Monday, February 22, 2021

Why there's no voting our way out of this

 

Last week I published an article titled simply "TINVOWOOT", an acronym meaning "There Is No Voting Our Way Out Of This".  Ongoing developments are proving that to be true on a daily basis.

Wirepoints, an organization that's done yeoman work in highlighting the fiscal insanity with which the state of Illinois governs itself, points out that the state's politicians are, at root, completely untrustworthy, because they don't care what the people of Illinois think or want.  They're functioning at their own whim, not answering to anyone - even those who nominally elect them.  Bold, underlined text is my emphasis.


Three stories told those who believe Illinois is on the wrong track that the state’s political establishment cannot care less about their concerns. Disdain and even hatred about those concerns prevail.

First was Gov. JB Pritzker’s State of the State and Budget Address. It’s not just that it was more of the same refusal to undertake the major reforms needed to solve the fiscal crisis, which we are writing about separately. It was the extreme rhetoric Pritzker used to attack a political obstacle that doesn’t exist.

That political obstacle, Pritzker said, is Illinois Republicans. Their purposeful destructiveness has undermined the mission of putting Illinois on the right path, Pritzker would have us believe.  “In essence, they eliminated the fire department, burnt down the house, and poured gas on the flames — and now they’re asking why we’re not doing more to prevent fires,” he said. “In a normal year, I might have more patience for their hypocrisy. But this is not a normal year,” he added.

In truth, however, Republicans have been unable to pass or block a single thing of any consequence during the Pritzker Administration because Pritzker’s party has held a supermajority in the General Assembly for years. Nor do Republicans hold even one statewide office. He has faced no political obstacle from those he excoriated.

Second, Illinois finalized the Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards through a vote by a legislative committee. A firestorm of opposition preceded the vote, expressed by Illinoisans who saw what the standards were plainly designed to accomplish: political indoctrination of kindergarten through high school students, imposing radically divisive critical race theory on classrooms.

Countless parents across the state were livid, but they watched helplessly as the standards were sold to the public through distortion and outright dishonesty, which we wrote about here.

Third, a commission appointed by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot to identify city statues that perhaps should be removed returned its list of what it called “problematic” statues. The list includes five of Abraham Lincoln and two of George Washington.

. . .

Most Illinoisans may think it preposterous that those statutes could be tagged for possible removal, but Lightfoot is taking her commission’s list seriously.  “This project is a powerful opportunity for us to come together as a city to assess the many monuments and memorials across our neighborhoods and communities — to face our history and what and how we memorialize that history,” Lightfoot said in a statement.

The common element in each of those stories is the extreme contempt that Illinois’ political leadership shows for the most fundamental values held by many Illinoisans. And they make no effort to hide it. They simply don’t care.

It is therefore understandable if despair is the sentiment growing most rapidly in Illinois.


There's more at the link.

That's only one state, of course:  but Illinois is emblematic of many other "blue states" in its disregard for the will of its people.  Take California, where a petition seeks to gather enough signatures to force a recall election for that state's Governor.  During the recent general election, standards for signature comparison on ballot documentation were relaxed.  Strict comparison was deemed unnecessary, and an unduly onerous burden on election staff.  That was, of course, because Democratic Party politicians were expected to - and did - obtain the majority of the votes cast.  Now, with a Democratic Party governor in danger of recall, does the same standard apply?  Of course not!  Suddenly strict signature comparison and verification are the order of the day - because if enough of the signatures on the recall petition can be called into question, there will be no recall election.

The duplicity is sickening . . . but it's no more than what we've come to expect from the progressive left as soon as they gain power.  They try to make sure, by fair means and/or foul, that they never relinquish it again.

We're seeing this now on our southern border.  The point of letting in a flood of illegal aliens is not compassion, or altruism, or anything of the sort.  It's to ensure that left-wing voters and potential voters outnumber those who might oppose progressive left-wing policies.  We all know this . . . but you'll never see it mentioned in the mainstream news media, because it's politically incorrect to mention it.  "Out of sight, out of mind" is their mantra.

We've just had another example out of that bastion of progressive buffoonery, New York City, where an educator has allegedly been forced out after refusing to take part in politically correct indoctrination.


Ames was grilled about her “ethnic background,” chastised by a colleague at a training session when she shared her grandparents’ experience during the Holocaust in Poland, and “admonished” when she declined requests at superintendents meetings to take part in the comic book movie-inspired “Wakanda Forever” salute to “black power,” she charges in the legal filing.


Again, more at the link.

Wakanda?  A fictional, non-existent nation that exists only in imagination, being used as an ideological indoctrination point?  What happened to reality???

Any right-thinking American with children in that school system should be absolutely outraged if the report is true . . . but you'll hear only crickets from most parents, because they've stopped caring.  They regard the public school system as a warehousing project for their children.  They don't actually care about what they're taught, just as long as the kids are kept busy while their parents are doing other things.  When they "graduate", their lack of knowledge and understanding won't matter, just so long as they're part of "the system", and know enough to fill in welfare forms.  Those parents who do care about their kids' education will, indeed, be outraged . . . but they're outnumbered and outvoted by the mass of those who don't.  Therefore, nothing will be done.

Increasingly, if we care for traditional American values and morality and standards, we're going to have to inculcate them in our children in spite of, rather than with the help of, the state.  That will, in turn, arouse the suspicion of a state whose political leaders want everybody indoctrinated to think as they see fit.

As I've said before, if you find yourself trapped in such a "blue state", or in a blue enclave within a "red state", it's long gone time you started looking for a way out of there.  You may lose money by moving, but you'll at least retain at least some degree of the freedom for which our founding fathers fought . . . not to mention your self-respect.  Freedom begins locally, with citizens and their local government controlling their own affairs.  From there, we can move upward and outward to take back levels of government that have been infiltrated by the progressive enemies of freedom - but it all starts locally.

Peter


8 comments:

Old NFO said...

The balkanization isn't just 'continuing', it is now ramping up with the new administration in power. I don't like where we are headed...

7916 said...

I've seen this meme more frequently after the election, but I think it has changed to still emphasize voting over the formation of communities. Voting, even in a local election, is still a rigged game. When the union voting blocs need it the rigging will occur.

In short, local voting is still supporting the state. You won't change the state from the inside. Your locality is still subject to the state. Your freedom only depends on your level of involvement with the state; move, homeschool, no debt, small lifestyle, and a community of like people.

The community thing is way to big a topic, but voting is no place for your hope.

Anonymous said...

Same dismal single-party rule here. Just substitute Kommiecticut for Illinois, and Hartford-Bridgeport-New Haven-Waterbury-Stamford-New London, et al for Chicago. All #LIBTARD run 3rd world tribal shit-holes that just want us to throw more taxpayer dollars their way.

Beans said...

Wakanda... A fictional land created by... Jews. So she should have gotten a hard pass...

As to the rest. They don't consider us citizens. They consider us subjects.

Dumb Jo was right when he told a union worker that "I don't work for you, you work for me." Yet who is partially responsible for his election? Union workers.

We are subjects. They rule. They don't pass laws. They pass Edicts.

NITZAKHON said...

"It's to ensure that left-wing voters and potential voters outnumber those who might oppose progressive left-wing policies."

And early after the 1965 immigration bill, that was openly acknowledged.


"They regard the public school system as a warehousing project for their children."

We had our kids in a private school and switched them to the local "Oh, that's a really good school district" schools. Money. But they're back in the private school now. (And much happier too.)

I do want to move. The problem is - the IRONY is - my USSR-born wife does not see the storm approaching. And unless I outright just abscond with the kids, I am not sure what to do.

The Freeholder said...

Here in red-turning-purple-ish blue North Carolina, my last kid graduated high school in 2013, just ahead of The Deluge. Even then, there were more and more "pre-Woke" teachers whose work we had to undo on a very frequent basis.

But you know what made it easier? Both kids did the maximum time in JROTC. In that class they got old-fashioned civics, like I was taught. They even used the same textbooks! PE like it used to be, summer camps for leadership, the works. Their battalion NCO turned out to be a guy that I remember from high school. Career Army, retired. Great guy.

My wife is a public school teacher who is taking early retirement at the end of the school year. Too much lunacy. Between woke BS and Covid lunacy, she's had enough. I don't blame her. If I were still at my last employer, a private university, I'd have been fired by now.

Unknown said...

We aren't going to fix this by moving to another state. That has been the line of a lot of conservatives for too long. Meanwhile, the democrats have been very busy at a very local level. There is a vacancy on a town commission because the conservatives decided to leave? Guess who fills the seat. One of the biggest failures of the conservative 'side' is a refusal to get involved and stay involved in local politics. I realize we think of it as wrestling with the pig, but our refusal to wrestle with the pig has just allowed the pig to get bigger and to get far, far better at playing the game. We keep thinking that there will be plenty of red states and in some far and distant future we will come back down from out mountain tops to lead the great revitalization. That won't happen. Not when every school board, every town planning and zoning board, every library board is packed with liberals from Boston Mass to Billings Montana.
We tend to laugh at the democratic activist machine, it looks ridiculous, but the actual democrats on the boards, on the state government commissions are far more experienced at making the machine work than their republican opponents are and it shows.

NITZAKHON said...

I realized some years ago that to US, political awareness is just once every election cycle. To the Left, this is THEIR REASON FOR BEING. Thanks to frontpagemag.com's David Horowitz, I came to understand that this is their religion, and that they are Marxianic missionaries.

A short anecdote to that effect: Back in the days when the local rag had a disqus comment section I would comment on articles, op eds, etc. And within minutes I would get slammed by one of the "usual suspect" Leftists. But then I would notice two things:

1. It would not take five minutes for my comment to be downvoted and replied to.
2. Within 15 minutes I'd have five downvotes and at least three comments against mine.

I came to the conclusion that these people were like sharks, literally patrolling the site for wrongthink and alerting their fellow that there was a bad man comment that needed to be squelched.

OK, one more anecdote: I made a comment on a racial matter piece. Again, within minutes, comments against me. But one was interesting: they quoted a (of course) raaaaaaacist comment I'd made A YEAR BEFORE. And I concluded they were keeping f*cking dossiers on opponents. Because given the volume of comments I'd been making, there was no way for someone to have weeded through just to find something - they had to have had it on hand in a file.