When I visit Chicago and travel on a city bus: to say that what I am seeing could be called civilized is an outrage.
Never do you hear a word about these streets in the press. Nor do you see them on T. V.
Human fulfillment is utterly missing---there is nothing but a hollow shell.
The promise of democracy has been dashed to the wind.
Everyone talks about tyranny and democracy, or tyranny vs. democracy---what does that mean?
It means universal aspirations. Legitimate aspirations. The people of Chi-town have legitimate aspirations too, it isn't just the Egyptians. On the streets that the bus just drove through I could not even talk this way, without the risk of getting beat up.
Then how do I know other people feel the same way I do? I know.
Because it is legitimate.
Eventually I make my way to a slightly "better" -- or better insulated -- neighborhood at Montrose and Leavitt. And I go into a Starbucks.
I ask him for the cheapest thing; that's a "small coffee" and then I buy a biscotti and the soft seat, as the music, is free. And here they play for 1/2 hour the best jazz ever and I know. I am a jazz expert. As I write the number they play is not as good to me. I don't care for it. But I had one half hour of the best jazz, in a soft seat, with the best coffee, flavored w/ cinnamon, sugar, and milk.
And civilization is falling apart
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