This ridicule (tactic) is not new, it has only intensified under the current regime. Calming the worries of people who aren't locals is a rite of passage among Chicagoans who didn't grow up here. The “Chirak” nickname, for example, is made funny by the many scenic waterfront scenes and West Loop restaurant scenes featured in “A Day in the Life” vlogs, which like to portray the city as the last American bastion for yuppies with no inherited wealth. (The best parody of this genre, by comedian Mike Schwanke, depicts a “28-year-old's weekend in Chicago” as an endless cycle of prosaic hang-outs—brunch, happy hour, dinner, etc.) While New Yorkers romanticize hardship, Chicago transplants humbly pride themselves on ease. Chicago, in our opinion, is well-managed and ready to play. It’s calm and quite safe here, if a stranger asks about it, it’s calm.
Can we fault this well-intentioned position without tripping over the usual slippery claims about authenticity—that what's authentic in a city isn't near its famous landmarks, or that life must be hard to be real? Maybe we laugh, as Chicago poet Britney Black Rose Capri did in a video over the summer: “I know these motherfuckers have never been south of fucking Hyde Park, and that's only because there's a university there. West? Baby, O'Hara. Like, I get it, but it's also fucking funny.” I get it, too: the sociology behind what counts as violence in Chicago, and why that violence affects some neighborhoods and not others, is incompatible with this kind of peacocking—and, in any case, nuance has never meant much to conservatives, either inside or outside the city, unless any violence can justify policies that prolong inequality. But I don't expect their feathers to be ruffled much by the feel-good imagery meant to combat their theatricality. These images of the city, reassuring in their homogeneity, seem to suggest that any defense against fascist occupation must be based on the grammar of tourism. They resemble what author and activist Sarah Shulman has called “spiritual gentrification,” a way of looking that replaces “complexity, difference” with “sameness.” They harmonize with a conservative worldview that has no problem turning the city into a playground for those who can afford it. This is the reactionary dream of any city, the city as a suburb, whose pastoral image, by the way, is its own illusion. Chicago is beautiful but pastoral? Ha!
Pastoral is a preposition. Reaganite conservatism accomplished its mission of reimagining the model American citizen within the “Dick and Jane” fantasy of the American family. Today, this family is the lingua franca of politics: liberal and conservative politicians alike frame policy in terms of what it will or will not do for “American families,” as if they were looking out over a sea called “America,” populated by a multitude of private islands. Although the American Dream has lost its credibility due to gross inequality, we cannot shake its logic of individualistic aspiration, according to which, as cultural theorist Lauren Berlant put it, “if you invest your energy in work and raising a family, the nation will provide broader social and economic conditions in which your work can be valued and your life can be lived with dignity.”
It's “you” and “your”, not “we” and “our”. The model citizen, in their view, looks for signs of public good in private places, especially that celebrated place of retreat in America, the family home. It is not advisable for a model citizen to identify with the masses who demand that their government do things for the people. many; such an organization of the masses threatens the calm family portrait by which the citizen understands himself. In his quest for an American life well lived, he must justify contradictory government behavior—for example, that health care will not be a universal given, but that bodies should be controlled and punished according to the law when they compromise the ideal of the stockade.
Examples abound in our country, but the very existence of the so-called Department of Homeland Security – the recipient of tons of money to monitor, detain, maim and kill the people living here in the name of public safety – is one place to look at. Since January, Department of Homeland Security propaganda broadcast on social media platforms like Instagram and X has adopted the president's signature penchant for posting crap and slop. The department produces clips in the style of “Cops.” ICE seizures, citizen doping and sweaty intimacy memes corporate account. The July post shows a Chevy Silverado wrapped in a Border Patrol logo, parked as if its occupants are looking longingly at the open desert during golden hour. “You look happier,” says the observer featured in the text. Response: “Thank you! ICE is deporting all criminal illegal aliens and there is no crisis at the border.” Another post describes a “one-way Jet2 holiday before deportation” and footage of a gang of beaters being herded onto the plane. Piece in Drift writer Mitch Theriault gave such messages the apt name of “agit-slop.” On the chain gang video, one commenter remarked: “At first I thought it was a meme account.” It remains for someone else to point out: “THESE ARE PEOPLE WITH FAMILIES JUST LIKE YOU!!!!!”
