How’s everyone’s weekend going?
Thanks for spending a portion of your Sunday with the Six.
Let’s get right to it.
MAKING THE WRONG KIND OF HISTORY
February is a month the nation recognizes Black History.
One hundred years from now, historians will likely want to erase current events.
In Chicago, with every major decision, Mayor Brandon Johnson affirms his campaign platform promises: reparations, reparations, reparations.
He cancels crime technology that helps police catch bad guys, as he did this week. The move confirmed a campaign pledge Johnson made to not renew the contract of SouthThinking, the company that created the ShotSpotter gun-detection technology. Activists who advise Johnson labeled the tech as “racist” and Johnson was quoted as referring to ShotSpotter as not “worthwhile.”
But newly hired police chief Larry Snelling likes the system and sees its benefits in preventing shootings (isn’t that the point?) Yet Johnson took the advice of his activist base over the police chief he hired and cancelled ShotSpotter. When Johnson tried to keep the service through the summer and the Democratic National Convention, Shotspotter called his bluff and raised its double barrels in the direction of Johnson. Another self-induced shit show created by mayor and his checkers-like negotiating skills. A shocking development considering Johnson rose to the mayorship of one of the country’s largest cities from a job as community organizer. Who saw this coming?
Most media coverage of the incident was focused on Johnson’s imbecilic deliberations with ShotSpotting (dropping the ball likely cost the city millions more when the bad PR forced Johnson Friday to cut a new short term deal with zero leverage). But these decisions, and almost every one he’s made while in office, are consistent with his campaign messaging.
These are two of Johnson’s core beliefs: non-blacks owe blacks. The bill is due for black oppression. And that conventional policing––you know, where they catch criminals and put them in jail––is systemically racist.
Just two months ago, Johnson reiterated this worldview on CNN. He told an interviewer how in 2024 he had compiled a “full out community safety plan” that “not only gets at the root causes of violence in the city of Chicago,” but makes “critical investments.”
He added how he’s included “half a million dollars for restoration and reparations to address, again, the cycle of violence.”
Johnson has surrogates for his reparations worldview who occupy governor mansions on the east and west coasts. Legislators in the state of New York recently signed a bill this month creating a state commission “to study the history of slavery in New York state” and in 2023, California’s Reparations Task Force proposed Black Californians receive up to $1 million in payment for the state’s treatment of their ancestors.
Progressive politicians all over this country that are in charge of state legislatures and major cities believe the same as Johnson. They hate this country as currently constructed and see it as a patriarchy run by corrupt white men. That’s the root catalyst of Open Borders: flood the zone with as many foreign nationals as possible in order to change the power dynamic.
The city of Chicago has shifted from a Irish Catholic-dominated corrupt patriarchy to a new machine run by public sector unions. They are an identitarian-dominated machine where decisions are made based on race or sex. It’s now the prevailing ideology in Chicago and the public sector unions, with Johnson as avatar, represent the instrumentation of that ideology.
I’m a middle-aged white guy. I don’t know anything about being black in America.
But this month is supposed be one that recognizes and celebrates black history. Instead, it’s being hijacked by victim hustlers like Brandon Johnson.
Is that what black people want?
Let’s proceed with the Six.
1. Democrats May Need A Plan B. Here’s What It Looks Like.
It’s becoming more difficult even for strident Dems to ignore Joe Biden’s behavior. Although Big Pharma will try and convince otherwise, cognitive decline does not reverse for people in their 80s. That’s why elderly folks in their ninth decade of existence should slow down, sit on the porch, have a cold lemonade and not be President of the United States. If Biden does relinquish the office, what exactly would the king-making turn look like? Politico with the nitty gritty.
2. A Teen’s Fatal Plunge Into the London Underworld.
One of my favorite types of true-crime stories—a whodunit and a whydunit—about a the mysterious death of a London teenager named Zac Brettler. Before he died, Brettler was posing as an oligarch’s son, which was news to the teenager’s stunned parents. A compelling, twists-and-turns piece delivered by a master storyteller for the New Yorker.
3. The Surreal Life Of A Professional Bridesmaid.
A fascinating article on a bridesmaid-for-hire: “let me be there for you, this time, if: you don’t have any other girlfriends except your third cousin, twice removed, who is often found sticking her tongue down an empty bottle of red wine”. Skills include: doing the electric and the cha-cha slide; holding up the bride's dress; catching the bouquet dramatically; and responding promptly to pre-wedding email chains. The woman profiled has discovered a market inefficiency.
4. College Educator Admits Students Can’t Read.
Today’s college students struggle with basic literacy, a professor writes in this essay for Slate. Their “reading resilience” is low and comprehension basic. In part, this is because they have grown up with smartphones. But it is also because the way reading is taught is insufficient, and this is deeply troubling to the author. They are not simply “choosing TikTok over Jane Austen,” he writes but “they are being deprived of the ability to choose.” Yikes.
5. His Best Friend Was A Warthog. One Day It Decided to Kill Him.
A second brilliant piece of long form storytelling in this week’s Six. From Texas Monthly, a 32-year-old man named Austin Riley spent a good part of his life caring for a 250-pound warthog. Only to have the pig on one random day viciously attack him. “It wasn’t just an attack, as far as Austin was concerned, but a murderous act of betrayal, one that shattered everything he thought he knew about the deep bond between man and pig.”
6. Four Grand Words: Pitchers And Catchers Report.
With the official start of spring training for most MLB teams this week, thoughts turn to baseball. And baseball movies. While the “Naked Gun” is not considered a baseball film, it does contain some of the funniest moments in cinema history set at a ballpark. One of those is when our unflappable hero, Frank Drebin, plays umpire. Enjoy.
Thanks for reading everybody and have a great rest of your weekend.
Have a suggestion for The Sunday Six? Send email to jonjkerr@gmail.com.