They do not believe that the blue areas of Illinois support the entire state.
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Not that I wouldn’t dance a jig, but if #MM and #LL go down, I may OD on my own natural endorphins.
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me (right now): ‘I wonder if Fenimore Cooper felt the same way.’
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It’s easy to laugh at this kind of foolishness but it’s also an indicator of how profoundly the rural landscape has changed in the USA over the past half century or so. Until the Great Depression at least, it could accurately be said the rural USA was filled with yeoman farmers, making us genuinely different from much of the world.
Now it is increasingly filled with large corporate farms (the new plantations) and smaller farms/ranches so deeply in debt they could hardly be said to own their own homesteads: pretty much old fashioned peasants in a word but with illusions and, in some cases even a memory, of a time when it was different.
That can lead to a peasant culture that Edward C. Banfield described in which suspicion of and resentment toward non-clan members dominates: The poorer peasants envy the peasant who has a cow but don’t necessarily wish for cows of their own, they wish for that peasant’s cow to die; no one thinks there might be a problem with the lord of the manor keeping them just above the level of subsistence, the problem is ‘outsiders.’
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Over the years I’ve said this to friends who live in upstate New York. If it wasn’t for the big cities like Chicago driving the economy they would still have outhouses in their backyards and one room schoolhouses.
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What was Fallwell Jr. arguing the other day? That by land mass, Virginia is more conservative?
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Over the next week or so, feel free to take time out of your busy schedule to track just how wrong those Downstaters are!
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Would Illinois be better off without Chicago?
You’re OneWordAnswer:
No.
I will sell you a New and Improved TwoWordAnswer for twice as much as you paid for the OneWordAnswer.
You’re TwoWordAnswer:
Hell No.
That’s all the time I’ve got for this ridiculous subject.
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I had to smile a bit when I saw this piece, as it strikes me as the old “business as usual” among R’s.
I grew up in downstate Illinois (near St. Louis), and first became aware of politics in the state around 1960. I’m not aware of a time when the politics of the state haven’t been divided between Chicago and the belt around St. Louis (more urban, Democrat territory) and the remainder of the state (traditionally more rural and R). As far as I know, this divide goes back at least to the 1920’s, and very possibly longer. R’s have been complaining about Dem power in the urban ares of Illinois forever and, I’m sure, would love to somehow belong to a separate state where they could hold power for themselves.
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Not too off-topic, but Wisconsin has just posted its numbers as of noon today. We now have demographic data, too:
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Believe me, Cook County would happily separate itself from the 56,280 square miles of hayseeds surrounding it.
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“There’s nobody around here that’s got it,” Powell said. “We’re a farming community. We know how to wash our hands. We’re with pigs and cows and chickens *. In this community, it’s really hard to comprehend.”
*those are the smart ones
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Rural Pennsylvanians say the same shit about Philadephia.
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Rural everyfuckinplace says the same shit about Nearestactualcitythatkeepstheirsorryassesfromruin.
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Pritzker, who comes on every afternoon around 2:30 not only reassures the entire state with his honesty. He’s succeeded in pushing the press conferences of our Fair-haired POTUS completely off the radio and streaming broadcasts of WBEZ, Chicago’s NPR affiliate!
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Cliburn describes his political views as “borderline old-school libertarian” and differentiates his effort from the “New Illinois” secession movement led by Halbrook as more populist and rogue than that of elected political leaders.
Ah yes, the eternal struggle between the Peoples’ Front of Judea against the Judaean Peoples’ Front (splitters!!). “Old-school libertarian”, as in, just move to Somalia if you really want to live without a central government.
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In other moran news, why do folks that have a reasonable amount of intelligence(assuming that anyway since he went to some reasonably decent colleges) make statements that dumb morans will believe, but the rest of us, include the Semi-intelligent person that made the comment, know are bullshit and so just make themselves look stupid as hell?
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Tragically, some of the small towns in upstate New York still don’t have operating sanitary sewer systems.
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Why even give this garbage column space?
Chicago is a huge income-generator for Illinois.
Could Peoria or Rockford really replace it as the flagship city of the state?
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