Trump is threatening to occupy Chicago whereas the Cubs are feting the far proper.
The solar units over Wrigley Area throughout a sport between the Chicago Cubs and the Milwaukee Brewers.
(Geoff Stellfox / Getty Pictures)
In 1914, Carl Sandburg famously referred to as Chicago “the City of Big Shoulders.” The poet wrote, “Come and present me one other metropolis with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and powerful and crafty.” Greater than a century later, Chicago resides beneath the specter of army invasion by its personal nation, however Sandburg’s metropolis stays “Stormy, husky, brawling.” A Nationwide Guard sworn to defend the rights of its residents is poised, in line with this nation’s commander in chief, to occupy the streets as the primary act of this regime’s newly branded Division of Battle. The messaging by President Donald Trump and the dangerously dim-witted Pete Hegseth isn’t difficult: Their most urgent bogeyman isn’t China or Iran. It’s these combating for justice in the US, or as Trump described them throughout his marketing campaign, “the enemy inside.”
Those that refuse to kiss this man’s ring at the moment are successfully enemy combatants in their very own nation. For those who’ve learn the more disturbing passages in Hegseth’s guide American Campaign, you already know the secretary of protection desires not solely of defeating grammar and full sentences; he additionally thinks that accountable governance entails ordering police and the army to take sides in opposition to “radical leftist” dissenters in a coming “civil conflict.”
Hegseth desires to see his “fellow Individuals” who suppose, act, and dwell in another way from him subjected to army violence. Like Trump’s whole royal court docket, Hegseth doesn’t work for us. The GOP has lengthy stoked its base by feeding it racist caricatures of Chicago. Now the Republican Occasion is able to dwell out discuss radio’s 40-year propaganda fever dream and stomp what Trump’s balding, 31-year-old “youth” chief Charlie Kirk calls “the cockroaches” of this exceptional metropolis.
Kirk, nonetheless, is greater than a boring racist with a penchant for old-school Nazi verbiage. He was raised in Arlington Heights, a delicate, tony Chicago suburb, which explains a terrific deal, together with why he’s a diehard Cubs fan. On August 20, after a 4–3 Cubs victory, Kirk was allowed to take the sphere and pose with two of the group’s stars, Michael Busch and Matt Shaw. Kirk wrapped his arms across the two gamers (each white). Shaw brandished a happy thumbs-up, and Busch grinned for the cameras. When Kirk posted the photo on-line, individuals in Chicago have been furious. Right here is that this suburban dork, terrified of the large, dangerous metropolis and thrilled on the considered the army on each nook, smiling subsequent to a pair of town’s greatest baseball gamers.
The Nation spoke with Rory Fanning, a former Military Ranger and writer, who leafleted round Wrigley following Kirk’s go to. For the Cubs “to be related to this rabid white nationalist who’s entrance and heart on this [political] debate proper now,” units a horrible instance, he stated. Referring to 2 Latino gamers on the group, Fanning requested, “How does Miguel Amaya really feel? Willi Castro?”
Present Challenge
Fanning stated that the Cubs group first owes its followers an apology—“significantly the Black, brown, homosexual, transgender girls followers,” he stated. However he argues the Cubs ought to go even additional: “Charlie Kirk must be banned from Wrigley Area.”
That’s not prone to occur beneath the possession of the Ricketts household, who has owned a 95 p.c stake within the Cubs and Wrigley Area since 2009. Paterfamilias Joe Ricketts was beneath fireplace in 2019 after a collection of racist and Islamophobic e-mails have been leaked to the net publication Splinter. The subsequent 12 months, Todd Ricketts, the youngest of his 4 siblings, rose to prominence as Donald Trump’s chief fundraiser for his reelection marketing campaign in 2020, resulting in an outcry of protest from Cubs followers. (One would possibly bear in mind Todd’s earlier work in 2010 when he went undercover at Wrigley for the tv present Undercover Boss and obtained fired for not cleansing bogs correctly.) A June 2020 editorial within the Chicago Solar-Occasions requested: “What are you to do should you’re a fan of the Chicago Cubs however the group’s homeowners embody a man who’s main the hassle to reelect probably the most divisive, damaging and incompetent president in fashionable American historical past? We’d say there’s all the time the White Sox.”
And but there was no such editorial outcry in 2025 about Kirk sullying the sacred areas of Wrigley Area. Fanning instructed The Nation, “Wrigley is manner larger than the Ricketts. Wrigley is manner larger than these two doofus gamers who come out with Charlie Kirk.”
The Cubs are simply a part of Main League Baseball’s capitulation to the Trump regime. Along with ensuring to flatter their decaying Expensive Chief, groups and networks now run ICE recruitment advertisements in between innings. Throughout a Mets sport, you possibly can see ads that blare, “Be part of ICE. Catch the worst of the worst.” Provided that Main League Baseball is dependent upon immigrant labor from Latin America, its complicity with this regime is nauseating, particularly when contemplating that Venezuelans are the second-largest immigrant group within the MLB and an open goal of this administration. And nonetheless Kirk’s photoshoot at Cubs is particularly galling. It was like a pretentious Brit in jodhpurs overseeing colonized India and pondering he represents progress. This suburban Illinois man-child, this strolling argument in opposition to white superiority, doesn’t know Chicago exterior of Wrigley.
Hundreds of courageous Chicagoans crammed the streets on Saturday refusing to dwell beneath inner occupation in their very own nation. The protests seem to have stymied these efforts—not less than for now. Kirk will bluster, however actually at a distance. He would by no means dare face the “Metropolis of Large Shoulders.”
Editor’s be aware: This text was revealed at 5AM ET on September 10, earlier than the capturing of Charlie Kirk at a school occasion in Utah.
Donald Trump desires us to simply accept the present state of affairs with out making a scene. He desires us to consider that if we resist, he’ll harass us, sue us, and lower funding for these we care about; he might sic ICE, the FBI, or the Nationwide Guard on us.
We’re sorry to disappoint, however the truth is that this: The Nation received’t again all the way down to an authoritarian regime. Not now, not ever.
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Onward,
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editor and Writer, The Nation
