By John Kass

April 9, 2025

Betty and I have an old car that is pushing 200,000 miles. It still runs fine but I was thinking of getting a new one, something fancy, something that speaks to status, to luxury.

Something posh. Something with a quiet ride. Something cushy.

I look at pictures of fine motorcars I’d never be able to afford, but then I look at another picture, one that I took years ago in my brother Peter’s backyard, at the swing set.

It is my all time favorite family photo. Of our two boys and Pete and Georgia’s children, two girls and a boy. They’re young, tiny enough to all fit on one swing. They’re in their 20s now, with lives of their own. Later, brother Nick and his wife Dina had two boys who were born later, otherwise they’d be in that photo, too.

But when I sit in the dad chair in our living room, scrolling on my phone, looking at fancy cars that I yearn for but won’t buy, and I look up and see that picture of the kids on the swing set.

I ask myself: What do I owe them?

And what do we as Americans owe the children of America?

We owe them a chance at success, not a guaranteed outcome, but a chance at winning. A chance at a good paying job, a chance to buy a home and someday retire with dignity. The same chance our fathers gave us. We were all given the same thing. Opportunity. Not a guarantee. But a chance.

And we don’t have to face machine gun fire on the beaches of Normandy as our fathers and grandfathers did. We don’t have to walk through the Killing Fields of Southeast Asia.

But we’re too selfish now. We give into panic when we should stand strong.

All we have to do is grow a spine and as President Donald Trump tries to revive American manufacturing. He’s trying to do this with tariffs. And the markets predicably entered a drop and then Wall Street speculators were in full-blown panic.

They’re all complaining and whining and crying about Trump now.

But where were they when the Republican and Democrat establishments sold our nation out to China, and shipped all those good middle class American jobs overseas? They turned their backs on the American people and now they’re afraid it will cost them money.

A “self-induced economic nuclear winter,” if Trump doesn’t call a 90-day pause on the impending levies cried Pershing Square CEO Bill Ackman, a public supporter of Trump.

What? Economic nuclear winter? If Ackman and his friends promised to watch your back, would you trust them?

“If, on the other hand, on April 9 we launch economic nuclear war on every country in the world, business investment will grind to a halt, consumers will close their wallets and pocket books, and we will severely damage our reputation with the rest of the world that will take years and potentially decades to rehabilitate,” he said in a post on X.

Can you go to war with men like these? No.

They’re cowards.

I knew the type years ago. We called them Yuppies then. Young urban professionals. These days Trump calls them Wall Street ‘panicans.’ Then the panicans wore cologne and paid too much for coveted cigars they’d smoke with the cigar band on to make sure all would see. And they coveted bread machines and silk paisley neckties.

Trump isn’t a panican. The other day he put a post on Truth Social addressing the chicken littles as he tries to revitalize American manufacturing and attack the $36 trillion national debt:

“The United States has a chance to do something that should have been done DECADES AGO,” Mr. Trump posted. “Don’t be Weak! Don’t be Stupid! Don’t be a PANICAN (A new party based on Weak and Stupid people!),” the president wrote on Truth Social half an hour before Wall Street opened for trading.

“Be Strong, Courageous, and Patient, and GREATNESS will be the result!”

In Chicago back in the ’80s, stockbrokers got their suits at Bigsby & Kruthers. It was owned by the Silverberg brothers who portrayed their store as more European tailored and fashion-forward than more traditional competitors. They used pro-athletes and Hollywood stars to market the store. Michael Jordan was cool. Suits and ties were cool. Images are crafted and purchased like ties even though the Silverberg’s got their start in more humble environs on Maxwell Street.

And Maxwell Street wasn’t cool then. It was the opposite of cool.

But in the 1980s B&K was all glitz and greed and Wall Street fantasy like Michael Douglas with slick-backed hair pronouncing from Hollywood that “greed is good.”

In the early 80s I was a college intern at the Daily Calumet, “America’s oldest community newspaper” on the Southeast Side of Chicago. In two weeks as intern there, editor Bob Bong made me the newspaper’s steel writer and political writer. I stopped trying to finish my college degree. I had a job and I wasn’t interested in the sheepskin. Plus there was work to do.

U.S. Steel’s South Works was laying off 45,000 men. Then Republic Steel a few miles away laid off 18,000. Wisconsin Steel laid off everyone. The hollowing out of Chicago manufacturing had begun.

The elites weren’t panicking then. They weren’t panicans. They would lose nothing. They had their suits and cigars. The people of the neighborhoods, the workers, were panicking. But they weren’t given a big media/political voice, because they weren’t in on the grift. Republican swamp creatures like U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell. Old Mitch married into the Chao family and they made fortunes.

According to a 2019 New York Times story:

“The family of Elaine Chao, the transportation secretary and wife of Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, has high-level political connections not only in the United States but also in China. That gives the family unusual status in the world’s two largest economies.

“Through interviews, industry filings and government documents from both countries, The New York Times found that the Chaos, and by extension Mr. McConnell, prospered as the family’s shipping company developed deeper business ties in China. Along the way, one of the company’s boosters was Ms. Chao, who now oversees efforts to promote America’s own maritime industry, which is in steep decline as China’s shipping sector rises in global dominance.”

And the elites—Republicans then mostly, but many Democrats too– kept telling us that globalization was a good thing. We’d be able to buy cheap stuff from China. All the cheap stuff we wanted. American manufacturing were sold out, but Walmart made money selling the Chinese junk.

But in South Chicago and other such neighborhoods, they weren’t happy. They’d been knocked to the ground, teeth knocked out, proud men forced to beg as their wives and children watched. They didn’t have stock portfolios. They were working men.

And the Wall Street guys who just ripped on Trump because they lost a few million in the markets the other day?

They’re the soft-palmed sleazebags who stepped over those mill workers years ago, beginning in the 1980s, as good paying jobs were shipped out to China. The blue collar union workers? They believed Democrats once. But they turned out to be generational road kill for the global elite.

More than 90,000 factories were shut down and wiped out in America. Whole towns were wiped out. The best jobs were what factory workers considered part time work, making not enough to raise a family.

And to top it off, the Democrats opened the borders looking for cheap votes, and tens of millions of illegals streamed in. The illegals competing with Americans for scraps, and if Americans objected what did the Democrats call them? They called them racists.

In those ruined towns and neighborhoods, the workers–blacks whites and Latinos–the bad public schools were crap and getting crappier. There were no solid factory jobs since our coastal elites and political establishment shipped those jobs to China and Malaysia, Vietnam and Mexico.

But China and Mexico did give us something in return: They gave us Fentanyl.

More than 100,000 young Americans die each year from fentanyl overdose. China knows this. And the Mexican narco gangs know it. Democrats knew it. The Biden White House knew it. But they they were being protected by the dying legacy corporate media. And now? All we hear is screeching panic from Wall Street.

Democrats and Wall Street have been making fools out of the American working classes for years. The presidential candidate of Wall Street was Kamala, and she pushed wealth taxes and open borders, more DEI, defunding police, trans athletes in women’s sports, and they want nothing to do with cleaning up Democrat waste in the federal government, or cleaning up any fraud and structural abuse hidden in the federal budget.

Now they’re screaming in panic, as if they’d just had their legs blown off on Omaha Beach. It’s so insulting. They deserve to be publicly shamed as they float above us, the Masters of the Universe, the hedge fund guys simpering their way through life. They’re the ones who fully backed the stupid wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine and elsewhere. A white college male had a better shot winning the lottery than an internship at JP Morgan in 2024, per its specific DEI policy–regardless of how accomplished he might be.

After the factories and mills were closed, after the bi-costal elites told the workers to “learn to code,” Americans were robbed of their sense of purpose  and connection to their community. The same thing happened in South Chicago also happened in Youngstown Ohio and Corning New York, and Bethlehem Pennsylvania, everywhere that men lined up to work an honest shift with their legs and their hands. The white working class, the black working class, the Latinos. And I saw them all together, suffering in South Chicago. The working men and women were screwed. They were heartbroken. Their jobs were taken away and shipped out to satisfy the greed of the Wall Street Masters of the Universe.

The bi-costal elites, whose hands were soft and smooth and uncalloused began to favor casual clothes of the farmer and stock worker and cowboy. They wore heavy boots as if they needed them.

But the American middle class didn’t have time to spend on costumes and fantasy in the hopes of being considered men. They worked multiple part-time jobs, living paycheck to paycheck, with little hope of raising a family and connecting to a community. When their shifts were over they delivered meals to the elites from Uber Eats.

I don’t need a new car. I’ll keep this one running as long as I can. I just want my boys to have a chance.

Trump is right. The working men and women of America are proud. They don’t want to burden their children with $36 trillion in debt. All the children of America deserve a chance to run their own race, and not be crippled by the economic selfishness of their parents and grandparents. Enough.

All the children in America deserve more. They deserve what we had. They deserve a chance. They deserve a future.

(Copyright 2025 John Kass)

 

 

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About the author: John Kass spent decades as a political writer and news columnist in Chicago working at a major metropolitan newspaper. He is co-host of The Chicago Way podcast. And he just loves his “No Chumbolone” hat, because johnkassnews.com is a “No Chumbolone” Zone where you can always get a cup of common sense.

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