12/3/15
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is in big trouble. The City of Chicago is in financial hot and
rising water that was only partially, and temporarily, alleviated with the property
tax increase and other “revenue raising measures” the Mayor rammed through the
City Council. The Mayor’s hand-picked
schools chief is plea bargaining with the feds over a massive corruption scandal
taking place right under the noses of Mr. Emanuel’s school board. Crime is a big problem in the city and it’s
not, as the Mayor seems to suggest, just a problem of optics and perceptions. And now much of Chicago’s black community,
much of its white community, and all of its black political leadership is in an
uproar over the shooting of Laquan McDonald and the long delayed release of the
tape of Mr. McDonald’s killing. (See POLITICSAND THE LAQUAN McDONALD SHOOTING: THETIMELINE DOESN’T FIT THE NARRATIVE, 11/26/15)
Some are seriously calling for the Mayor’s resignation, a resignation
for which they will be waiting a long, long time, to be sure.
The question one has to ask, and that one suspects Mr.
Emanuel is asking himself, is why in the world he ever wanted to become mayor
of Chicago in the first place. Mr.
Emanuel says that this is the only elected post he wants to hold. Only the most naïve people believe this; the
rest of us know that the job of mayor of our fair city is, like everything else
in Mr. Emanuel’s professional life, only a stepping stone to the next
thing. And most of us know what that “next
thing” is. So why did Mr. Emanuel think
that being mayor of Chicago would set him up nicely for the Oval Office? Or, for those ingenuous enough to believe
that Mr. Emanuel has no intention of running for president and just wants to be
a good mayor, why did Mr. Emanuel think he could actually run the dystopia that
my beloved home town is fast becoming?
The answer lies in Mr. Emanuel’s perception of
himself. He is the archetypical young,
well educated, upper middle to upper class child of privilege that is
absolutely certain that he knows the score, that he has the plan, and that, if the
benighted citizens would only come to realize and appreciate his manifest
wisdom, he could lead us to nirvana.
You know the type.
They were raised in wealthy suburbs by either doting parents or parents
who demanded “excellence,” narrowly but somehow fuzzily defined, of their
children. They were sent to fancy
schools whose faculties featured denizens of the ‘60s radical movement who
somehow never found their way back to reality. At these schools, these golden children
were treated to continued reassurances that they were indeed wonderful in every
way interspersed with the errant nonsense that passes for modern non-technical
higher education. When they emerged
from these cocoons of craziness, these wonder children moved from their
suburban hometowns, for which they showed nothing but contempt, into “the city,”
generally gentrified neighborhoods in which everyone thought, and sometimes
looked, just like themselves. This echo
chamber served to constantly reinforce their life-long held conviction that
they were obligated to bring enlightenment to those who needed only to
understand the goodness and omniscience such a background conferred on these
denizens of yuppiedom. These wunderkinds could do anything…if only
the dullards they deigned to govern would appreciate the favor they were being
granted by the presence of this newly emerging ruling class. So is it any wonder that Rahm Emanuel
thought that he, and maybe he alone, could pull the city of Chicago back from
the precipice of doom toward which it was speeding?
Mr. Emanuel is the archetype of this entitled and oh so
competent, clever, smart, and compassionate class of philosopher kings. Further, he is probably among the most
talented and ruthless of this bunch.
Yet he is only one of this crowd.
The really scary thing is that nearly all of the nation’s political
class (of both parties, by the way; this is not a Democratic peculiarity) and
much of the country’s business leadership is composed of people who share Mr.
Emanuel’s background and perception of self.
Their passionate and undying certitude regarding their own perfection,
and their unquenchable mission to share their omniscience with all of us,
whether we want this favor or not, is dangerous and is wreaking the predictable
havoc on a society that at least used to draw its strength from the wisdom of the
common man, a wisdom held in complete disdain by Mr. Emanuel and his ilk.
See
my two books, The
Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The
Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics,
for further illumination on how things work in Chicago and Illinois
politics.
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