Dispatches From That Other America

If you look at a political map of Illinois and see blue -- see a Democratic governor, a Democratic supermajority in the state legislature and an unbroken string of Democratic mayors of Chicago going back nearly a century -- what you are seeing is factually true and misses an important point.  

Illinois is ineed a bastion of blue in an ocean of red because of Chicago, a few suburbs and the areas around several large universities.  I'm glad I live here and raised my family here.  But let your eyes travel down I55 or I57 and before too long you're in downstate Illinois, which is a whole other country.  

Trump country.

When I worked for the City of Chicago, we had a lot of interactions with downstate because that's where the state capitol is and that's the portal through which flowed all federal funds.  And we had our jokes.  One I remember (which I'm sure was borrowed from Sex and the City or somesuch) was that a trip to Springfield was like time traveling to a land where it was always 1978:  the racial hierarchy was genteel but right out in the open and strictly enforced, every jukebox offered a wide selection of  Charlie Daniels, The Allman Brothers or Exile, and everybody smoked.  

It wasn't that Springfieldians were unaware of the march of time or the amenities that modernity.  For example, our Springfield-based auditors always made sure to schedule our audits in late November so they could spend some extra time in Chicago taking in the sights, seeing some shows and doing their Christmas shopping.   But while in Chicago -- a land of 100 cuisines and 10,000 restaurants -- they always insisted on eating at fucking Steak 'n Shake.  Or Applebees, if they were feeling fancy.  

Also, I'm personally aware of at least one, multi-million dollar failed bid-rigging scheme in which the specs for the new software system were written so baroquely that, if they hadn't screwed it all up and been forced to start over, would have made it was impossible for any software company to qualify except the Springfield-based company at which they were all planning to work after they retired.

You see, they're actually acutely aware of the march of time and modernity.  They simply rejected it, except as a contaminated culture which they were forced, from time to time, to tolerate, and on which their livelihoods depended.  And they hate that.  

Paradoxically, this is exactly why our coastal elite media are always caught so back-footed whenever the GOP does something that doesn't surprise we-who-live-among-them in the least.  Because despite the 1,000 diner sojourns the coastal elites have made to the wilds of continental interior to speak with Trump voters in their natural habitats, they still don't understand on a very basic level how the brains of rank-and-file Republicans are wired.  How deep the resentment goes.  How warped and furious their opinions have gotten after steeping in Hate Radio and Fox News every day for 30 years.  

Beltway insiders gather 'round the dying embers of the establishment media to tell each other stories of "moderate Republicans" and "independents" the same way conquistadors talked themselves into believing in El Dorado and the Fountain of Youth.   They must be out there somewhere.   They must be.   And by god and Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, we're gonna keep dispatching expeditions into the savage interior until we find them.

Which is why every time another Republican atrocity shambles out of the darkness and crashes their campfire TED talk, they're caught unawares and freak out.

Meanwhile, as Very Serious Media Persons continue strip-mining mighty mountains of Republican shit in search of imaginary moderate Republican ponies, out here in the real world, this is what local Republican parties are up to.  From the State Journal-Register (with emphasis added):

Former Trump advisor to headline Sangamon County's GOP Lincoln Day dinner

Kellyanne Conway, an advisor of former President Donald Trump, will be the keynote speaker of the Sangamon County Republican Party’s annual Lincoln Day dinner.

Sangamon County GOP chair Dianne Barghouti Hartwick said the dinner, scheduled for 6 p.m. on May 3, has been a fundraiser for the party dating back more than 100 years. Tickets begin at $125 per person for the dinner with photo opportunities available for $50 each.

She first saw Conway speak in Peoria and was impressed by what she heard describing Conway as "very dynamic and very smart."

"We go with who we think will be interesting in our county and a few other counties," Hartwick said Tuesday.

Asked about Conway's ties to Trump, now embattled with legal charges tied to the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, Hartwick reiterated that the selection was not regarding the former president. Trump carried Sangamon County in 2020 despite losing Illinois and the overall election.

Instead, that Peoria speech delivered by Conway resonated with Hartwick.

"She was all about the positive things of America and working towards other positive things," she said.

...

Conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was the 2022 Lincoln Day dinner speaker.

Yes kiddies, last year the Sangamon County Republican Party celebrated the legacy of Abraham Lincoln by paying Charlie Fucking Kirk $30,000 plus expenses to come to town and spin up the crazies.  I wrote all about it here:

... 

Here, like everywhere else, the party is an admix of bigots, imbeciles, fundamentalists, ammosexuals, Conservative family dynasties,  whiny Libertarians, and assorted other weirdos and perverts.  Here, like everywhere else, behind every wreck-the-gummint initiative and think tank, and every wannabe Trump candidate for higher office you will find a crackpot neofascist billionaire financiers willing to pour staggering amounts of money into The Cause.   However unlike elsewhere the antics of our Looney Party don't leach into the nation headlines because at the moment, here in the Land of Lincoln, Republicans are outnumbered and largely impotent. 

And while you might think that living in a state where the government actually tries to help its citizens would have a leavening effect, you would be wrong.  Because these days all politics are no longer local.  They're national.  And our local Republicans seethe with all the venomous prejudices and resentments that drive the national party.  Richard Irvin -- a "More Law-n-Order Than Thou" guy running in the Republicans gubernatorial primary -- is being attack-ad bombed by his opponents because he once said something positive about Black Lives Matter.  Between screeching that the  Squad's Socialist Green New Dead is "killing us at the gas pump" and mocking Joe Biden as mentally out to lunch, area nutjob Mary Miller repeats that she is "the Trump-endorsed candidate" for IL15 at every opportunity.  And all of them bend the knee to the Big Lie by emphasizing their unstinting support for "election integrity".  

And it's only going to get worse.

And before Chuckles Kirk it was Candace Owens.  

And hey, guess what?  I wrote all about that too.

To understand the real significance of this above-the-fold headline story in todays State Journal-Register you really have to read it from back-to-front.  Because this is not just about why this particular group of Republican mopes and dregs have chosen to pay an unhinged Hitler-sympathizer and batshit conspiracy PEZ-dispenser like Candace Owens to keynote their 117th annual Lincoln Day Dinner.

This is about the fact that the entire Republican party is utterly (to borrow a phrase from the late Hunter Thompson) decadent and depraved all the way down to the local level, and how the cowardice and ruthless opportunism that is hardwired into the party means there is no longer any way out of the doom-loop they have locked themselves into. 

And before that it was Jason Chaffetz, one-time congressperson and current Fox News troll who now lives in Donald Trump's underwear drawer, and now blocks the little blue light on Trump's phone now that the FBO has taken away the classified file folder he used to use.

The year before that it was Fox News in-house train-wreck/barfly,  Jeanine Pirro.

The year before that wingnut-network-job-hopper and H.R. Haldeman stunt-double, Corey Lewandowski.

The year before that, in 2016, it was none other than Fox News prime-time Gorgon and Keith Olbermann's former girlfriend, Laura Ingraham.

 

And on and on and on.

[Note to the Sangamon County Republican Party: Just get it over with once and for all and rename the damn thing "Jefferson David Appreciation Day".]

If you want to hear wealthy professional opinion havers with decades of bullshit under their belts feign shock that the Republican Party suddenly and inexplicably went mad, or that somehow the Democrats are equally toxic, or that maybe Liberal are somehow to blame for the sorry state of the GOP...or you're in the market for aspirational fairy tales about what the GOP once was back in the Good Old Days and what it shall be again in the Great Days to Come the Beltway media has a dozen different flavors of comforting lies and liars to choose from.

But if you want grim, honest and depressingly accurate insights into what the Republican Party has become, how it got there and where it's going, go ask a Liberal who has been living among actual Republicans out here in the middle of Middle America, and who has been thinking about and writing about politics and the media for decades.

I Am The Liberal Media