Day Six Derecho Update: No Fair Remembering Stuff ... Named After Everett McKinley Dirksen

There are a lot of things named after Pekin, Illinois' favorite son, Everett McKinley Dirksen, the Republican Senate Minority leader who partnered with (some would say, was bullied by) Democratic President Lyndon Baines Johnson -- 

-- to help break the Southern filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and help write and pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968, both landmark pieces of legislation during the civil rights movement.

So it's right and proper that stuff should be named after him.

Like the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington D.C. -- one of the trio of senate office buildings where Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans plotted with Donald Trump to stack the Supreme Court with Federalist Society thugs and stooges who would work diligently to roll back all forward progress this country made in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries including what Johnson and Dirksen had accomplished.  

There is also the I-74, Dirksen Highway.  

And the Everett Mckinley Dirksen Elementary School. 

And the Everett McKinley Dirksen United States Courthouse, which you may  know as the Dirksen Federal Building.  It's at 219 Dearborn in Chicago -- just across the street from the former site of the previous courthouse where the finally nailed Al Capone.   The Dirksen Federal Building is where they held the Greylord Cook County judicial corruption trials, dropped the hammer on former Illinois governor Otto Kerner 

... and former Illinois governor Dan Walker 

... and former Illinois governor George Ryan 

... and former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich.  

And also too, R. Kelly.

Here in Springfield, Illinois, Everett McKinley Dirksen's descendants still walk among us, and one of the city's main drags is Dirksen Parkway, of which there is a North and a South.  

Dirksen is always busy, as it'll get you onto and off of I-55 and I-72 in a couple of difference places, It's lined with hotels, chain restaurants, car dealerships, the Illinois Department of Transportation HQ, grocery stores and large, still-vital shopping centers where you can find BBQ next to the Harley-Davidson dealership and across the street from a big, well-stocked Lowes.  The very same Lowes where I bought a battery operated DeWalt shop fan that has kept a room in our house more-or-less habitable for the past few days (finding places to recharge is another matter.)

I got to Lowes just before closing, and while the trip there was a journey of but a few familiar miles, it fell far away and eerie. There were long stretches in the dark with no lights at all -- including no traffic lights -- where, in recent days, more than one inattentive driver has sailed through an intersection without realizing that they were supposed to stop.   There have been accidents.  

Then, suddenly, lights!   A stretch of normal commerce. Normal red-yellow-green traffic control.  Then, suddenly, dark again.

Last night we were trying to pick a place to eat, and decided to try the restaurants at the other end of Dirksen (in defiance of all logic, Smokey Bones has mediocre BBQ but surprisingly good donuts!)  Per the internet all the places we pondered were open.  We called to make sure and got long answering machine messages full of push-this-or-that button options, followed by automatic hangups. 

This is why (video shot by me.)

Day Six after the storm and the South end of Dirksen is still a mess.  The Capitol City Shopping Center is a ghost town that the city has commandeered as a staging area for rebuilding/restoration efforts.  All adjacent businesses -- the restaurants, the theaters, etc -- are all closed.  Across the street, the Crowne Plaza Hotel and Convention Center is darkened, as are the Holiday Inn and Hilton Garden overflow hotels next door; their parking lots empty except for equipment vans, cranes and bucket trucks.  

All of those adjacent businesses and restaurants are also closed.

People, the pot dispensary is closed!

Downed power and phone lines drape the easement, fencing and snapped/sagging poles like cobwebs spun by a giant, lazy, drunken spider.

The 2023 Springfield derecho has done to Dirksen Parkway (and the rest of the city) what Mitch McConnell and the Republican Party have done to progress in the United States from their viper's nest in the Dirksen, Russell and Hart Senate Office Buildings: smash vital but fragile systems and networks which had taken decades of hard work to create and which had become fundamental to the day-to-day lives of ordinary people. The lives of ordinary citizens were thrown into fearful darkness and chaos.

The difference is, all along Dirksen Parkway (and all over town) skilled professionals from all over the midwest have brought their tools and expertise to bear on the problem, and are working 17 hours a day right through the holiday to fix what the storm has destroyed.

But in the Dirksen, and Hart Senate Office Buildings ... and in the House of Representatives ... and at the Supreme Sourt ... and in state governments across the country, the ravaging, pulverizing destructive force of the modern Republican party is only getting worse and shows no signs of abating long enough for us to fix even a small fraction of what they have already destroyed..  

I Am The Liberal Media