Two brave Illinois GOP state legislators are so sick of Chicago’s gays and liberals and their gay liberal mayor and its gay $532 billion economy and its gay St. Patrick’s Day Parade that they have finally just proposed the obvious: wall the damn place off, and let everyone else in Illinois form their own state. Chicago will get to keep everything that is currently located there, and the freedom-loving hillbillies will get to keep the other 16% of the state’s $630 billion economy and the state prisons. (PSSST, TAKE THE DEAL, CHICAGO.) Because, why not? Illinois is America’s “microcosm,” so what better place to finally give up on “America” as a place where competing viewpoints work to coexist and just hold this experiment already? Reps. Bill Mitchell and Adam Brown claim their downstate constituents “are tired of Chicago dictating its views to the rest of us,” through democracy and the votes of the state legislature, like Stalinist Russia.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could live in a place where wonderful Christian Republican White Folk could live in a place that reflected their values? A place where multiculturalism, tolerance, Liberalism and the New Testament were turned back at the border and sent back to the Sodom and Gomorrah from whence they sprang? If Illinois state representatives Bill Mitchell and Adam Brown have their way, they’ll build a wall arond Chicagoland, mine the border and create their own state, a place where good, God-fearing White Folk can worship their flavor of God, ban gays, and remake women into compliant sperm receptacles legally defined as the property of men. No longer would women be allowed to harbor the silly idea that they should control their own bodies.
Here in Oregon, and to a lesser degree in Washington, the same sort of separatist sentiment has also reared its head. To be honest, both states east of the Cascades have far more in common with Idaho than Seattle or Portland. I can understand why some might be tired of those who don’t share their narrow Conservatism and why they might want to create their own homeland. I’m sure they think it’s easy, and certainly more palatable, to wall themselves off than to have to continue tolerating those who don’t think as they do. I think most of the Willamette Valley and Washington west of the Cascades wouldn’t be heartbroken to see eastern Oregon and Washington split off into separate states…or even merge with Idaho.
Rep. Mitchell brought up the state of Indiana multiple times Tuesday morning and said that he would like Illinois to become more like its neighbor to the east. “Take a look at Indiana. Their population is similar to the new Illinois we are proposing. But there are some fundamental differences between Indiana and Illinois as it exists now: Indiana doesn’t have a budget deficit; they haven’t raised taxes to pay for more government spending; they have a lower unemployment rate than Illinois. And what’s the biggest difference? Indiana doesn’t have Chicago.”
Translation: Indiana isn’t nearly as White, Liberal, tolerant, and multicultural as Chicago. Reps. Mitchell and Brown may not be willing to admit or even discuss this, but it seems clear that the 800-lb. gorilla in the room is race. Of course, that point could well be largely speculative on my part; it’s just a difficult piece of the puzzle to ignore. Very often when Conservatives begin talking about creating their own home, it’s because they want to create a place where the majority look and think like they do and others are unwelcome.
I think Chicago should take the deal. Given that the Chicagoland area is the economic and financial engine that drives Illinois, losing the rest of the state would be to Chicago’s advantage. And the rest of Illinois could drag itself back to the 19th century.
Yeah, democracy really can be a terribly oppressive thing when you can’t impose your point of view, isn’t it?
