Has Chicago become an island of sanity in “red” sea of bigoted nonsense?

My initial reaction to the Election Night results across the nation were to feel fortunate that Illinois, with Chicago in particular, had proved to be a bastion of sanity.

There's a reason we now flip the "bird" at this building

While the bulk of the nation seems to have gone goofy over the notion of Donald J. Trump capable of being in charge, it would appear that we have maintained a bit of sense. Or we’re not caught up in the stupidity prevailing elsewhere.

THAT ATTITUDE GOT reinforced after I stumbled my way Wednesday through the nation’s news reports, what with the attitudes of bigotry being on the rise seeming somewhat scary. I feel fortunate that we don’t have things as blatant in Chicago as in elsewhere.

And before you snicker at my naivete, I know full well the history of Chicago (it was here that Martin Luther King, Jr., got hit in the head with a brick) and the attitudes that still prevail. I know full well there are those parts of the city where certain types of people ought not seriously think of entering – unless they’re looking to provoke an outburst!

The report that most intrigued me was a Washington Post report about the situation in Whitefish, Mont. It seems that the mother of a prominent white supremacist activist/writer has opened a business there, has white supremacist activists taking her up as their pet cause!

The activists are upset that many local residents of Whitefish don’t like having her around and would prefer she get lost! As in leave, sell her property, and donate a chunk of the proceeds from the sale to a civil rights organization of their choosing.

Wishing they could be spared nonsense

ALL OF WHICH has neo-Nazi activists inclined to want to go to Whitefish to engage in protests on behalf of the mother – whom it seems doesn’t really know much about her son’s activities and isn’t really the kind of person who’d naturally be connected to these Nutzis.

The situation has become so heated that Montana’s governor and attorney general, along with senators and representative, have all signed a letter expressing their support for the locals – and against any white supremacist activity deciding to use their state as the site of their efforts to assert their control over the situation.

I’m old enough to remember when would-be Nazis wanted to march in Skokie and know at heart that they really weren’t interested in expressing any view – it was about intimidation.

It was all about intimidation, not expression, back in '77 in Skokie

They wanted to wear their swastika armbands and get up close to those older residents who had come to this country in the years following the German Holocaust. As though implying that the day would come when they’d be back in a death camp – and this time, they wouldn’t come out alive!

NOT THAT THESE nitwits would have ever been capable of pulling this off. Just as I doubt that these crackpots wanting to visit Whitefish would really be capable of forcing themselves on the local residents – whom it seems don’t want their town to carry a racist taint.

Which is what some of these activists now carry considering that they feel emboldened by the presidential victory of Donald J. Trump – whom no matter how much he says otherwise got elected through their political support. For Trump to deny the fact comes across as ridiculous as those neo-Nazi types who try denying that Jewish people were harassed back in the Germany of the 1930s.

Then, there are the ongoing legal proceedings concerning Dylann Roof. He’s that South Carolina punk who thinks he showed how much of a man he really is by walking into a black-oriented church and opening fire – killing nine.

Roof has been found guilty and could face the death penalty. Prosecutors already have their list of witnesses they want to call to try to persuade jurors to grant a death sentence.

ROOF: Sees self as hero. Will anyone else?

BY COMPARISON, ROOF said in court Wednesday he’s not planning to call anybody to defend himself. Although he does want to make a statement in court.

Likely to be some self-righteous bit of nonsense he’ll spew about the propriety of his actions. In his own mind, he’s a revolutionary who was taking action to fight for the same cause that was advanced with Trump’s political victory.

For all we know, he’ll go to his death strapped to the gurney with the lethal injection going into his veins – thinking that history will remember him heroically.

Which may be the most tragic part of the Trump political victory – is that it reinforces the nonsense these kind of people like to spew about our society. And that while not every person who backed Trump with their vote can be classified as “racist,” it can be said that they’re willing to look the other way at the repulsiveness of the people whose side they’re now on!

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