Chicago burned through Labor Day like a busted slot machine spewing lead. Fifty-four people shot. Seven dead. Blood in the gutters, the South Side howling like a wounded animal. Meanwhile, the official line from City Hall: “Relax, it’s all down 32 percent this year.” Numbers. Percentages. Clearance rates. Bureaucratic poetry meant to calm a nervous public. But if you’re lying in Bronzeville bleeding from a .40-caliber hole, the math doesn’t matter.
Over in Washington, D.C., the bureaucrats were toasting a 12-day homicide-free streak, like some perverse Guinness record. Twelve days of peace in the nation’s capital, punctured by a bullet on day thirteen. Still, the charts point down. Robberies, car theft, aggravated assault—all down. You can smell the victory reports being drafted in clean air-conditioned rooms, far from the alleys and stoops.
Enter the federal cavalry. Trump barking about National Guard deployments, the governors swearing he can’t touch their troops without the ancient Insurrection Act. That law is a relic—something cooked up when men wore powdered wigs and carried muskets. Now it’s being waved like a blackjack over the heads of Chicago and D.C., as if sending troops into city blocks would erase the ghosts of bad policy, poverty, and half a century of systemic neglect.
And the media? They’re chasing the next school shooting. Catholic kids bleeding in the hallways—what a headline. The nation stops, mourns, argues over the Second Amendment. Meanwhile, seven shot in Bronzeville barely makes the ticker. The truth is mass shootings in safe suburbs are an affront to the illusion of order. Inner-city killings? They’re background noise. The editors will tell you it’s not racist, just “audience engagement.” But if you’re counting corpses, it feels like the country has decided some bodies are worth more ink than others.
The mayors will tell you everything’s under control. The feds will threaten to roll tanks down Michigan Avenue. The media will lunge at the next school massacre. And the people in Chicago and D.C.? They’ll keep ducking bullets, filling hospital wards, and watching as their daily bloodshed gets buried under stories deemed more palatable for primetime.
