The Indignant Citizen Manifesto

If you can imagine the stupidity encountered during the course of a normal day to be like a simmering pot of spaghetti sauce, seemingly under control but in actuality very close to boiling over, then perhaps you can understand the motivation behind this blog.

Because sometimes a simmering pot of spaghetti sauce will, if unattended, produce a heat bubble that bursts through the surface, spewing sauce on the clean stove. Now someone has to clean that shit up. And if the sauce simmers unattended long enough, more bubbles form, breaking the surface over and over with increasing volatility and spitting spag spooge on the hot stove top. Eventually the hot stove top will make the spag spooge hard and crusty. Now whoever has to clean that shit up really has to work at it. And why? Because the sauce was never stirred, the heat never checked and nobody ever bothered to put a lid on it.

The Indignant Citizen is here to stir the sauce, cover and reduce heat as needed.

Indignation: n. anger aroused by something unjust, unworthy or mean. (Merriam-Webster online)

The Indignant Citizen is not angry. He is occasionally frustrated to the point of anger, but he is not an angry person by nature. The Indignant Citizen’s patience is tried by stupidity, hypocrisy, arrogance, laziness, corruption and poor grammar. The Indignant Citizen reserves the right to engage in any of these at any time, however, because when he does so, it is for effect. When you do, it’s wrong.

The Indignant Citizen sees you when don’t give up your seat on the el for the woman with three kids. He has cursed you for not stepping all the way into the car. He wishes you would just walk to the back of the bus, already. He has burned eyes in the back of your head for cutting into the bus line in front of people who’ve been waiting for 20 minutes, because you think you’re entitled to a seat. You’re not. So fuck off and get your lazy ass to the back of the line.

The Indignant Citizen is tired of suburban strip malls, big box retail centers and fry pits lining soulless stretches of roadway. He is especially tired of seeing these environments in the City of Chicago. He thinks planners who allow these steaming piles of crap to defile our landscape should be fired. We don’t need another Best Buy, we need walkable communities people can care about.

The Indignant Citizen thinks if people just used common sense and were considerate the world would function much better. For instance, who brings a hundred-dollar bill to a baseball game and expects change from a beer and a brat in the first inning? Please. Take you ATM card, go to the Cash Station, pay the fucking fee and get a twenty. There are people behind you in line, asshole.

The Indignant Citizen intends to use humor, sarcasm logic, superior analysis, loaded rhetoric and occasional profanity to expose the stupidity, hypocrisy, arrogance, laziness and corruption rampant in Chicago and elsewhere and ridicule those responsible. No one will be safe. Names will be named and he will call things what they are.

The Indignant Citizen wants what’s right.