Will Syria restrictions really do a thing to make Illinois any more safe?

I spent the past weekend visiting cousins I haven’t seen in awhile – in large part because they choose to live in Indiana (near Chesterton and Portage, to be exact).

Red Eye touts unity, governors don't

So I had an initial reaction of “What a dink!” when I learned this weekend that Hoosier Gov. Mike Pence was engaging in a knee-jerk reaction being taken by many Republican gubernatorial types – people who are citizens of Syria are being banned from resettlement efforts into Indiana.

IT SUPPOSEDLY MAKES the Hoosier State “more safe” from the type of activity that occurred on Friday (on 11/13/15, to be exact) in Paris. After all, one of the people who may have been involved in that terroristic act was a Syrian citizen.

But now that I’m back in Illinois, I learn that our very own governor – the one who claims he’s not interested in partisan politics but just cares about the good of the people – feels compelled to do the same, exact thing.

Gov. Bruce Rauner made his own statement during the morning hours, with the initial news reports going out during the noon hour on Monday.

People who might be trying to flee Syria and have hopes of going into exile in the United States are going to have certain places forbidden to them – all because some people want to gain political points for themselves by taking the knee-jerk negative reaction. Even if it might be a Syrian refugee who is trying to escape the nonsense that has overtaken his home nation.

NO MORE SYRIA. Even though I suspect many of these same ideologues wouldn’t have a clue where on the map Syria is, or anything about that Middle Eastern nation.

Rauner follows lead of Pence, ...

Excuse me for thinking that I don’t feel any more (or less) safe now than I did on Sunday, or last week or even last year.

I just happen to believe that the kind of people who coordinated the sorts of activities that took place in Paris on Friday (or in New York and suburban D.C. some 14 years ago) aren’t formal activities of any government. Thinking we can do anything based off nationality or citizenship is so short-sighted!

I’d have more respect for Bruce Rauner if he didn’t just follow his political party’s ideological line. If it appeared he put some real thought into this issue!

... while Pence follows GOP overall lead

BECAUSE I HONESTLY believe this action without any real thought behind it merely creates the camouflage that we’re somehow seriously reacting to an international incident without doing a real thing that would make us more safe.

If anything, it comes across as a more shallow gesture than all the political rhetoric that got spewed in the early 2000s when people were eager to bash about France when the perception among the ideologues of our society was that France wasn’t being tough enough to support our interests.

If I never hear the tacky “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” line, it will be too soon. What amazes me is that when that line originated in an episode of “The Simpsons,” it was meant to be so ridiculously over-the-top that no one could possibly take it seriously.

Instead, way too many people did, along with coming up with all kinds of other tacky epithets and sentiments.

IT MAKES ME wonder if any of those individuals are feeling any differently these days, particularly now that France’s military engaged in its own offensive strikes against places in Syria – chosen largely because of their ties to the ISIS group of people who think they’re promoting Islam in the same way the Ku Klux Klan claims to advance Christianity in this nation.

I don’t think many of us really understand a thing about what happened last week in Paris, or what is going on in the Middle East. We just want to rant! I don’t think we even care who we’re ranting about; so long as we can turn the volume up loud.

And while Rauner spent some time Monday morning doing a little ranting, he may have made himself feel better.

But that was a little less time spent trying to figure out how to resolve the state’s financial problems and budget status for real. Except that to many of us prefer to just rant and rage about that issue as well.

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EXTRA: We’re all flying blind. But that won’t stop us from rants and rages

How long will it be before we think of Paris in such a cutesy way again?

As I write this, I must confess to not knowing the scope of the violence that occurred Friday night in Paris.

At least 100 people who were hostages-turned-targets killed in one lone theater, while it seems there were explosions in a sports stadium and at least four or five other incidents.

THE DEATH TALLY was at about 140. But by the time you read this, it could be higher. Much higher. A part of me is cynical enough to wonder how close to 1,000 fatalities we’ll see. If we’re talking multiple incidents, it could go high – particularly if there are more incidents yet to come.

Of course, we’re all suspecting Arab terrorists – which is a phrase too many nincompoops string together too easily. I’ve heard way too much speculation about ISIS. Way too much in that I have yet to hear a fact about who might have done this, or for what motivation.

The group in the Middle East that, to my mind, puts in my memory banks that silly mid-1970s TV show about a woman who fought crime by summoning the strength of the Egyptian goddess Isis.

Perhaps we could unleash her on the people who have coordinated these attacks? Problem solved!

MY BIGGEST HOPE is that people appreciate the scope of what appears to have happened, and the significance.

A part of me already wonders if the happenings of Sept. 11, 2001 in New York and Rosslyn, Va. (never forget the Pentagon) have been surpassed in significance. Will the same ideologues who liked getting worked up with their “Proud to be an American” song lyrics and “U.S.A.” chants (which ought never to be used outside of an Olympics athletic event) realize this event was meant to take a shot at the entirety of the Western World?

Could the power of Isis defeat ISIS?

That date just over 14 years ago would have been just as bad if the target had been the Tower of London or Buckingham Palace rather than the World Trade Center or the Capitol building (which was spared because of those passengers who attacked their attackers, remember?)

Perhaps it is likely in coming hours and days we’ll learn stories of how the violence could have been much worse – but how people made their bones (and perhaps gave their lives) to save others.

THAT WOULD AT least give Friday’s events some significance.

Because as things stand now, Friday will be just a gruesome day that will get some people all worked up as they camp out in front of their televisions and argue over which station they want to “spin” the factual tidbits that are spilling out of Paris while officials try to seal off their borders.

Which I think is a petty reaction, in part because I’m already reading the anonymous reactions on assorted Internet sites from crackpots who are determined to turn Fridays happenings into some sort of anti-immigration diatribe.

Yes, there are those who are already spewing trash about how “all those Mexicans” are now going to follow up what happened in Paris, France with (perhaps) an attack on Paris, Texas.

SOME PEOPLE WILL spew ideology no matter what the circumstance.

They’re the ones we really ought to be concerned about as we try to figure out what happened in France and as we join in the international mourning scene.

From 9/11 to 11/13 – which date will be next to gain an “infamous” stain?

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