The Purge: Chicago Style

Remember the glory days of the Summer of Love 2020, when the “mostly peaceful” protests to honor the martyrdom of St. Floyd the Recidivist ravaged cities and murdered innocents? His apostles having gotten a little too frisky with the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth, Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot tried to pre-empt them.

In a scene reminiscent of medieval battle preparations rather than a slow Tuesday in a 21st-century American city, she raised the river bridges that surround the city’s less feral neighborhoods to prevent the roaming Visigoths from giving Chicago’s dwindling productive class another reason to leave. Alas, those unlucky enough to find themselves on the wrong side of the river found themselves, once again, suffering the consequences of the virtue signaling of those on the right side of the river.

Sweet home Chicago.

Of course, Lightfoot’s own soft-on-crime policies and bigoted rhetoric brought the everlasting mob to life. To the outside observer, one could be forgiven for thinking that Chicago voters would conclude that Lightfoot wasn’t doing her job. And they’d be right, but not for the reasons they thought.

In the mayoral runoff election in 2023, law-and-order Paul Vallas went up against if-you-notice-increasing-crime-you’re-a-racist Brandon Johnson (both Democrats, mind you). After years of more daylight robberies, more Magnificent Mile flash mobs, and more grade schoolers murdered by gang violence, voters got to choose between course correction and doubling down on stupid. And Chicago progressives declared in one voice, “Hold my box wine.”

So here we are, a few months later, with no signs of things going in any direction except worse. One could hardly expect less with Jussie Smollett’s bleach-wielding attackers still on the loose. But for those more inclined to engage in deadlier forms of assault, Chicago remains a spiraling free-for-all. It’s gotten to the point where a community group called Native Sons recently proposed “The People’s Ordinance,” which asks the local drive-by shooters and drug dealers to voluntarily restrict their rampant criminality (or, as they put it, “high-risk activities”) to between the hours of 9 p.m. and 9 a.m.

This isn’t a creation of the Babylon Bee. It is an actual, non-satirical proposal. Read it if you don’t believe me.

This is what a once-great American city has been reduced to, a desperate citizenry is begging gang bangers to commit murder only during pre-ordained times. Mayor Johnson is a bit busy promoting government-run grocery stores as the cure to Chicago’s ills, so for now, the Native Sons and their traumatized neighbors are on their own. The idea of the people being left to their own devices against killers roaming the streets without fear of consequence while a manipulative political class protects its own, and only its own, is the premise for “The Purge” franchise.

Related: Chicago Armed Robbers on an Extraordinary Rampage: ‘Everyone Is so Freaked Out’

For those lucky enough to have not seen any of the five “Purge” movies, the premise is this: in a futuristic, dystopian America, the government has implemented a single 12-hour time span, held every March 22 from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., during which time all crime, including murder, is legal. The event is dubbed “The Purge” and has been constitutionally established as a recurring national holiday.

One detects fairly quickly that “The Purge” series is a scathing critique of contemporary American society, as seen through the lens of the intersectional Left. Guess who spends their Purge holidays using their privileged position to hunt down and murder innocents? You guessed it: rich white people.

And guess who spends their Purge holidays cowering in their Section 8 housing, trying just to survive yet another night in blood-drenched America? You guessed it: minorities, the poor, immigrants, and so on. Any non-whites who find themselves on the delivering end of the weaponry do so only out of economic desperation or because they’ve been hoodwinked by The Man. The whites themselves do it for sadistic pleasure or from racist hatred.

The comically absurd films are meant to be taken as serious warnings by activist/director James DeMonaco, whose melanin-deficient psychopaths don American flag trucker hats as they prowl the streets in their machine-gun mounted trucks, complete with invocations to God and the “New Founding Fathers” every time they score a kill. The films’ sledgehammering of their politics across the faces of audiences makes Michael Moore’s propaganda of yesteryear feel almost naively quaint.

Chicago’s real-time Purge reenactments aren’t too far off the mark… if you allow for the fact that the victim/killer roles are reversed. The elected leaders are Democrats. The public safety officials are Democrats. The Cook County state’s attorney is a Democrat. The teachers and professors are Democrats. The looters and arsonists and rapists and killers are Democrats. The vast majority of the voters, both actual and fictional, are Democrats.

Out of American cities with the highest murder rates, Democrats run 19 out of 20 of them. In contrast, America’s ten wealthiest congressional districts are made up of Democrats. If DeMonaco wanted to give an honest critique of American violence, he could start by acknowledging the political demographics for what they are, not what he would wish them to be.

The problem with America isn’t flag-waving Bible thumpers wreaking havoc in the streets with a wink and nod from the likes of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis. The problem with America is unprosecutable criminals and perpetually aggrieved, meaninglessly degreed activism tourists wreaking havoc in the streets with a wink and nod from the likes of Joe Biden and Brandon Johnson.

And what was considered the basis for “The Purge” is what despondent Chicagoans are pleading for, with their aforementioned People’s Ordinance, as an improvement from the situation in which they’re currently mired. “The Purge” is twelve hours, once a year. Chicago is 24/7, every day of the year. But one’s pity turns to frustration and finally to indifference, witnessing them vote for more of the same again and again ad nauseam.

DeMonaco is currently working on the next Purge movie. He should consider saving money on professional actors by simply setting up his cameras on Chicago street corners, hitting the record buttons, and letting the city do its thing, but don’t hold your breath for that. There are political narratives to maintain.