Most of the time, the Leftists who turn free areas into pockets of Marxist misery are fine with residents living in such rancid repression – until a national or global event comes to town. Once they know that they will be in a glaring spotlight, they move speedily to create Potemkin villages to disguise the real destructive fallout of their policies – only to return to those policies once the big event is over.
Legend has it that in 18th century Russia, Empress Catherine the Great wanted to tour her conquered lands. Nobleman Gregory Potemkin had been charged with colonizing the new territories but failed when the money ran out. As the story goes, Potemkin arranged for fake facades of entire villages to be propped up along the river and local peasants to wave as Catherine’s boat floated by. Once she passed, the entire construct would be taken down and put back up again downstream so she would believe her empire was healthy and her people happy. It was all a fraud to create the illusion of a robust society to hide the real, decrepit one.
Today’s Democrats have adopted similar deceptive techniques to temporarily disguise the painful realities of the regions they deliberately destroy.
The Marxist agitators of the Summer of 2020 – Antifa and Black Lives Matter – have morphed into the pro-Hamas terrorist sympathizers of the Summer of 2024. The radical activists have arrived to sow their usual election year mayhem. Their modus operandi is to first alight on college campuses, then spill out into the cities, then metastasize out to the country. This year, they’ve started this predictable process earlier, so by mid-Summer the protests will be in a community near you.
The Left has unleashed these toxic forces to generate chaos and confusion, which in turn allows them to seize ever-more power and control. It is, however, a fine line: too much chaos and confusion and the American people will recoil and reach for a resolute, steady hand to restore lawfulness.
The lessons of 1968 loom large. That year, American society was drowning in the counter-cultural revolution, driven primarily by the anti-Vietnam war protests which had spread from campuses. Radicalism begat more radicalism and created even more bedlam.
It came to a head at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where the radicals clashed with police, resulting in mass arrests, an increasingly out of control society – and the election of Richard Nixon, a famously strong leader who promised a return to law and order.
With their DNC once again being held in Chicago, Democrats are desperate to avoid a 1968 replay that could help re-elect President Trump, so they are trying to contain and disguise what they’ve unleashed, at least for a short time.
For four years, the Soros State’s Attorney in Chicago, Kim Foxx (who infamously mishandled the Jussie Smollett “This is MAGA Country!” race hoax) has refused to prosecute criminal acts linked to protests if her office determines them to be “non-violent.” As a result, she dismissed crimes during the 2020 George Floyd riots involving arson, burglary, theft, criminal trespass, unlawful gathering and disorderly conduct. If you’re rioting for “social justice,” those crimes don’t count.
Now that pro-Hamas mobs are threatening to rain chaos on the DNC, Foxx is suddenly interested in prosecuting crime. In response to protesters indicating they will not abide by the city’s restrictions on demonstrations and with violence threatening to erupt, Foxx has stated that her laissez-faire approach to protests will NOT be in effect during the two weeks surrounding the Convention, when the eyes of the nation and world will be upon her city.
So for just 14 days, Chicagoans may have some semblance of law and order and relief from dangerous, rampant crime – not because Foxx cares about their safety and the rule of law, but because she doesn’t want the everyday violence she usually condones to help elect the guy vowing to restore law and order. Once the DNC show is over, she will once again plunge Chicagoans into crime-ridden lawlessness.
The shameless Kim Foxx move recalls a similar sleight-of-hand from California Governor Gavin Newsom, when he ridded San Francisco’s streets of homeless camps and open-air drug markets ahead of the 2023 APEC summit, which brought to town world leaders and international media. Newsom admitted, “I know folks say, ‘they’re just cleaning up this place because all those fancy leaders are coming into town’ – because it’s true.”
China’s President Xi Jinping deserved sanitized, safe San Francisco streets but its residents do not. Just as the DNC visitors to Chicago deserve clean, safe streets but its residents do not. When the circus leaves, the “leaders” go back to their corrupt power grabs and their jurisdictions revert to their familiar rot.
If “leaders” have to put up Potemkin villages, they have abject disregard for their constituents’ freedom, well-being and safety - the things they are supposedly elected to ensure. They sentence their residents to live in hellholes while they live it up, protect their own interests and consolidate power. If blue-area serfs ever wake up and reject the abuses of their Potemkin “leaders”, they might actually get on a path to real - instead of fake – liberty.
