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

 

My Life as a Low Information Voter

Perhaps someday, someone will explain to po' dumb me the substantive difference between the lumpen "Low information voter" that somehow always ends up at Trump rallies yawping about Ivermectin and the Biden Crime Family,  and the vast, dull Middle who have been exempted by the punditocracy from knowing anything about how their country is run or who is running it because, y'know, they're just "normal" people.  Not "obsessed" with politics or policies or issues like we Savvy Take Havers (hahaha!) Salt of the Earth, one and all, but, y'know, they're just so veryveryvery busy living their normal lives.  

To me, it sounds like a distinction without a difference.  Much like:

"The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who never learned to read."  -- Mark Twain

Well, there is one difference.

When another pillar of democracy comes crashing down under the Republican wrecking ball, the "Low information voter" stands up and cheers.  Take that, Soros!  Take that, Fauci!

But when a pillar is turned to ash by the fascist rabble and their monstrous leaders, the so-sorry,still-veryveryvery busy people barely notice...

...unless that particular arcane, boring, who-knows-who's-to-blame-and-why-can't-Both-Sides-stop-fighting pillar happened to be holding up one of the never-noticed-it-because-it-was-supposed-to-last-forever rights that affects them personally.

At which point they may actually, finally be moved to pay attention to the news long enough to notice that that right is now effectively gone forever, because its destruction was presided over by highest authority in the land.    And thus begins the locking of yet another barn door long after the horse has galloped off, been shot in the woods by maniacs and devoured by vultures.

Wait, you mean a court can do that?  But isn't [voting rights, abortion, getting-fired-for-no-damn-reason, climate change, not-getting-mowed-down-by-a-madman-with-a-machine-gun, and on and on and on] something something protected by the Constitution? 

Then some brave soul breaks the bad news to them.

Then they want to know, "Well, who the hell is to blame for this?!?!"

Short answer is, you are bucko!  

You wanted someone else to do the business of citizenship for you.  To pay attention for you.  To think for you.  To decide for you.  And the MyPillow-dick-pill-fascist entertainment complex was more than happy to help you let the reins of our democracy slip from your veryveryvery busy hand because the all those various "controversies" that the MyPillow-dick-pill-fascist entertainment complex ginned up were so hard to understand and why-can't-Both-Sides-stop-fighting.  

And so forth.

And into that ever widening abyss of electoral ennui marches the ever growing mob of "Low information voters", which is why the MyPillow-dick-pill-fascist entertainment complex manufactures those bullshit "controversies" in the first place.

Well, for the last five days I have been both a veryveryvery busy, person and a low information voter.  Very busy because the aftermath of the storms that tore through here last week has left us without power, reliable phones, wifi for five days and counting, so we have been busy trying to keep various batteries charged, preparing meals, staying on the power company that keeps telling us that we're not in an outage area, keeping in touch with family etc.

Did I mention that the van's "Check Engine" light lit up this morning?  It never rains but it derechos, I suppose.

Anyway...busy.

And also "low information" in the sense that I've largely been away from the firehose of Breaking!News! for five days now.  When the wind is right I can get a single bar on the phone and skim some highlights, but that's not really much more informative than scanning the headlines at the store while waiting to buy one of the last bags of ice in the tri-county area.  And honestly, I have become way more interested in local, weather-related news than anything else.  

Instead, we've been reading books.  Washing dishes.  Helping out the neighbors.  Doing some post-storm cleanup.  Figuring out food.  Figuring out meds.   Staring at the inert electric garage door behind which all my tools are trapped  (The door is old.  There is no lock.  No manual entry option.  No emergency open kit stashed in the frame.  No door or window. Until the power company gives me the "Open, Sesame!" all the treasures within are denied me.)  And generally trying to stay low and still deal with the heat, humidity and depressing uncertainty.  

And yet, even as busybusy and low information as I am, I'm somehow also able to become aware that...

...this week the Republican majority on the Supreme Court wiped their asses with the 14th Amendment and struck down affirmative action in college admissions because that is what these black-robed destroyers were hired to do.  And I know that the liberal majority ripped 'em a new one for doing so.

...the same Republican majority on the Supreme Court took on a theoretical case about a purely hypothetical situation so they would once again trash legal precedent and give the pre-emptive go-ahead to bigots who want to deny public accommodations to protected classes of people.  And they did it, because, fuck you, we're here for life!  Bawahahaha!

... yes, that very same Republican majority on Supreme Court gutted president Joe Biden's very modest student loan forgiveness program, and that a whole lotta Savvy Pundits are trying to somehow blame Biden for it.

...some "centrist" outfit called "No Labels" is acting as a cutout for a handful of high-dollar, dark-money Conservatives who want to put Trump back in the White House.

Somehow it was possible for my wife and I to attend to all the problems and contingencies and worries that arose from our derecho disaster, and to cope with the idea of remaining in a state of sweaty weariness for an indefinite period of time, and the loss of 95% of our news media inputs...and still remain aware of the wider world enough to know that Republicans are howlingly sadistic fascists who are drooling at the prospect of bleeding American democracy to death from 1,000 cuts.  

Finally, stepping out of my "low information" role for a moment, I knows that they have been on this trajectory for decades.

And that the people who are still hiding behind "Both Sides Do It" are either inexcusably lazy, arrant cowards, posturing cynics, or some unholy Turd Tur-duck-en of all three.

Your pal,

driftglass

I Am The Liberal Media

&n