Thank God it’s finally over

     Passover begins Wednesday night. The holiday where Jews sit late into the evening, delaying dinner while they give thanks for freedom. Our most comfortable holiday, in that it blends food (eventually), family and gratitude. Not to forget obligatory pillow leaning and mandatory wine drinking. What’s not to love?
     Yes, a lot of the gratitude is scripted ritual in a language most participants don’t understand. And being Jews, who often have trouble sticking with the program, Seders often turn into general celebrations of freedom from all sorts of oppression. There is much ad-libbing. I certainly plan to give thanks for freedom, finally, from Chicago electoral politics, which have filled the airwaves for months, the past five weeks supercharged by the mayoral runoff.
     The simplistic solutions and buzzwords hammered by candidates must offend anybody grounded in the real world. If fixes were that easy, you want to scream, how come nobody’s done them yet? With crime the No. 1 issue, you’d think the choice was: a) let cops do whatever they like so they don’t feel sad and instead start arresting people again so crime goes away, the Paul Vallas plan; or b) fix everything in society — jobs, schools, families — so crime goes away, the Brandon Johnson solution. Good luck with either of those plans.
     There are valid reasons to be thankful for the election beyond that it is finally over. The campaigns were surprisingly civil, for a Chicago election. While race was always a factor — how could it not be? — there just wasn’t as much poisonous racial rancor as in years past. A low simmer rather than a rolling boil.
     Yes, great white hope Vallas played footsie with the Fraternal Order of Police. But he didn’t come close to Bernie Epton’s notorious “Before it’s too late.” At least not in so many words.
     And yes, Johnson, in one of what seemed like daily debates, accused Vallas of being “dismissive to a Black man.” Which approaches the Lori Lightfoot poor-me, you-hate-me-because-I’m-Black-and-not-because-I-don’t-know-what-I’m-doing quickstep. But both candidates were generally civil.

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