Societal tensions are going to linger amongst us long after Election Day

This year’s election cycle turned into an ugly display over the tensions we have in our society from people who can’t handle that everybody isn’t like themselves, and we don’t somehow grant them superiority status over the rest of us.
 

A place for those not enthralled by urban life

Take the latest rant of conservative commentator Ann Coulter, who suggested that Donald Trump’s presidential aspirations would have been a complete-shoo-in, IF ONLY we restricted the ability to vote to people who could document that all four of their grandparents had been born in this country.

ANN, OF COURSE, is often off-kilter. I don’t doubt she’s just trying to get a rise out of those more rational amongst us in society. But the sad thing is that she’s not alone – of that I have no doubt.

It’s an incident in my beloved home city, and in fact on my preferred Sout’ Side, that makes me see the kinds of hostilities that this year’s elections placed a magnifying glass to are going to linger on for awhile.

At the crux of it was yet another police shooting. A man from Indianapolis got into a fight with an off-duty police officer who wound up using his weapon, resulting in the man now being dead.

Yes, it was a black man, who was only in the Mount Greenwood neighborhood this weekend because he was attending a funeral. Anyone familiar with the neighborhood at the far southwest end of Chicago near suburbs such as Alsip and Evergreen Park knows there are a lot of cemeteries located nearby.

BUT THAT APPARENTLY wasn’t a good enough reason for a black man to be in a neighborhood that is overwhelmingly white, and also a cop enclave (for the record, I once had an uncle, now deceased himself, who lived there in large part because he was a Chicago cop).

It’s one of those places where people choose to live if they want to be isolated from the daily realities of Chicago, or want to be isolated from certain kinds of people they wish weren’t a part of Chicago’s daily reality.

In short, the kind of people whose votes Trump might very well have sought out – if he weren’t busy looking for each and every excuse he could to demonize Chicago to get himself the votes of people from elsewhere.

Socorro Salas, later Vargas, was the only one of my four grandparents to be born in the United States. I guess the ideologues think I shouldn't have a vote either.

This shooting incident predictably enough resulted in activists coming into the neighborhood, and local residents turning into counter-demonstrators wishing to show their outrage at what some referred to as “animals” who “ought to go back home.”

ANYBODY WHO KNOWS anything about Chicago and its past won’t find any of this surprising. If anything, it’s a wonder that the alleged counter-demonstrators controlled themselves to avoid bashing anyone’s skull in. Although a second round of protests that took place Tuesday got a little more physical, as police had to separate black protesters from local residents.

Yet then, we see the behavior of students at Marist High School, a Catholic school in the neighborhood that is a popular choice of many South Side and surrounding suburb kids whose parents don’t want them in public schools with “those kind” of people.

A text message being passed around the study body shows that some of these high school students are in full agreement with their parents’ behavior – and want to view the “problem” as one of a guy who didn’t have the sense to stay out of a neighborhood he should have known better than to set foot in.

Also, the few students who tried responding to the text in ways to show their disgust with bigotry wound up being laughed at. Administrators at the high school say they’re “devastated” and want to try to teach the young people about tolerance and brotherhood.

YET I CAN’T help but think that many of these young people are going to wind up yawning, paying a bit of lip service to the concepts, then wind up going about feeling the way they feel.

 

Certain attitudes passed down through generations?

Which may largely be the same as their parents who may have cast their ballots for Trump on Tuesday out of a belief that finally, there’s a guy who “gets it” and won’t try to put them on a guilt trip for feeling the way they do about those who are different.

Is it really any different than that incident earlier this year when students at Andrean High School, a Catholic institution in Merrillville, Ind., tried to turn “Build a Wall” into a taunt to be used against a rival high school with a significant Latino enrollment?

This election cycle forced us to see how ugly a certain segment of our society has become. Incidents like these amongst our young make me wonder how long it will be before the stain can truly be washed away?

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EXTRA: Illinois now the Land of Adlai just a few decades too late for him?

I’m old enough to recall when Illinois was capable of flipping to either political party in presidential elections, and when the label of “Land of Lincoln” was taken literally as our home state was the home of one of the Republican Party’s founders.
 

DUCKWORTH: Illinois' new senator

So yes, it feels a tad strange that on Tuesday, the voter tallies from our home state were so strong for the Democratic Party that it seemed over before it even began.

VERY QUICKLY AFTER the polls closed, voter projections declared that Hillary Clinton would take Illinois’ 20 Electoral College votes, and Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., let it be known within a half hour that he would concede to Democratic challenger Tammy Duckworth.

“Opponents can peacefully bury the hatchet,” Kirk said in admitting defeat. “What binds us is stronger than what divides us.”

Even Duckworth, herself, seemed to have some trouble realizing the reality, holding off for an hour or so before claiming victory. “We showed a campaign that respected the voters … can actually be respectful,” she said.

The reality of Illinois is that the population of the state is so overwhelmingly Chicago-area. Not Chicago proper, but Chicago metro.

ALMOST HALF OF the state’s population lives in a Chicago suburb. When combined with the roughly 2.7 million who live in the city proper, it means two-thirds of Illinois is Chicago-area.

I know people look at the Illinois map showing 102 counties who wonder how the six-county Chicago area can possibly be so dominant. But it is.

I don’t care just how much red you’re going to see on the Illinois maps indicating counties that preferred the concept of a “President Donald Trump,” it was in the wrong places in terms of generating large numbers of votes.

 

MENDOZA: Illinois' new comptroller?

Which is why it seems that all the other campaigns for political office were impacted to the point where it seems that Clinton coat-tails were what it was all about.

ALL THE PEOPLE who backed Hillary Clinton likely also cast their votes for Duckworth for Senate – in large part because they went along with the theory that Clinton will need to have political allies in Congress if she is to be able to accomplish anything.

The question will be to see if it has the same impact for Illinois comptroller – will enough people cast ballots for Chicago city clerk Susana Mendoza just because she has the “D” after her name? Will she hold the early lead she jumped out to in the first hour of votes being counted?

Or will current Illinois Comptroller Leslie Munger be able to retain the post to which she was appointed two years ago by Gov. Bruce Rauner?

Will Rauner’s wealth (and that of his politically-allied friends) be able to help her buy two more years in the post, allowing her to finish the work of the late Judy Baar Topinka?

WILL IT ALSO be strong enough to make enough of a shift in the Democratic Party leanings of the Illinois General Assembly that have been able to thwart all of the anti-organized labor initiatives desired by Rauner.

Or will Rauner wind up feeling very lonely for the next two years of his gubernatorial term, surrounded by a slew of Democrats in the state Legislature and the constitutional offices who will be anxious to put him through as much political agony as they can before he seeks re-election come the 2018 election cycle?

Too early for Illinois?

Illinois certainly has changed a great deal from the days when our state’s favorite son presidential candidate Adlai E. Stevenson II (himself a former Illinois governor who later went on to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations) couldn’t even win the Electoral College votes from his home state in either of the two election cycles (1952 & ’56) in which he ran.

It makes me wonder if the spirit of Adlai E. is off in the heavens somewhere, chuckling along with the soul of Eleanor Roosevelt at the Election Day results of today – and thinking he had the misfortune of coming along politically some six decades too early.

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EXTRA: Not too late to take my $$$

I couldn’t help but be amused by a pair of e-mail messages I received mid-day Tuesday.
 

CLINTON: She still wants my money

One was from the Hillary Victory Fund, run by the Democratic National Committee and state Democratic parties in several states – although not Illinois.

THIS PARTICULAR E-MAIL informed me that their records showed I haven’t contributed a dime to support Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid. It gave me one last chance to cough up some cash to help Hillary’s election fund pay the bills.

“When you wake up on tomorrow will you have done EVERYTHING YOU POSSIBLY CAN to elect HILLARY CLINTON and DEMOCRATS ACROSS THE COUNTRY?” the e-mail asks me.

Yes, it’s true. I haven’t donated anything. Because I never do. It’s part of my own reporter-type mentality to not make a financial tie to any campaign. Either that, or I’m just a cheapskate.

But my guess is that someone thinks I should feel a guilt trip. As though it’s my fault if we somehow wind up with Donald Trump as president. Excuse me for not feeling all that guilty.

FOR IF IT turns out that Trump truly is able to make his segment of the electorate large enough to be a majority, I’d argue it is due to those people who despised what he said but were too lazy to vote.

In which case, the American people will get what they deserve.

And if Trump doesn’t win, then we can all load up on the Xanax we’ll have to take after dealing with all the ideologues who will spend the next four years lambasting Clinton every opportunity they get!

 

TRUMP: Does he not want me to vote?!?

One other e-mail caught my attention – one put out by the Washington-based Latino Victory Project, which has helped to create greater awareness that is largely responsible for the apparent strong voter turnout by voters with ethnic origins to Latin American countries.

IN THE EVENT a would-be Latino voter runs into hostility at the polling place from someone claiming they don’t belong or somehow aren’t registered to vote (even though they really are), a number to call to file a complaint is 1-888-VE-Y-VOTA.

Or “Go-and-vote!,” en Español. Standing up to hostility and intimidation – which really is the chief political tactic of the Trump camp of supporters – is the key to defeating them in the end.

And I’m sure that having a toll-free telephone hotline number that works in Spanish will somehow particularly infuriate the knuckleheads’ sensibilities all the more.

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‘Scare’ tactics likely to last all the way up to final second of '16 voting cycle

Normally, I’d be contemplating writing a commentary for this moment that harangues those of you who haven’t bothered to vote on Election Day. Although it seems like such a piece of copy would be pointless this time.

Is this 1909 cartoon about female political empowerment somewhere in Donald Trump's mind about "making America great." Image provided by Library of Congress collection.

For it seems that many people are using the early voter option, and not just me because I want my day Tuesday to be free so I can focus on what other people are doing at the polling places

THE COOK COUNTY Clerk’s office let it be known Monday that 357,982 early voting ballots were cast amongst the roughly 1.51 million estimated registered voters in the suburban parts of the county. In Chicago proper, some 1.57 million are registered – with some 284,506 people having voted early through Sunday, according to the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners. Across Illinois, the early vote tally is just under 1.3 million.

There’s also the Washington-based Morning Consult group that came out with its own study showing that many of the people who cast those early votes did so because the very thought of one of the presidential candidates scares the bejeezus out of them.

Some 46 percent of people who voted Democrat did so because Donald Trump leaves them “scared,” while 31 percent who voted Republican feel the same way about Hillary Clinton.

A vote for a "first,"...

For what it’s worth, only 23 percent of people who voted for Clinton could say they were “excited” about her, with 21 percent truly feeling positive about a potential Donald Trump presidency.

THIS TRULY HAS become the campaign cycle of, “Who do you hate the most?!”

 
The truly sad part is that the campaigning tactics meant to emphasize those fear the most aren’t over with. We’re going to keep getting them until the absolute final polling place closes out on the West Coast – or perhaps out in Hawaii.

I know in my own e-mail I received a pair of Internet surveys, each asking me the same question; “Have you voted yet?” One came from a group that clearly states it is trying to get Donald Trump elected president, while the other comes from a group that, based off its past surveys and e-mail statements, would appear to be one in support of the political interests of Hillary Clinton.

... or the same-ol', same-ol'?

The point of these surveys is that these groups are trying to figure out where to best focus their efforts on Tuesday so as to encourage the kinds of voters most likely to cast ballots for their preferred candidate.
 
WHILE ALSO NOT wasting a lot of time on people who already have cast their ballots. Which, at least in suburban Cook County, appears to be a significant number of people – already recognized as a record high that was still to be boosted by the people who waited until the absolute last day Monday to “early” vote.

Of course, it could also be an effort by Trump interests to figure out who to harangue into trying to change their minds – since Trump himself is on the record as saying that early voters should take advantage of legal provisions that exist in some states that allow someone to cancel out their early vote ballot by actually showing up at the polling place to vote.

Trump envisions a nation of people with “buyer’s remorse” who will have cast their votes for Clinton and her historic presidential campaign (all that “first female” jazz) and will wish they could take it back to pick yet another rich, white guy with an overblown ego to be the head of state.

I don’t know if I quite buy into that line of logic – although I suspect the people most inclined to think that way will be the 21 percent who claim “excitement” about the possibility of a Trump presidency.

BY THE TIME you read this, it is likely your polling place will be open. For all I know, you may already have cast your ballot (unless you’re the type who waits until evening hours after work to vote).

You’re probably sick and tired of hearing the trash talk, that will continue for a few more hours until we learn late tonight (or early Wednesday) who “won.” Then, we’re likely to hear for years to come from the “sore loser” types who will go on and on about how we, the people, made the “wrong” choice!

In fact, the only suspense left for me in this year’s election cycle is the question of how gauche Trump will be Tuesday night whether he wins or loses, just because he IS The Donald! and most likely can’t help himself.

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2…, 1…, blast-off!!!!! Or will it just be another round of rhetorical nonsense?

Tuesday is the day; the one in which we cast our ballots and put an end to all the nonsense that has become Election Cycle 2016.

Which one will we pick...

One way or another, we’ll have a winner. One of these people will slink off the stage for us to forget about, and we can go back to thinking there’s a touch of decorum to what passes for the process by which we pick our political people.

YEAH, RIGHT! I bet you’re still waiting for the Cleveland Indians to win that fourth World Series game that puts an end to their 68-year streak of seasons without a World Series win.

To me, the scary thing about Tuesday being Election Day is that it isn’t going to put an end to any of the nonsense that has been taking place in recent months. The electorate is way too worked up into a frenzy for a mere counting of the ballots to bring an end to anything.

There are too many people convinced that a scam of epic proportions is about to take place. There will be those who absolutely will refuse to accept the legitimacy of whatever outcome they’re presented with in the late hours of Tuesday.

Or perhaps even the early hours of Wednesday, if there wind up being glitches that delay the ballot-counting process.

AT THIS POINT, I have to say I don’t have a clue just how stupid the process is going to get at the very end. I do realize this is going to be a turnout election – as in it will be one that gets settled by which candidate has the better organization in terms of getting their faithful loyalists to get off their derrieres and out to the polling places.

Personally, I believe that if every single person whom Donald Trump and his presidential campaign went out of their way to demonize during this election cycle actually get out to vote, the outcome is a foregone conclusion.

A butt-whuppin’ of historic proportions for Trump – he’ll learn that it’s no longer the 19^th Century where certain types of people could be told they had no business thinking about politics and ought to leave the governing to the real people.

 

... on this day 3 days before the Armistice of old?

Who are all the individuals who are exactly like themselves.

BUT WHETHER THAT will happen is the big story for Tuesday. I have no doubt that those “deplorables” that Democrat Hillary Clinton says comprise the Trump camp are truly motivated to show up. I also know that, in general, the public gets downright lazy when it comes to turning out to vote.

So if the masses get lazy and the deplorables become a large-enough group, then we get “President Donald J. Trump” and first lady Melania – along with first ex-ladies Ivana and Marla and all their kids. Which in some ways does bear resemblance to the American family of the 21^st Century.

At least moreso than that of Hillary and Bill, their daughter Chelsea and grand-daughter Charlotte. How downright traditional an image they would present.

Although it is Trump, to listen to the ideological crackpots, who is the one bringing back the all-American image. The ideologues would have you think the House of Clinton is the one subversive to what our society stands for.

ALL OF THIS will be fodder for people to complain about in coming weeks, months and years. Because the public is not going to be pleased, regardless of who “wins” the election. I suspect Trump himself will be particularly tactless in his Election Night conduct, yet the hard-core of his followers will be convinced he's merely telling it like it is -- at least in the depths of Trump's own imagined reality.

 

Do we wish we could keep Barry O for 4 more years?

It will be particularly tactless if it becomes “President Hillary R. Clinton” (sense says she is the overwhelming favorite to win), since I wonder if the ideologues will hit her with so much in the way of delaying tactics that we’ll wind up thinking someday how much more harshly they’re beating up on her compared to Barack Obama – who has faced nothing but obstruction during his time in the presidency.

Of course, I have always thought that the Obama presidency was so much harsher in its treatment by the opposition than was that of Bill Clinton.

After all, all the ideologues did was tried to impeach the man and embarrass him by unveiling his sexual fling with a young girl – an act that Trump appears to have committed so many times that people have quit counting!

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Ridiculously early? Or acceptably tardy? It’s Christmas on State Street!

I realize that many retail-type businesses started decorating for the Christmas holiday over a month ago – just prior to the sugar rush for kids otherwise known as Halloween.

Will this display window remain in use through Valentine's Day? Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

But I have to admit a journey I made Sunday to “that Great street” threw me for a bit of a loop – and I don’t mean the one that circulates el trains around the downtown area.

Is this "A" quality work?

FOR THE DISPLAY windows at Macy’s (the one-time Marshall Field’s) aren’t fully prepared for the holidays. Does this mean Macy’s is slacking off and lagging behind in preparing its holiday window display? Or are they kicking in with something that ought to be complete right about the time that Christmas actually arrives?

It seems the theme for this year is some sort of combination of Christmas with Valentine’s Day – a whole lot of hearts and pink and a combination of the two days.

Which is cute. I’m not complaining. Although it just seems so weak compared to the holiday displays I recall from childhood at the old Marshall Field’s – whose bronze signs remain on the façade of the building, largely because they’re historically significant and Macy’s wouldn’t be allowed to remove them no matter how much they may want to.

The Macy's façade prepares to symbolically blare out the joys of the holiday

Then again, times change. And I’m sure at least a few readers will dismiss me as an old codger for reminiscing about the long-gone days of Uncle Mistletoe.

ONE THING I couldn’t help but notice on Sunday, a few of the windows along Washington Street had special labels indicating they were the result of the Practicum Visual Class at nearby Columbia College.

A leftover sign of the days of old when Marshall Field &Co. would have given the Christmas holiday a particularly-Chicago signature

In the past, Field’s had their own full-time staff dedicated to those window displays – they were a source of professional pride.

Now, they’re just a class project. Let’s only hope we got “A” grade-level work for our holiday this season.

And we'll see how nice the displays look for this holiday season -- which is approaching rapidly, since the city's official holiday tree has already arrived and will soon be on display for all to see.

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‘No ballgame today’ – we’ll have to wait ‘til spring for baseball to return

It looks so simple on paper – 5-3 – marked under a column of the scorecard for the 10^th inning.

There's no lonelier place than an off-season ballfield

I’m sure those who are Chicago Cubs fans will forevermore regard as a happy moment that bit indicating the groundball hit to third baseman Kris Bryant, then thrown to Anthony Rizzo at first base for the final out that ensured the first World Series title ever for a team that plays its home games at Wrigley Field.

YET I HAVE to confess to feeling a twinge of sadness at that sight.

Not because I cared about the Cubs or had a strong rooting interest in either team that was playing. But because I enjoy baseball.

And the final out of the final game of the World Series each year always brings out a feeling in me that the game is gone; for the time being.

Perhaps it’s because professional baseball teams play nearly every day during the season that they become truly wrapped up in the routines of our lives; in a way that the Chicago Bears with their once-a-week loss (or so it seems) just can’t.

THERE IS A beauty to the form of the ballgame as the pitcher vs. hitter challenge takes place; trying to see if one can out-think the other to their success. With other ballplayers hopping into action in those spare moments when contact is made with the ball.

Producing those moments that inspire newspaper photographers into action – freezing forever those bits of action for us to study. The diving catch. The bobbled ball. That moment of agony on an outfielder’s face as he realizes the fly ball is headed over the fence – and there’s not a thing he can do to stop it!

Even non-North Side felt something for Cubs

These moments that can make watching a ballgame a real treasure. Totally lost on those kinds of people who think anything other than a 15-9 ballgame is boring – although I actually think those high-scoring slugfests are dull because it usually means the pitching stinks, errors are being made in the field and everything is out-of-whack.

And now, it’s over. Another season is in the record books. Something that can be studied by those inclined to do so, while many of us will remember the individual moments of the games we actually saw. We’ll likely exaggerate their significance.

Line shot will never depart my mind

JUST AS I will forever recall a line drive double that Reggie Jackson hit off the right field wall at Comiskey Park in a 1979 ballgame – it struck me as being the hardest-hit ball I ever saw.

On the scorecard, it looks like a simple “2B-9” hit off pitcher Ken Kravec. But I remember it as a sizzling shot that never went more than 15 or so feet in the air – and would have been a home run if it had cleared the fence a foot higher instead of smashing into the wall.

Of course, the likely story would have been White Sox fan killed by Yankee home run. Because I doubt any fan in the outfield stands could have reacted quickly enough to avoid being hit in the face by the drive.

It’s these little moments that stick in my mind about baseball. The sight of ballplayers congregated on the pitcher’s mound deep in discussion about the game (and wondering if they’re really checking out the blonde who got herself a box seat right behind the dugout).

THE MANAGER CHARGING out of the dugout to argue with an umpire’s call – and knowing that the choice words he’d like to use to describe the ump’s mother will get him ejected!

Watching the coaches relay all those signals to the batter – and wondering how screwed up things will get if the coach inadvertently scratches his earlobe at the wrong moment?

I’d be willing to bet that similar thoughts are running through the minds of baseball fans everywhere – although for those who are Cubs-obsessed, they were able to delay them a bit, what with the parade that stretched from Wrigley Field through downtown on Friday.

Particularly if you’re inclined to believe Gov. Bruce Rauner, who in issuing the proclamation declaring Friday in Illinois to be World Champion Chicago Cubs Day said, “the Cubs winning the World Series is bigger than baseball.”

Baseball will be back come April

WHETHER YOU AGREE with that statement or not, the season is now over.

Unless you’re inclined to check out the stats in the assorted Latin American winter leagues (where, by the way, the late White Sox star Minnie Miñoso’s old Jalisco Charros team – he both played for, and managed, them – beat the Hermosillo Orange Growers 11-8 Thursday night), you’ll have to endure some five months of inactivity before we again see meaningful games being played.

For some of us, an empty ballpark is an even sadder sight than one when our favorite ball club loses.

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