"I Loathe You Just the Way You Are"

One man’s flirtation with political fatalism


As long as a big-time contractor can sidle up to the governor in Springfield, and say, “Frankly, my dear man, you shouldn’t give a damn. There are jobs to be handed to the unions, money to be made by me, and votes to be garnered by you. So what if the public has to pay double in I-Pass tolls?”—as long, I say, as this is so, Illinois shall continue to be an opportunist’s paradise.

As long as the president of the Chicago teachers’ union can stare at the TV camera, and, ignoring the fact that Chicago has the shortest school day in the country, along with some of the lowest test scores, and one of the highest per-pupil expenditures—stare, I say, at the taxpayers, while stating categorically that she and her minions will not work a minute longer for a measly two percent raise, then Illinois shall continue to be an ignoramus’s haven.

As long as Congressman Luis Gutierrez can demand that illegal aliens—pardon me, undocumented workers—no, wait, uncounted citizens—can demand that they be given free benefits, immunity from the law, and a path to legality JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE HERE, then Illinois, I fear, will continue to be a magnet for criminal migrants.

As long as illegal aliens can undercut a legal resident’s employment by working, without benefits, for paltry remuneration, Illinois’s restaurants and hotels and suburban lawns will continue to be cleaned for next to nothing—while low-skilled Americans wait in line at the unemployment office.

And while Americans search for elusive jobs, their illegal competitors enjoy the luxury of hiding in plain sight—of being, ironically, unelusive—because Cook County (heavens!) is a “sanctuary county,” a utopian but myopic entity that dispenses charity to parasitic strangers at the expense of law-abiding citizens.

If enough Illinoisans are out of work, even as illegal workers avoid paying taxes by receiving their wages under the table, then the state will inevitably (as has happened) run out of money. What then will our Dear Democratic Leader do?

Quinn Jong-Il, like his namesake in Pyongyang, invariably looks to his people, for it is the people—ordinary people—who are most easily fleeced. As a last resort, they may be sacrificed, but in the main the people exist in order to provide for the Dear Leader’s needs. Before they get the ax, they get the tax. And so more of the people’s income is confiscated; fees are hiked; regulations expanded. When, like Atlas, the big corporations shrug, and threaten to leave the state, Quinn Jong-Il placates them by offering continued tax breaks and infrastructure assistance and Cubs tickets. Yet for small businesses and the middle class, the government has nothing but sly contempt—nothing but derision for the common man.

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
How will the Future reckon with this man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores?

(Tweet from Quinn Jong-Il:
     omg the man with the hoe is a teabagger?)

How will it be with kingdoms and with kings…
When this dumb terror shall rise to judge the world,
After the silence of the centuries?

Centuries??? Is 2012 soon enough? Can it happen in Illinois, a state whose politics are as blue as a hot spring in Yellowstone Park, and about as malodorous and corrosive? Will we follow Indiana, Wisconsin, Ohio, even Minnesota in their efforts to curb government spending?

As long as the various taxing bodies in DuPage County see fit to increase their budgets at a time when home values are plummeting, Illinois will continue to be a public-sector sinkhole.

As long as Rahm Emanuel covets casino revenues so he can play Monopoly with Chicago’s resources, Illinois will continue to be a gambling den.

As long as Barack Obama believes that the United States is villainous in its international relations, and inequitable in its domestic dealings, America will lose out in the global marketplace—the marketplace, not just of goods and services, but of ideas and moral force. As long as this president thinks we must be “green,” and not be mean to terrorist fiends, and so long as his wife insists we ought to get lean, while the both of them preen on Martha’s Vineyard even as Washington’s Monument leans from an earthquake, then Lady Liberty, losing her sheen, will look with envy at Millennium Park’s amorphous “Bean.” Take that, Jesse Jackson.

As long as Ben Bernanke can borrow two trillion dollars from himself, to lend to Timothy Geithner, so that President Obama, looking at the unchanged unemployment numbers, can boast, “But you know, if we HADN’T done anything, the solar system would have been sucked into a rabbit hole,” then I say that Mr. Bernanke’s and Mr. Geithner’s grandchildren, along with yours and mine, are in a hell of trouble.

As long as gay men and women are convinced that by being ineligible to marry they are hence as oppressed as Negroes were in George Wallace’s South—Negroes who were lynched for imagined misdemeanors—then I say the gates of tradition have been breached, and New Age barbarians are upon us. Among these hordes of effete militants are climate-change alarmists, who would take the world’s economy back to the Middle Ages, and incarcerate the world’s religions in a secularist sanitarium. Among them are animal-rights advocates and abortion-rights activists, declaring with one voice: “A fetus is not human! But a snail? Beyond human!” Thus chanting, they march into the garrison of American culture. Yet what, in fact, is American culture? For directly behind these liberals are even more liberals on the move—the multiculturalists, the diversity enforcers, the hate-speech police, the organic-food action groups, the gender-sensitivity crowd, the medical marijuana lobby, the anti-oil, anti-tobacco, anti-gun, anti-carbon dioxide, anti-trans fats zealots, plus a few old-style feminists, and a ragtag band of hippies proclaiming their eternal scorn for William McNamara. Who is to say where American culture ends, and one-world government sympathies begin? At what point is Euro centrism supplanted by Latino identity, or by Asian/Pacific-Islander sensitivities?

As long as The New York Times, and MSNBC, and their ilk can wear their political loyalties on their sleeves, while feigning impartiality—as long as there stands behind them a Greek chorus of progressive pundits praising Obama’s agenda, and mocking Rick Perry’s hairstyle—as long as Illinois remains part of Cook County—as long as I have breath within me to serenade our Dear Leader Quinn Jong-Il, I say and sing:

“I could not loathe you…any bet-t-ter. I loathe you just the way you a-a-a-are!”