The Problem of the Chicago Voter Outside of the Ensorcelled Circle

Imagine if a Mayor of Chicago, had at one time been a civil engineer and actually read Mary Wisniewski's fine piece of reporting in the editorially awful Chicago Tribune - all crap that Rahm approves.  Too bad a Mayor is not a civil engineer by trade . . . Oh, that's right . . .one (Ed Kelly) was but that was long before Ms.Wiszniewski wrote about crumbling bridges.

Instead, we live in a politics and policy driven Progressive, global, Banana Republic. This is a malicious make-believe palace, a fairy tale world where magical things can happen for an Oh, so very few, including an eight year stay in the White House for a very special lad, or where a little guy can sit on another little guy's lap and tell him that he too dreams of being Mayor.

It is a place where big dreams count as nothing and fortunes trump virtue.

It is a tight ensorcelled circle that welcomes only the approved - the businesses, the banks, the law firms, the real estate wizards, the University and 501(c)3 public policy tax vacuums and the very few people enchanted for windfalls.

Outside of the ensorcelled circle only those with an immediate connection to the source of gold some few benefit with multiple pensions, Shakman exempt appointments, or sinecures beyond  of the vision of  everyone else.

That leaves out millions of Chicagoans and many more Cook County residents.

Outside of the ensorcelled circle people make due, beef about water bills, tax increases, burgeoning crimes against person and property, horrific public schools and worse public servants.

Yet, these same put-upon people vote the ticket every election and every time.

Gun Violence and Police Misconduct keep every eye on flaccid media writers like Eric Zorn, Neil Steinberg, Stephen Chapman and Mary Schmich, or smarmy echo-chamber Orwellians on WBEZ, or WTTW.

Chicagoans nod, sigh and wait for the Cubbies. Sadly band wagon south siders feel a tingle in the thighs over the baby bear and forget 2005 as a time past. Same goes with political villainy.  Chicagoans are too nice by half.

They scratch their heads about

• Forrest Claypool's latest six figure job and pension package
• Suzanne Mendoza's leap from Herbie Pulgar to the Comptoller's chair
• Pat Quinn
• Proco Joe
• Toni Preckwinkle
• Mike Quigley
• Jan Schakowsky

And think nothing about putting an " I'm With Rahm" sign on the their lawns

Chicagoans will always do a neighbor a solid; even if the neighbor works against every fundmental core value you have, makes a ton of money and pension for following orders.

The only thing necessary for the perpetuation of evil in Cook County is for good people to do a solid for Frannie, Billy, Tommy, or any other knucklehead with a government gig.

It is one thing to break wind in the bath tub; it is another thing altogether to bite the bubbles.

Moral Outrage (Getting One's Undies in a Bunch) a Sign of an Unhealthy Conscience

Hey,hey! Ho, Ho! Kelly Anne Conway's Pumps Have Gotta Go! Some folks losing sleep over feet on the couch?  Not this bag of smelts.  And I doooooooooooo love smelts!

I sleep like a log.  Some might say. "well, so do psychopaths."  Yeah?  Name two.

Sleep is the benefit people cash-in because brave men and women stand guard over all of us. Better men than me have said so -

We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm. George Orwell

I went into a public-‘ouse to get a pint o’beer,/The publican ‘e up an’ sez, “We serve no red-coats here./”The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,…/O makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep/Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap;/An’ hustlin’ drunken sodgers when they’re goin’ large a bitIs five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.   Rudyard Kipling

Orwell wrote an essay on this Kipling  1890 poem Tommy Atkins and noted:

A humanitarian is always a hypocrite, and Kipling’s understanding of this is perhaps the central secret of his power to create telling phrases. It would be difficult to hit off the one-eyed pacifism of the English in fewer words than in the phrase, ‘making mock of uniforms that guard you while you sleep’.

This here sleeper is as  yellow as a duck's foot, but  honors the people who stand watch over his crib.

Moral outrage works well with 'humanitarians' - people who wouldn't give a starving blind girl a Confederate dime - and seem to ignite great group fuses of carbon foot-prints.

My moral outrage pencil-detonator must not be American made.

Michael Moore neither amuses, nor impels the Hickey moral tinder to spark.  Fat old guys in baseball hats scare little kids off the playground. Stranger Danger!

A recent study that I found in a magazine from the UK, the home of Orwell and Kipling, points to some interesting and telling features about folks who get morally outraged with every Tweet.

Feelings of guilt are a direct threat to one's sense that they are a moral person and, accordingly, research on guilt finds that this emotion elicits strategies aimed at alleviating guilt that do not always involve undoing one's actions. Furthermore, research shows that individuals respond to reminders of their group's moral culpability with feelings of outrage at third-party harm-doing. These findings suggest that feelings of moral outrage, long thought to be grounded solely in concerns with maintaining justice, may sometimes reflect efforts to maintain a moral identity.

No problem where I come from - guilt and shame are the real breakfast of champions.

I get yelled at by family, friends and neighbors whenever bumptious, boorish, or boastful bad old me surfaces.  Stay moral and stay at peace.

This study by Bowdoin psychology professor Zachary Rothschild and University of Southern Mississippi psychology professor Lucas A. Keefer in the latest edition of Motivation and Emotion is most telling.

Here's a list of their finds from Reason magazine.

• Triggering feelings of personal culpability for a problem increases moral outrage at a third-party target. For instance, respondents who read that Americans are the biggest consumer drivers of climate change "reported significantly higher levels of outrage at the environmental destruction" caused by "multinational oil corporations" than did the respondents who read that Chinese consumers were most to blame.
• The more guilt over one's own potential complicity, the more desire "to punish a third-party through increased moral outrage at that target." For instance, participants in study one read about sweatshop labor exploitation, rated their own identification with common consumer practices that allegedly contribute, then rated their level of anger at "international corporations" who perpetuate the exploitative system and desire to punish these entities. The results showed that increased guilt "predicted increased punitiveness toward a third-party harm-doer due to increased moral outrage at the target."
• Having the opportunity to express outrage at a third-party decreased guilt in people threatened through "ingroup immorality." Study participants who read that Americans were the biggest drivers of man-made climate change showed significantly higher guilt scores than those who read the blame-China article when they weren't given an opportunity to express anger at or assign blame to a third-party. However, having this opportunity to rage against hypothetical corporations led respondents who read the blame-America story to express significantly lower levels of guilt than the China group. Respondents who read that Chinese consumers were to blame had similar guilt levels regardless of whether they had the opportunity to express moral outrage.
• "The opportunity to express moral outrage at corporate harm-doers" inflated participants perception of personal morality. Asked to rate their own moral character after reading the article blaming Americans for climate change, respondents saw themselves as having "significantly lower personal moral character" than those who read the blame-China article—that is, when they weren't given an out in the form of third-party blame. Respondents in the America-shaming group wound up with similar levels of moral pride as the China control group when they were first asked to rate the level of blame deserved by various corporate actors and their personal level of anger at these groups. In both this and a similar study using the labor-exploitation article, "the opportunity to express moral outrage at corporate harm-doing (vs. not) led to significantly higher personal moral character ratings," the authors found.
• Guilt-induced moral outrage was lessened when people could assert their goodness through alternative means, "even in an unrelated context." Study five used the labor exploitation article, asked all participants questions to assess their level of "collective guilt" (i.e., "feelings of guilt for the harm caused by one's own group") about the situation, then gave them an article about horrific conditions at Apple product factories. After that, a control group was given a neutral exercise, while others were asked to briefly describe what made them a good and decent person; both exercises were followed by an assessment of empathy and moral outrage. The researchers found that for those with high collective-guilt levels, having the chance to assert their moral goodness first led to less moral outrage at corporations. But when the high-collective-guilt folks were given the neutral exercise and couldn't assert they were good people, they wound up with more moral outrage at third parties. Meanwhile, for those low in collective guilt, affirming their own moral goodness first led to marginally more moral outrage at corporations.

Hell, I ain't mad at nobody.

Love my straight eight.

The Trump Protesters - Kids Who Have Never Read Joseph Conrad

“Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality. ”
― Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes

In the 1970's, I was teaching English at Bishop McNamara High School in Kankakee, Illinois.  A movie came out called Apocalypse Now.   At that time, I learned how many people 'pretended' familiarity with Joseph Conrad - " The great British African Explorer and adventurer and wrote Heart of Darkness.  Did you know that Apocalypse Now is all about Heart of Darkness?"

No, I had not the foggiest!  I had been reading Conrad's the THE ENWORD of The Narcissus, you know about how  Jim and Huck took a raft trip and were raped by Hillbillies.  That movie came out about the same time.

A handful of people were aware that Joseph Conrad was in fact Polish.  A couple of fingers of folks, including teachers of English were aware of the fact that Conrad was a radical.

Since November 8th, Anti-Trump rallies  funded and organized by the World Workers International, Revolutionary Communists within the Answer Coalition have allowed privileged whites to again loot and vandalize cities with approval of the globalist elites.   The pale soul patched, man-bun suburbanites have put aside Pokemon and donned red bandanas and balaklavas in order avoid discomfort and identification as they temper tantrum across the continent.

The drips on cable news coo for their feelings and fears. And the decontructionist academics offer misreadings in support of their crime and misdemeanors.

Yep, a stone radical, who had brushed aside the Revolution.  That idiotic Second Coming of the Masses!  The Masses are tools. Always were and always will be.

Apocalypse Now is not an antiwar movie.  It is an Anti-Masses movies, just as Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Secret Sharer, The Secret Agent and Under a Western Sky are warnings to the individual heart that it belongs to God and not man's longing for a material paradise, or their personal feelings.

Jim Wait, a doomed West Indian sailor of color , dying of Tuberculosis  has the sympathy of the Masses - Black Lives Matter!  The Captain of the Narcissus, Alistoun and an experienced salt named Singleton, are reviled by the masses for not having human hearts. They are only concerned with the work and safety of the ship. When a storm puts the Narcissus in peril, the crew, the Masses want to chop off the sails and right the ship. The Captain and Singleton refuse.  Guess what?

The ship rights itself when the storm passes and the Narcissus still has sails to continue on its voyage.  Jim Wait dies.  The Masses wanted to slow down and give Justice to Jim Wait and they wanted the ship righted Now!  It can't wait! Move on!  The Answer!

The Masses will sink the ship.

Is that fatalism?  Is that heartlessness. Nope that is reality.  I have less than 21 miles worth of gas in the tank of my Malibu and protest I might the car won't make it to Peotone from Morgan Park.

Joseph Conrad lived in Polish occupied Russia and saw Imperialism at worst and learned that Revolution trumped that monstrosity hands down.

I hazard a wager that most of the Trump Protestors have never heard of the dead white man who wrote Under Western Skies and Heart of Darkness - you know Apocalypse Now.

Had the little dopes been stuck in one of my classes they might know that Revolution is always the ugliest example of human behavior.

Then they might know this, The ignorant serve cruel masters.  Or as Conrad wrote in Under Western Skies:

In a real revolution–not a simple dynastic change or a mere reform of institutions–in a real revolution the best characters do not come to the front. A violent revolution falls into the hands of narrow-minded fanatics and of tyrannical hypocrites at first. Afterwards comes the turn of all the pretentious intellectual failures of the time. Such are the chiefs and the leaders. You will notice I have left out the mere rogues. The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane and devoted natures, the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement–but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims–the victims of disgust, disenchantment–often of remorse. Hopes grotesquely betrayed, ideals caricatured – that is the definition of revolutionary success. There have been in every revolution hearts broken by such successes. But enough of that. My meaning is that I don’t want you to be a victim.   Conrad

Here's Who Banned Naperville High School from Expressing Free Exercise of Religion

No Asians, Pacific Islanders, Arab Americans, much less African Americans?  Gee whiz, Progressives sure play in their own sand box and then make other people miserable.


The Freedom from Religion Foundation filed a complaint with Naperville Central High School after pictures surfaced of the team praying before a Nov. 14 game against Waubonsie Valley High School. ABC 7 Chicago

 “We are so pleased that these outstanding thinkers and freethinkers have agreed to publicly lend their endorsement to the Foundation, and its two purposes of promoting freethought and the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause,” said Dan Barker, Foundation co-president.

• Jerry Coyne, Ph.D., professor of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago, is author of the popular book 'Why Evolution is True' and the blog of the same name.
• Richard Dawkins, probably the world’s most famous contemporary atheist and a distinguished evolutionary biologist, is Oxford professor emeritus. In his blockbuster book, The God Delusion, Dawkins writes: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction.”
• Daniel C. Dennett is Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, Tufts, and author of the bestselling book about religion, Breaking the Spell. In a newspaper article about his nonbelief, Dennett once wrote: “I’ve come to realize it’s time to sound the alarm.”
• Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of 36 Arguments For the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction and a research associate in Harvard’s psychology department, is FFRF Freethought Heroine of 2011. Goldstein is a 1996 MacArthur Fellow (the “genius” award). She has taught at Barnard and in the Columbia MFA writing program and the Rutgers philosophy department. She’s been a visiting scholar at Brandeis and at Trinity College in Hartford.
• Ernie Harburg, a retired research scientist, is president of Yip Harburg Foundation and co-author of Who Put the Rainbow in the Wizard of Oz? Ernie has dedicated his retirement to furthering the lyrics, music, memory and progressive views of his freethinking father, the lyricist Yip Harburg, author of classic songs such as “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and of Rhymes for the Irreverent, recently republished by FFRF.
• Jennifer Michael Hecht, poet, historian and author of the acclaimed Doubt: A History and The End of the Soul, told the FFRF 2009 convention audience: “If there is no god — and there isn't — then we [humans] made up morality. And I'm very impressed.”
• Susan Jacoby, bestselling author of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, and program director of the Center for Inquiry-New York City, told FFRF convention-goers in 2004: "[President] Kennedy had to speak about his religion because he was suspected of insufficient dedication to the Constitution's separation of church and state. Today's candidates are suspect if they display too much dedication to secular government."
• Robin Morgan, feminist pioneer, global activist, author of the groundbreaking "Sisterhood is Powerful" and more than 20 books, was formerly Ms. Magazine editor and consulting editor. She is the co-founder of the Feminist Women's Health Network and Women's Media Center and currently hosts "Women's Media Center Live" the radio "talk-show with a brain."
• Mike Newdow is working pro bono to challenge such violations as the addition of “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. He told the U.S. Supreme Court during oral arguments: “I am an atheist. I don't believe in God. And every school morning my child is asked to stand up, face that flag, put her hand over her heart, and say that her father is wrong.”
• Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard, is author of The Blank Slate: “I never outgrew my conversion to atheist at 13.”
• Katha Pollitt, “Subject to Debate” columnist for The Nation, author and poet, has spoken out regularly and energetically as a freethinker, in such columns as “Freedom From Religion, Sí!”
• Ron Reagan, media commentator, describes himself in a radio ad he taped for FFRF as: “Unabashed atheist, not afraid of burning in hell.”
• Robert Sapolsky, a neurologist, Stanford professor and bestselling author, once suggested FFRF put up a sign at its conventions: “Welcome, hellbound atheists.”
• Edward Sorel, satiric cartoonist and irreverent illustrator who is a regular contributor to The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and whose caricatures have been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery, has been a Foundation member since the 1980s.
• Julia Sweeney, comedian and actress, is writer/performer of the play, “Letting Go of God”: “How dare the religious use the term 'born again.' That truly describes freethinkers who've thrown off the shackles of religion so much better!”

I taught The Crucible for decades to high school students.  I taught It Sinclair Lewis' It Can' Happen Here for years.  I taught Milton's Paradise Lost; The Dream of the Rood; Dante's Inferno and the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J., as well as Voltaire, Byron, Shelly, Keats and Walt Whitman.

These well-educated elites of Freedom From Religion Foundation would find that troubling.  

Based upon a photo of  high school football players 'grabbing a knee' around their coach, Freedom from Religion Foundation assumed that the players were being puritanized by a public school employee in the secular heresy of prayer.

Naturally, the Foundation filed suit and the Naperville School Leadership tucked tail -"Naperville Community Unit School District 203 Supt. Dan Bridges said he instructed coaches of all sports in the district not to take part in prayers."

The players and their parents had none of it - 

"We, as a football team and a family, give Coach Stine our full support. He is the best coach in the state and cares about each and every one of us more than any other coach cares about his players. We are proud that he is willing to stand up for his faith and for the example he sets for us. He is a role model for every one of us in a world where true male role models are becoming few and far between. The players will continue this tradition of praying before our games and would like to extend an invitation to all members of the Freedom From Religion Foundation to come out next fall and watch us pray and play the game we love. Go Redhawks."

Go, Redhawks!

Freethought????  Except when thinking about God and something other than nonsense.

Senators Marque Kirque and Dick Durbin - Dweedle Dee and Lah-Dee-Dah

“I’m going to be protecting my relationship with Dick ." U.S. Senator Marque Kirque

Marque Kirque, the Junior U.S. Senator from Illinois had a stroke and U.S. Dick Durbin, the Senior Senator from Illinois is one.

They are an Illinois stamped brand of Progressive Senator reminiscent of that statesman and wit United States Senator Roland Burris.

Marque Kirque said in an interview yesterday that he's " “going to be protecting my (his)relationship with Dick " and that is more than understandable.  They are identical.
Dick Durbin's GOP opponent and fellow Brand-man Jim Oberweiss is identical to them as a dim-witted, compromised, self-indulgent low-lip biting pest.

It would be encumbant upon Illinois voters to vote against Durbin, a dim-witted, compromised, self-indulgent, lower-lip biting pest, who has lied about words the President had for Speaker Boehner, bullied the bullies of the IRS examine more than few smidgens of dirt on religious and conservative 501(c)3 supplicants, cheerleadered America into insolvency for George Soros and sullied the valor of U.S. servicemen and women.

I mean, Jim Oberweiss too is a dim-witted, compromised, self-indulgent low-lip biting pest.

But, he is not Dick Durbin.  Food for thought. Discuss until November.  Vote for the name that is not Dick Durbin.   Marque Kirque? 
His relationship with Dick is protected.

The Loud and Stupid Have Had the Floor Far Too Long - Dan Savage e.g.

 Overdue. Had to be done.


We have been far too nice to the people who make time stand-still: the vacuous, lite-enlightened, shifty, greedy, egomanical and the just plain too-stupid to be Governor.  Good manners and spineless moral dictates developed by ninnies with far too much time their hands preclude the time honored retort of  " What is wrong with you?  Just How Goddam Stupid Are You?  For Crissakes, You Just Can Not Shut up!  Now, have your opinions follow your ass out of here!" following any uncommonly stupid proposition or pronouncement (see any Editorial in any newspaper in Chicago, or catch Chicago Tonight on WTTW).

These dominating ideas used to come only from hopeless drunks after some cash windfall, any recently hired faculty member with a grudge about Homecomings, public librarians, Elks and Hyde Park indigents seeking unrestricted admission to the Newberry Library.

Now days,  this field of shameless edgy opinion contrarians crowds and dominates our inkspace, cyberspace, wirewaves and  legislatures.

Take for example this celebrated and  accomplished asshole -advice columnist, playwright, activist, arse-burglar and bullying  lecturer Dan Savage:



All wax and no wick.

Then we have this financially comfortable, mildly educated and spiritually bankrupt couple from Texas:

Two pacifists out of necessity in the battle of wits