Saturday, March 12, 2016

EXTRA: In defense of Chicago. We told Trump where he could stuff it!

I’ve had a chance to sleep on it, so to speak, with regards to the behavior of those people who felt compelled to silence Donald Trump when he tried to speak Friday night at a campaign rally at the University of Illinois campus here.

Chicago's way of telling Trump, "You're Fired!"
Because as we all know by now, those people got so unruly that the Trump people wound up cancelling the event – offering up some vague talk about doing the event somewhere else at another time.

THAT HAS CAUSED an all-too-predictable outburst from people determined to think Trump was disrespected by Chicago. That somehow, we singled him out for undue abuse. Trump himself is going about using the word “thugs” to describe our city’s behavior.

I have an uncle in Minnesota who actually is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, but who felt compelled to turn to Facebook to use the word “hypocritical” and say we had a “disgusting exhibition of stifling the ‘Democratic’ process.”

I realize my uncle has the same right to expression as anyone else. But my gut feeling in this case is to say to my Aunt Christy, “Tell Uncle Jim to lighten up a bit.”

Because after taking a few hours to mill over the events of Friday, I can’t help but think we in Chicago came up with the appropriate response to the nonsense talk that Trump has been spewing across the country and likely thought he could do once again in our fair city.

IF IT TURNS out that Chicago gets a reputation for being the place that stood up to Trump and told him to “stuff it,” then it makes me all the more pleased to be a Chicagoan.

Yes, I realize Trump can go ahead and act like a goof when he campaigns, deliberately making his political appeal to the share of our society that expresses intolerance for anyone or anything that isn’t exactly like themselves.

Of course, then they argue that those people not like themselves are obligated to show them the highest of respect. It’s the ultimate hypocrisy of those people who complain about “reverse racism” or “political correctness run amok.”

As it turns out, four men and a woman now face criminal charges for their behavior. Which in a group of that size, strikes me as being the proverbial needle in a haystack. A fairly insignificant number of people.

THIS WAS NOT some sort of massive riot in which people were killed or maimed – which is exactly the image I’m sure the Trump types will try to create in their own minds, then force into our thought process.

Which is part of why I can be sympathetic to those protesters who felt compelled to show up at the college campus Friday night.

But there’s also the fact that Trump’s campaign strategy likes to create the impression that there’s a hostile opposition, and many Trump rallies in other parts of the country usually have as their highlight the fact that security publicly removes people from the crowd.

In some cases, the Trump types have even taken punches at those people as they’re removed.

WHICH MEANS THE only real difference here is that Trump was denied the moment of picking out who got removed. That, and the fact that the Trump types didn’t get to hit anybody – because if they had, it’s likely the masses would have fought back and we’d have got the sight of Trump types having the caca kicked out of them!

As for Trump, it really is common sense that if you’re going to spew so much nonsense that targets so many people, that those people are going to want to retort in an equal fashion. Unless your idea of expression is that Trump gets to insult – and others just have to swallow it.

We got to see that the Trump types really are an overly-vocal minority. Consider the recent Chicago Tribune poll that showed Trump winning the Illinois Republican primary next week – but only having 32 percent support and some ridiculously-high disapproval ratings. In a one-on-one, he loses big time!

All I know is that if the Trump types ever do try to re-schedule the Chicago rally (as they hinted they might), it is likely to be an event so overly staged as to bear resemblance to a Nuremberg rally of old. Which some might think an overly-appropriate image to have?

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