In Trump’s take on “America,” this is what passes for subversive speech

“We sir, we are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights. We truly hope this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and work on behalf of all of us. All of us.”
--Brandon Victor Dixon, the actor portraying Aaron Burr in “Hamilton”

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Will denouncing this become conservative cause?

These are the words of subversion, as deemed by President-elect Donald J. Trump, who is continuing in campaign mode these days, using his personal Twitter account to take pot shots at anybody who offends his sensibilities.

Which these days seems to be a majority of the populace – since let’s not forget that a majority of the popular vote did go to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Nearly 1 million more people wanted her in the White House as opposed to him.

BUT WE HAVE the Electoral College system, which is likely to give Trump’s campaign 290 votes to 232 for Clinton (with Michigan technically still up for grabs) when it convenes in state capitols across the nation on Dec. 19 and make it official that Trump is No. 45 in the historical order of U.S. presidents.

So we’re likely to get the kind of government for the next four years that will benefit the interests of those in our society who think the foreigners, minorities and other forms of degenerates have been receiving way too much and that it’s time for real people (a.k.a., themselves) to take things back.

I didn't realize Hoosiers were so delicate

Which is what Dixon meant in his statement made Friday during a New York presentation of the musical about our nation’s early history when he said many in our society are afraid that “your new administration will not protect us” and may, in fact, use people not like themselves to bash upon.

So as the so-called majority to relieve its tensions at the expense of others, I presume.

WHAT MADE THIS an instance is that the Friday night performance of the musical was one attended by Vice President-elect Mike Pence. Apparently, he was walking out of the theater while Dixon was making his post-show comments.

Who bothered to see this show?

But it has been reported that Dixon’s comments were carried out in the lobby of the theater, meaning that Pence definitely heard the message that was meant for his ears.

Which led to Trump’s Twitter comment (a Tweet from a twit?) who said that Pence was “harassed” by the “Hamilton” cast and that they created an atmosphere that altered the theater from being its usual “safe and special place.”

He insists that the cast should “apologize!” to Pence. Which is a notion that makes me laugh. It makes me wonder if Pence has a tushy made of candy. Is he too sensitive to insult?

IF SOMETHING THIS lame is really worthy of an apology, then I can’t help but wonder how many apologies Trump himself needs to issue to so many different groups for the nonsense he continuously spewed during his presidential campaign.

Not that I expect him to issue Apology One. Donald Trump is exactly the kind of guy who thinks the Constitution’s first amendment (the one guaranteeing freedom of expression) applies only to himself – as in he can insult anybody he wants to.

But if those people dare to stand up to him and try to answer back, then they have committed a grave offense for which they must be punished! Hillary Clinton’s “crime” for which she deserves to be “locked up” is for having the nerve to challenge Trump during the general election.

By Trump’s mind-set, she should have surrendered gracefully and made a plea to the electorate to accept Trump’s ascension to the presidency by acclimation.

Is this more the way conservatives want history?

WHERE HE CAN now reward the nativist ideologues amongst his supporters with positions of power where they could seriously try to implement their xenophobic ways upon our society – which would make Dixon’s statement ever so accurate.

Where I also suspect they can now think of the theatre community as a batch of sissies and dilettantes who would dare to disrespect U.S. history by presenting it in a multi-cultural, multi-racial manner – as “Hamilton” does!

Of course, just about anything “historic” usually causes these peoples’ eyes to glaze over – with many of them probably believing they saw something truthful in that sappy 1997 film with actor Leonardo DiCaprio dying in the Atlantic Ocean when the Titanic sank.

Maybe what really bothers Trump is the notion that his life is too insipid to ever become the material of a successful Broadway musical. Would anyone really want to see a show about a guy with a bad combover and overuse of tanning lotions, particularly if he’s boorish enough to think the way to a woman’s heart is by grabbing her most private of places?

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“Alt-right” synonymous with “bigot?”

It is the new phrase that came out of the 2016 election cycle; “alt-right.” As in not the standard issue conservative who leans toward the Republican party, but an alternate version.
 

TRUMP: Election opened nasty can of worms

Of course, what makes them alternative is that their racial hang-ups are a little more intense. In fact, they are the base of these people having anything resembling a political philosophy.

IF WE WANTED to be purely honest, we’d simply say they’re bigots. But the “alt-right” term comes from those people who want to legitimize any sense that one’s racial sentiments ought to be permitted to be a basis for government policy.

And also don’t want anything resembling use of the term “cracker” to refer to themselves.

Now I know there are some people who are getting upset these days with the perception that the Republican Party has been overtaken by bigots. They want to think there’s some moralistic overtone to the conservative thought process by which they have become the political party for white people.

They want to argue that not every person who cast a vote for Donald Trump’s presidential bid did so for racial reasons. In short, they’re willing to talk a lot of smack to avoid the very real fact of modern-day politics.

PEOPLE WHO VOTED for Trump either really do have the ridiculous notion that white people are being discriminated against because they’re no longer permitted to discriminate against people not like themselves. Or, they’re more than willing to look the other way when it comes to being around the bigots of our society.

Perhaps to them the notion of being around non-white people with some authority is more offensive than being around white people who are willing to use physical force to maintain their sense of place in the world.

I have one person I knew back in college who, on Facebook recently, said we ought to refuse to use the term “alt-right” and replace it with “all white.” It would be more accurate, she says, if we didn’t try to make the term “alt-white” sound respectable.

How far will alt-right rewrite history?

Yet this is going to be the very focus of much of the rhetoric we’re going to hear in coming years. There are people who must take seriously notion expressed by author George Orwell (as in “1984”) that “history is written by the winners.”

THEY PROBABLY THINK this past election cycle was a “war” in which they’re trying to take back the country from all of society’s undesirables – as in the ones whom the deplorables think are truly disgusting because of their repulsive sensibilities about life!

In that context, “alt-right” is merely a part of rewriting history. And not seeing the incredibly obvious in that photograph playing big on the Internet these days with Vice President-elect Mike Pence in front and a whole slew of white people filling the room.

It is a way where we can go back to the old way of thinking of things, in which a “Martin Luther King, Jr.” was a borderline-Communist agitator for spouting out nonsense about equality and non-violence who tried falsely to portray himself as a Christian.

Let’s not forget that some people do have a twisted sense of their Christian religious faith – I still remember once covering a Ku Klux Klan rally outside the Statehouse in Springfield, Ill., where their “pastor” led everybody in a prayer for God to strike the Earth with a plague that would wipe out all the non-white people.

NOT EXACTLY IN line with any serious religious teachings I have ever heard.

Yet these are the individuals who are being given some credence. Who are being treated as though they have something essential for our society to hear. And whose hostile rhetoric somehow bears a legitimacy to what else is being said.

So how should we truly think of these people? What terms should we use to describe them with a sense of honesty?

There are times when I watch the old “All in the Family” reruns on television and think that actor Carroll O’Connor’s “Archie Bunker” character bears relevance to what is happening today. Which makes me wonder if actor Sherman Hemsley’s “George Jefferson” is who many of us will turn to for the proper retort!

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Now they want to “lock up” Rahm? "Sanctuary city" will be battleground

It never fails to amaze me the level of nonsense that gets spewed by people with regards to immigration policy, particularly when the topic of sanctuary cities arise.
 

Will 'sanctuary' cities be the first issue...

Chicago is one such place – where people whose immigration status is uncertain are supposed to not fear interactions with local police because our cops don’t automatically turn over such information to federal immigration officials.

IN SHORT, GETTING pulled over for a traffic ticket or a petty offense will be treated solely as the petty offense it is, and not balloon into an immigration hearing with deportation consequences.

But now that we’re in the era where we will soon have a “President Donald J. Trump” who campaigned on the notion that he was going to give rise to the number of deportations from this country and otherwise keep out people he deems undesirable, it has some wondering what happens next.

I stumbled across an Internet comment (anonymous, of course) from someone who wants the new president to start punishing local officials, including our very own Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who don’t get with the program on immigration enforcement.

“Trump could even prosecute Rahm for things like obstruction of justice and could lock that dirty little f*cker up for the rest of his miserable life,” he (or she) wrote.

GEE, FIRST THESE people were chanting at the Republican convention for the incarceration of Hillary Clinton. Now they want the mayor of Chicago locked up for not fitting their ideological hang-ups. For people who probably think they’re “real Americans,” I find it odd they’re so eager to turn this country into a police state!

But the pressure is being put on cities that made themselves sanctuaries because there are those ideological nut cases who want to make people not like themselves miserable. Perhaps they’re the ones who found something logical in that “self-deportation” nonsense that Mitt Romney spewed four years ago during his failed presidential bid.

But now we’re going to have to see just how far Trump is willing to carry out the trash talk of his campaign. There are those people who voted Republican because they want to believe he didn’t mean anything he said literally.

 

... upon which Rahm and Trump clash?

Yet the honest truth is that there also are those people who were most enthusiastic to vote for Trump because they WANT to believe him literally, particularly on the immigration issue.

IF TRUMP’S FIRST presidential act isn’t the full repeal of the executive orders issued by Barack Obama to offer comfort to young people who were brought by their parents without full immigration status, they will revolt.

They will want the punitive action by the federal government against urban areas in general, and sanctuary cities like Chicago in particular.

For what it’s worth, the mayor has said this week the city is not about to give up its sanctuary city status – which was enacted before he became mayor and is largely a symbolic policy. Chicago officials made it known they’re not looking to bully non-citizens.

Not that it means anyone in Chicago is immune from prosecution. For federal immigration officials have agents in Chicago on the search for those who are not supposed to be residing in this country. They can still investigate and prosecute cases.

IT JUST MEANS they have to do their own legwork, instead of being able to rely on the Chicago Police Department for some free assistance.

OBAMA: How quickly will immigration views die?

Considering that immigration is an issue that lies beyond the Chicago Police jurisdiction, it only makes sense they should butt out. Immigration officials are the ones trained in the nuances of immigration law and understand it better than a beat cop who pulled someone over for driving with a busted tail light.

We’ll have to see just how this whole issue shakes down. I don’t doubt some are eager to see urban areas punished for this issue – although the real reason is more a matter of partisan politics rather than anything else. For the urban areas, particularly places like Chicago, did NOT vote for Trump’s presidential ambitions.

They are the reason why Hillary Clinton will win the popular vote so overwhelmingly (which is what all those polls were reflecting when they showed her likely to win the presidential election) despite losing the Electoral College, and I’m sure Trump is a vindictive-enough individual to be willing to find a way to try to crack down on his political opponents.

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An encore in corrections for ‘Fast Eddie” would be a unique outcome

Perhaps it was intended that Edward R. Vrdolyak have his life in the public eye end in a way unlike just about everyone else.
 

VRDOLYAK: Back in the public eye

A return trip to prison, if that is what ultimately occurs, would be something unheard of.

BECAUSE USUALLY WHEN someone on the Chicago political scene gets into legal trouble and winds up with a criminal conviction and prison time, upon their release they manage to fade away and we don’t really hear much about them again.

Just think – how many of us know off the top of our heads whatever became of Larry Bloom or Miriam Santos.

But it seems there’s no way the man known during his time as “Fast Eddie” was going to fade away like that – even though he has been retired for roughly the past decade and probably wishes he weren’t thought about so much anymore.

Vrdolyak was the son of Croatian immigrants from the East Side neighborhood down at Chicago’s far Southeastern corner (where Indiana is a next door neighbor and the smells of the oil refinery in Whiting often waft across the state line) who was elected to the City Council in 1971 and achieved his political peak in the mid-1980s.

HE WAS THE man who realized that many Chicagoans were hostile to the idea of Harold Washington being elected mayor in 1983 – which he used to justify his own blatant resistance to anything the city’s first black mayor tried to achieve. He also banded together 28 other alderman into a caucus that was openly defiant.

 

Someday to be sequel to this headline?

For those of you too young to remember "Council Wars" as we laughingly referred to it back then, think of the way Congress has treated the Barack Obama presidency, only much less polite.

The “Vrdolyak 29” is how it was publicly known, the group that for more than two years did everything it could to make Washington look ridiculous. It took a court-ordered redistricting of City Council ward boundaries to break this up and give the mayor some sort of control over the city.

All I know is that locally in his home neighborhood, there are those people who remain grateful that Vrdolyak kept THAT MAYOR from doing more harm (in their minds) than was actually achieved.

 

Will Harold's backers be able to control laughs?

IN OTHER PARTS of Chicago, there are those people who remain eternally peeved (to put it mildly) that Vrdolyak existed. They were the ones who privately cheered back when the feds got a criminal conviction against him and he wound up serving 10 months in prison (briefly being a fellow inmate with former Gov. George Ryan at the work camp connected to the Terre Haute Correctional Center).

That should have been the end of the Vrdolyak story. But it isn’t. For it seems the feds have come up with a new indictment – criminal charges related to payment for legal work he never actually did and speculation that he didn’t make payments to the Internal Revenue Service that were owed for someone else.

Vrdolyak’s attorneys are saying the money was actually paid into a special account and theoretically are still sitting there waiting for the IRS to come collecting. Not that the IRS is buying such an excuse.

Vrdolyak is now facing charges (for which he will make his first court appearance two days before Thanksgiving) for which he could face up to an eight-year prison term. An encore performance in the Bureau of Prisons! A political recidivist.

THAT WOULD GIVE Vrdolyak a unique niche in our political culture. Off the top of my head, former alderman Ambrosio Medrano is the only return case I can think of.

 

MEDRANO: Also doing a sequel to serving time

The alderman is now serving a 10 ½-year prison sentence for a deal involving bribes connected to a contract for selling bandages to Stroger Hospital, which came after he had already served prison time – just over two years for his role in the Operation Silver Shovel investigation at City Hall back in the mid-1990s.

But if a return to prison is meant to be Vrdolyak’s fate (his backers can’t believe that any charge is being sought for actions so old), that would be quite the outcome for the man who once defied Harold Washington, saying famously, “It’s a racial thing, don’t kid yourself,...We’re fighting to keep the city the way it is.”

Which is why some people now will take great pleasure if it turns out that a 78-year-old man like Vrdolyak winds up ending his life sitting in a cell somewhere.

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EXTRA: JFK, LBJ on hand as Sox win!

Just a little video snippet I stumbled across in my search to shift my mind away from the continued agony of our current president-elect, while also coping with the fact that baseball is no longer being played until March, with the coming of the World Baseball Classic tourney that will conclude at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

I’d like to think this could be a bipartisan snippet, although I’m sure there will be some crackpot upset that John F. Kennedy got his moment in the sun throwing out the first pitch of the season on Opening Day at Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C., in 1961 – where the Senators began their season against the Chicago White Sox.

IS ANYBODY STILL carrying a grudge that it wasn’t “President Nixon” elected eight years earlier than he wound up being in reality?

For what it’s worth, three White Sox pitchers combined to defeat former White Sox pitcher Dick Donovan in a 4-3 game on April 10.

The White Sox that year finished fourth place, ahead of the ninth place Senators. And the rest of baseball was absorbed by all the attention paid to Mantle/Maris in New York and whether either could top “The Babe” in home runs for the season.

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Now that the World Series is over, it seems we need a new ‘sport’ to follow - Madigan/Rauner isn’t fun any longer

If one views the ongoing spats between Gov. Bruce Rauner and Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, as pure gamesmanship, rather than a serious effort to settle the state’s finances, things make sense.
 

Do Madigan/Rauner think winner gets trophy?

Maybe the two figure that since we no longer have the World Series taking place, we now need two new teams to challenge each other while we cheer them on, and heckle mercilessly the one whose presence we cannot stand.

THE SAD THING is that this isn’t a game. Come Jan. 1, we revert back to the budgetless status that we in Illinois endured for the entirety of Fiscal ’16.

Which caused its own level of chaos and uncertainty whose harm to the state is still being felt. Now, we will wind up enduring more because these two men seem to want to show the rest of us they have “bigger hands” than Donald Trump.

Seriously, that is the level of nonsense we have reached. We, the people of Illinois, will be the ones who suffer when our government is no longer able to live up to its obligations (although I realize for some ideologues, that in itself would be considered a good thing).

It is with this attitude that I perceive the latest round of inaction that occurred Tuesday morning – the day that Madigan actually showed his face at meetings between the governor and the legislative leaders.

ALTHOUGH IT SHOULD be noted that state Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, didn’t bother to say much. This really isn’t a Democrat vs. Republican or a Chicago vs. rural Illinois fight – although both Rauner and Madigan will try to make us perceive it as such to give them a moral high ground to cling to.

This is the same ol’ nonsense between two over-bloated egos. It’s not even really a fight concerning organized labor and whether or not it has too much influence over state government.

 

Maybe the key to resolving budget ...

It has come down to two men who are determined to say they “won” the political battle, and “crushed” the opposition.

For what it’s worth, the sides met on Tuesday at the Statehouse (totally appropriate since the Legislature is in session to consider gubernatorial vetoes) and Madigan said he would appoint state Rep. Greg Harris, D-Chicago, to represent his interests on a budget negotiating team.

THE ONLY PROBLEM is that none of the Republican interests realized that anyone was considering a budget negotiating team. They seem to want to deal with this one-on-one, Rauner vs. Madigan. May the best “man” win.

 

... is to take both egos out of equation

Even though it could be argued that if one really is putting together a budget for the remaining six months of Fiscal year ’17 (which began July 1), putting the financial experts in charge of talks rather than the political egos makes all the sense in the world.

If anything, we’d probably have a better chance of getting a budget proposal approved if we’d take the political egos out of the equation altogether.

Then again, what would be the point of politics if partisanship and egos didn’t somehow manage to gum up the whole works?

IT WILL BE interesting to see what happens on Wednesday. For Madigan gave the impression that the negotiations could begin seriously on that day. While Republicans are giving the impression that nothing of significance can happen on that day.

We need a budget long before groundhog hides from shadow

Except for the comments made previously by Illinois House Minority Leader Jim Durkin, R-Western Springs, that the General Assembly ought to deal solely with budget issues and not even consider vetoes. Which is quite a switch, since the usual conservative ideologue position is that the fall veto session should be NOTHING BUT veto considerations – and that bringing up any other issue is inappropriate!

Everybody’s looking for blame to place come Jan. 1, which may be the meaning of Durkin’s remark Tuesday about how Madigan is trying to “run out the clock” to force budget negotiations to proceed.

Which may mean my World Series analogy is off. Perhaps Madigan and Rauner think they’re performing their very own Super Bowl? All I know is that if Feb. 5 really comes around and we still haven’t resolved this issue, Illinois will be in a serious bind.

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How vociferously will Trump resist the influence, allure of the presidency?

I see where President-elect Donald Trump is saying he doesn’t really want to live in the White House – he envisions being able to govern the nation from his high-rise luxury apartment in Manhattan, with trips to his Mar-A-Lago mansion in Florida and an occasional visit to that ugly tower along the Chicago River.
 

Will this replace the White House?

As though he can keep conducting himself as though he’s running his usual business interests. Does Trump secretly envision that the nation will be renamed from the "United States of America" to "Trump – the country?"

OF COURSE, THE sensible thing for us to do with such egotistical pronouncements is to chuckle at the naivete being expressed. I don’t doubt that the security concerns involved in protecting a chief executive of the nation will require Trump to accept residence in the presidential mansion in the District of Columbia.

Even though I’m sure Trump probably thinks the nation’s mansion is downright drab compared to the tacky level of gaudiness that exists at so many of his other properties, and may think Harry Truman had a point when he referred to the White House as the "crown jewel of the federal penal system."

Trump kind of reminds me of the statements that Barack Obama made in the early days of his presidency – when he insisted he and the family were going to be making regular trips to Chicago so as to revitalize themselves. They would need their Chicago fix.

Not that the man has never set foot in Chicago since becoming president. But practicality has made them into District of Columbia residents to the point where they openly admit they’re not returning to the city once his term ends in January.

THERE WON’T BE that final flight for Obama and family on board Air Force One to the Second City on Inauguration Day – which is what tradition would call for.

 

Presidential vacation home?

Although I suspect that the Trump-type of voters are probably snickering to themselves and saying Obama doesn’t deserve the perk – we ought to let him hitch-hike, then have him arrested for vagrancy on the walk home!

In short, there’s a lot of nonsense we’re going to hear in coming weeks as Trump tries to wrap his mind around the reality that he’s now going to be legally responsible for the fate of this country. He will be blamed for everything that goes wrong in coming years.

 

For when he deigns to visit Chicago

His legacy now is not going to be some garish buildings and being the “best sex” Marla Maples ever had (if you believe the New York Post). He’s going to have to start behaving like a serious human being – instead of an egotistical blowhard.

IT IS WITH that in mind that people are watching his appointments.

Some may be relieved he didn’t put New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (himself a blowhard) in charge of anything. Others are repulsed that Steve Bannon will have anything to do with our government – he has edited conservative websites and often gets the labels of “racist” and “anti-semitic” attached to his name.

But the one that intrigues me is that of Reince Priebus – the head of the Republican National Committee who took his share of abuse during the campaign from Trump for being amongst those GOPers who resisted the charms of The Donald as president.

A quick look through Google finds headlines from earlier this year reading Reince Priebus, other Republicans, denounce Trump’s indefensible comments about women and Reince Priebus condemns Trump on Muslim ban, amongst others.

 

Will he be first fired by 'President' Trump?

YET NOW, TRUMP is using the political operative to be his chief of staff – the guy who’s going to be in charge of the presidential staff and will be largely responsible for whether or not the Trump presidency succeeds at accomplishing anything.

Is Priebus feeling the “call of the White House” and can’t resist a chance to “serve his country?” Or does he just need a job that badly.

And as for Trump, is this a sign that he’s adapting to the political realities of being president? That he may try to conduct himself like a responsible human being?

Or is the reality that the instant Priebus does something to offend the president, he’ll become the first individual to get a “You’re Fired!” from the Trump administration?

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