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
