Back in 1982, as this country's long slide into Conservative idiocracy was accelerating to white-knuckle speeds, the Equal Rights Amendment was still a thing.
The ERA also provided an occasion for the late Mike Royko to eloquently and succinctly explain the political dynamics of Illinois. And I can say that 32 years later, even as political majorities have ebbed and flowed, very little has changed in the way the state is balanced between the state's Blue Chicago and it's Red Suburbs and Downstate.
In fact, if anything, between Federal Prisoner #40892-424 wrecking the economy of the state capitol by exporting thousands of state jobs to Chicago and the suburban Republicans going full, batshit Teabagger, tensions are much worse than they used to be.
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Nobody decides who to vote for any more, they only decide whether to vote. The only people who don't know this, of course, are the only people who have to know it - those dinosaur democratic strategists who still try to convert conservatives rather than energize liberals.
In the Transhuman Space setting for Steve Jackson Games' Generic Universal Role-Playing System*, Chicago is one of seven metropolitan statistical areas to have become separate US states by 2100 (the others are Atlanta, Miami, New York City, San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle-Tacoma), part of a general trend that has seen Brussels, Koenigsberg and Montreal become free city-states on the Singapore model. Do you ever think that might be the way to go?
(* Bold italics are SJGames' house style for the titles of printed works.)
WV: 151. The boy and girl who gather pearls of wisdom falling from his mouth.
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