Donald Trump will soon send the National Guard into Memphis or into Chicago, a city where violent crime has been way down and the White House posted images headed“Chipocalypse Now,” and “I love the smell of deportations in the morning.”
It’s certain there will be marches, riots, arrests, blood and likely death in the weeks to come – because Chicago is not the District of Columbia, which is a government town. For Mr. Trump, Chicago is enemy territory, and it’s time to break heads the way Mayor Richard J. Daley did in 1968 when anti-Vietnam War protestors marched on the Democratic Convention.
There may be a better way.
The annals of passive resistance are filled with mass sit-ins, work slowdowns and just staying at home. Here are some others Chicagoans may want to adopt, including a uniquely Canadian tactic.
1. Feigned incompetence. Work slowly or claim not to understand orders, which enslaved people have done to counter oppressive systems throughout history.
2. Tactical frivolity. Nothing punctures high seriousness faster than laughing at it. So, let’s see some clown marches down Michigan Avenue.
Or Whiteface parades by Black residents, or an Immigrants’ Ball in Millennium Park for the US-passport-holding children of immigrants. Or, as they did in Russia in 2012, substitute toys, teddy bears and dolls for humans in street protests.
3. Speak Chicagoese. The National Guard will not be from Chicago, nor likely from Illinois. So they might not have a clue about Chicago’s code words, memes and secret handshakes. Time to amp up on all of that and leave the guards clueless.
4. Flood the zone. Bombard National Guard Offices with permit requests for squirrel adoption, reports of UFO sightings (the ultimate illegal immigrants), and sign-up sheets for Official Snowball Fights.
5. Enlist grannies. Bludgeoning grandmothers in the streets is not a good look for any government. They have powers of their own.
6. Ask for help. When Donald Trump sent The National Guard into Washington, DC, on August 14, there wasn’t much crime to stop. So the Guard is still busy landscaping, gardening and managing other ‘beautification projects’ in the US capital.
This gave me an idea for a very Canadian act of passive resistance. When the Guard arrives, Chicagoans can walk up to the Guardsmen and do what tourists do in every city the world over when they’re lost: ask a police officer for directions. This is a particularly effective tactic if you’re white and older. Since the Guard is the police in Chicago, and if they see the Guard gardening, they can ask about their begonias or poinsettias, or tell the Guardener a long story about their own experience with begonias or poinsettias.
The point is, a few Chicagoans doing this is a funny news item; a few hundred is a great story back at barracks; a few thousand is worrisome; but a few hundred thousand is a revolution.
So, kill them the Canadian way, with kindness.
Meanwhile…
1. Talk about ‘key-man insurance’. Tesla’s board thinks its founder is so vital to the future that it’s offering him a pay package of $1 trillion if he meets the company’s goals. Here’s the news report, and the proxy statement that lays it all out (see pages 5 and 6). For scale, Canada’s GDP last year was $2.41 trillion (USD).
2. Is Africa’s size on the map racist? It seems so. “(Mercator) is the world’s longest misinformation and disinformation campaign, and it just simply has to stop,” Moky Makura, executive director of advocacy group Africa No Filter, told Reuters. You can helpCorrect the Map.
3. Eye candies. National Geographic’s Best Pictures of the Year. Plus the Academy Awards Best Pictures of the Year, 1927-2025. Plus, if you seek Armani’s monument, look about you. Plus, how the world and the universe will end. And storytelling through movement.
4. The best opening sentence ever. This from an article last week in The Guardian:
“A surgeon who froze his legs so they would require amputation to satisfy a sexual obsession before making nearly £500,000 in insurance claims has been jailed.” Here’s the story.
5. Gold medal sarcasm. A question for NRA chief Wayne LaPierre who’s not a straight shooter. And speaking of the gun-rights lobby, here’s a typical commercial.
6. Make big money writing short paragraphs. Okay, make small money writing one short story. The CBC Short Story contest is accepting entries until Nov. 1.
Trade doomscrolling for hopescrolling. Make your own disaster-preparedness kits.Discover your attachment style. Stay away from energy drinks; they can triple your suicide risk.
7. The future of…First, AI: Geoffrey Hinton’s latest take. Next, what will be left after theAI and Crypto bubbles burst? Next, how literary tourism became the hottest travel trend.Next, old school method acting. Plus women in sports. And finally, the future of HR.
8. What’s hypergamy? Basically, marrying above your station. Conversely, hypogamy means marrying down. The myth is that women, and especially gold-diggers, marry up. But a study by the London School of Economics released this year (and using data from marriages between 1837 and 2021), revealed that in England and Wales, it isn’t true, and even back in the Brontë’s day, never was.
9. Is there anything left to say? Last words by writers on writing. Plus a cultural bureaucrat finally speaks out without fear. Plus which Roman emperor is Donald Trump?
10. Lists that are good to be on. First, the passport power of major nations (Canada ranks 14; Singapore, first). Plus, when each country’s population will peak. (Canada, 2054). And one very good/very bad list to be on: the 1%.
11. In Praise of Older Women. While the woman in George Kaczender’s production of the 1978 movie In Praise of Older Women was in her 30s, here are two much older women who deserve our praise today: Anne Murray, 80, who just released a new album to add to the 55 million albums she’s already sold worldwide. Her interview last week on Q with Tom Power is fascinating. Earlier this week, 95-year-old June Squibb played the lead inEleanor the Great, which premiered at TIFF. It was directed by first-time director, ScarlettJohansson, who’s the most successful movie star of all time. Her films have earned over $14.5 billion USD worldwide.