Why I Voted for Harambe

An open letter to the American people

All the dignity that the Clinton v. Trump trainwreck
is worthy of responding to with. (courtesy: Mitch Carter on Instagram).

Fellow Americans,

I take voting—informed voting—seriously. I take good government seriously. I take our glorious republic seriously. And that is why, paradoxic as it may sound, I cast a ballot this morning with the name of a dead gorilla written in as my choice to be our next President. I do so as a pointed reflection on how 31 million of our countrymen conspired throughout the past spring to make a joke of this ballot.

To vote for someone is to believe, even if you view them as only the least undesirable option, that a candidate is at some basic level fit for the given office. I do honestly believe that Hillary Clinton is crooked, underachieved, too often wrong on policy, did recklessly endanger state secrets in a fit of paranoia—then shamelessly lied to the American public about it, and is generally unworthy of the Presidency which she truly seems to feel owed. But this does not in any way mitigate in my mind the blatant unfitness of Donald J. Trump, a crass, erratic, inveterate liar and know-nothing charlatan, who not so long ago repeatedly donated to the Clinton political machine he now makes a show of disparaging, and defended Bill Clinton in the victim in his own sex scandals, before more recently, and ominously, replacing Slick Willie as his political muse with the murderous imperial Russian gangster-President Vladimir Putin.

One dangerous, shameless liar does not absolve another. Unfitness does not excuse unworthiness. No matter what one or the other have spent the past year arguing to the contrary, it remains that any individual whose public life is so defined by such pervasive defects in character is unfit to stand as the leader of a free people. I consult today especially the memory of my beloved grandfather, whose journey of 5,000 miles across land and sea to escape the most depraved tyrannies of the twentieth century was not made to revel to in the criminal mediocrity of miscreants and appeasers. I think this morning as well of the founding generation, men who roused a nation into existence out of colonial subjugation, firm in the belief that it was within their power to remake the world, rather than settle for what was and was found wanting, and pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to that end. Those who have found themselves so moved as to believe there is a genuine choice to be made today are within their rights to do so. But with mine and our heritage in mind, I choose today to not participate in this, so that none shall ever be able to say I was among those who accepted responsibility for this damned nonsense. One or the other will win anyways, that much I accept is almost certainly true. But whichever it is will be gone and replaced in due course as have been all who came before them, and with any luck ushered out by a resurgence of good taste, sober thought, and sane, decent sentiments. In the meantime, for mine own small part, either-or shall not enjoy the pleasure of my confidence.

Dissenting,

Mitchell D. Carter

American individual.

-Mitch Carter.

Flying High

(Courtesy: Mitch Carter on Instagram).

(The following is adapted from a speech that was delivered at Waubonsee Community College in the summer of 2014 on the subject of "What is your most prized possession?", reprinted here in celebration of National Sunglasses Day)

There are all sorts of things that mean all sorts of things to all sorts of people. Everyone has something important to them, and probably then some. There are many things that I myself count as highly important to me: America, aviators, and AMC’s Mad Men are just few that I can count amongst them. But only one of those that I’ve named is an object I can hold in my hands; yet the only place I ever want them is on my face: the aviator sunglasses, preferably mirrored. Though they are physically a simple, relatively thin and flimsy item, my aviators repeatedly prove their importance to me on all but a daily basis, first through their key intended function of shielding my eyes from blinding sun, and also by their just-as-vital way of adding an extra edge to my look, by being the coolest, raddest, baddest shades around.

Being the massive sphere of burning plasma that it is, the sun has a tendency to be incredibly bright during the daytime hours, and I rely on my aviators to protect my eyes from that light while I perform important tasks, like driving, or wandering about outdoors. Sure, the sun is essential to creating the conditions in which life on Earth can exist, but without any protection, not only would I have a difficult time seeing ahead of myself through the intense rays, but I would also be opening myself up to the threat of lasting damage to my eyes. Thankfully, my possession of aviator sunglasses has alleviated this trouble. With their big, dark lenses covering my face like a Spartan phalanx, the aviators bring the world down to a cooler brightness, and the solar eminences find themselves powerless to halt me.

Of course, by their very nature, virtually any pair of sunglasses could guard my eyesight the way I’ve described, but there is something that simply sets aviators apart to me as more than just protective eyewear. The aviators do much more than just shield my eyes; they take me out of the sun and bring me to a place cooler than any other. They take me to a place of speed, parties, rock n roll, and freedom; a place where you can hear Van Halen on your stereo just well enough over the sound of the wind blowing through your hair, a place where the only fight is to keep ahold of that feeling. Whoever at Ray-Ban decided back in the thirties to start selling “pilot’s glasses” to the general public may very well have been a marketing genius; as the decades unfolded since, it has been proven time and time again that there’s almost nothing cooler than flying sweet jets (even if only because it’s impossible to fly your own giant bald eagle), and that’s exactly the sort of air I want about me in everyday life. Other styles, of course, have had their iconic moments, but there’s only one that MacArthur wore to storm the Philippines, only one good enough for Mav and Ice when they’re not busy shooting MiGs out of the danger zone, and thusly, there’s only one good enough for me.

When I first went out in search of shades way back when, it wasn’t a quest to which ones could protect me from the sun—the point of them was that they all could—, but rather the find the one’s that could do the job right. I came across several candidates for a place on my face that were all shot down by one flaw or another: wraparounds were too tight to fit over my eyeglasses, wayfarers are for Kennedys, and so on. I do believe it was the hand of fate that brought me to the aviators, perfectly big and bold enough to sit over top of glasses without looking too tacky, and bringing with them just the right mix of military and arena metal attitude. At once shielding my eyes and wing-manning for my style, the aviators have smoothly soared their way into becoming one of my most important possessions.

Thank you very much, and God bless the US.

-Mitchell D. Carter.

What Somebody Needs to Ask About Trump Tonight.

Tonight is important. The tenth Republican Presidential debate will air on CNN, just five days before the Super Tuesday primaries, and just two days after Donald Trump's victory in the Nevada caucus. Having won that contest, along with victories in South Carolina and New Hampshire, Trump leads the field of remaining Republican candidates with 81 delegates to the equal 17's of both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. It is now presumed by many that he will inevitably be the Republican nominee for President, in spite of his being both perhaps the most unpopular Republican candidate among Republicans and being the most disliked of all candidates from both parties among the larger voting public. There is good reason for this: in addition to being temperamentally unsound and often insistently dishonest, he is historically inconsistent in his position on nearly every issue of political relevance. While it is possible that there is nothing that can be said that will shake his core support, it would be monumentally clarifying if this stage were used tonight by either Sen. Cruz or Sen. Rubio to put the following questions to Republican voters who have yet to cast a ballot:

In the months since Donald Trump announced his candidacy last June, he has amassed great support with his promise to "Make America Great Again." Essential to achieving this end, he has argued, is being tougher on illegal immigration than any administration since the Eisenhower years. Mr. Trump pledges that he will construct a great, big wall--on the dime of a foreign sovereign--and deport twelve million illegal immigrants in the space of a few years. He promises that he can and will see to it that the very best trade deals for America possible are negotiated, and that good jobs will come back from China and Mexico. He insists that only he can be trusted to do this, because he is a businessman and not a politician, and he may have you convinced that I can't be trusted because either too "weak" or too inconsistent on these issues. And it is true that Mr. Trump is not a politician, but over many years he has frequently felt behooved to share his thoughts on political issues with the world, and has had many chances to put what are apparently his deeply-held principles to action in his business. And tonight I'd like to ask, when was it that Mr. Trump displayed that he, not I, is the individual most worthy of your trust to handle issues like immigration and trade? Was it five years ago when he said the government should undertake a lengthy and costly project of awarding amnesty "case by case"?Was it four years ago when he said that Mitt Romney, who he now considers "weak", was too mean spirited when he proposed that illegal immigrants should be legally blocked from getting jobs or obtaining welfare benefits was too "mean-spirited"? Was it when he told illegal immigrant activists three years ago that they'd "convinced" him they deserve legal status? Was it when he tweeted later that same year that amnesty could be done if Congress secured the border? Was it when, more than thirty years after his organization was first caught employing illegal immigrants in substandard conditions, the Washington Post discovered his companies still employ illegals to build his buildings? Was he fighting for the American manufacturing worker when he made a few bucks by putting his name on department store jackets and ties that were made in China and Mexico--ties he tried to give us as parting gifts at a previous debate? Was he fighting for the American worker when he turned down all but 17 of 300 job applications from American workers at his Mar-a-Lago club since 2010, claiming too many were unqualified, when he pursued over 500 visas for foreign labor, importing workers from as far as Romania?

My fellow Americans, Donald Trump may have you convinced I cannot be trusted to correctly handle these issues, and for the moment I am not trying to convince you otherwise. What I am asking you right now is to consider Mr. Trump's true history in business and politics, and then ask yourself whether you can really trust him any more than you can trust me. Can you tonight truly say you trust a man like that, who changes his political leanings with the seasons and admits to making bold pronouncements just for the sake of keeping an audience, with the incredible powers of the American Presidency?

A Strange Martyr for Freedom: “Charb,” in Memoriam.

Stéphane "Charb"Charbonnier, slain editior of Charlie Hebdo (courtesy: Business Insider).

It seems odd to eulogize a man who I had never heard of before Wednesday, especially considering that I gather from what little I do know of him that he's not someone I would agree with much politically. But for "Charb," or Stéphane Charbonnier, editor of the leftist and anti-religious French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo (and apparent longtime supporter of the French Communist Party) who was gunned down Wednesday in a brutal act of radical Islamic terror, I will make my best effort.

To declare a communist a martyr for freedom feels most strange of all. Yet that is exactly what he has become, and I fully intend to honor him here as such; after three men in ski masks stormed the Charlie Hebdo offices Wednesday with AKs and murdered him, along with nine colleagues and two police, in cold blood while shouting about “avenging” the prophet Muhammad, Charb’s name transcends his partisan politics, forever on.

Charb—and his magazine’s—crime in the eyes of these killers was their publishing of cartoons that varyingly satirized or mocked the prophet Muhammad. One, which graced the cover of an issue in 2011 that had been “guest edited” by the prophet himself, had him threatening the reader with “100 lashes if you don’t die laughing.” This issue was given as the catalyst for a firebombing of Charlie’s offices very shortly thereafter, the first attempt by radical Islamists to silence the publication. Unfazed, they issued a follow-up cover featuring a Muslim man kissing another man in a Charlie Hebdo tee-shirt that was captioned “love is stronger than hate.”

Others included one depicting Muhammad being decapitated by an ISIS militant (despite a “don’t you know who I am?”-type protest), another of him being filmed nude with a caption of “The film that will set the Muslim world on fire,” and one in which the prophet is judging a “Miss Potato Sack” pageant (of all Burqa-clad women). True to the magazine’s anti-religious editorial code, one notably features a Muslim, Christian, and Jewish figure, all three of whom are together saying that “Charlie Hebdo must be censored.”

While I must admit that a couple of the cartoons were somewhere in the ballpark of “thought provoking,” at least one other that I saw was genuinely obscene. Some are at least a tad crude in their jabs. Understanding Islam as I do, I can see where Muslims could easily become offended by the material. Without getting into the finer points of each cartoon Charlie Hebdo ever ran that is relevant to this attack, I feel inclined to say that personally I more than likely would not have run these as marquee content.

But it wasn’t my decision, and Charlie Hebdo isn’t my publication. And that’s the point. Obscene as some and more generally “offensive” to Muslims as they all apparently were, I don’t know that I consider them to be libelous or slanderous in a legally punishable way (though I am not an expert in the French standards for such things). Therefore, there was no reason a private enterprise could not publish them. Everyone, even a silly, godless French lefty rag, has the right to a free press, especially in Western civil society. And everyone, whatever they believe in, has a right to be offended at what comes from a free press. One thing, however, there is absolutely no right to is form a hit squad and execute the cartoonists who offended you.

Most religious groups in modern times seem to understand this. No Christians ever firebombed or shot up the Charlie Hebdo office, nor has anyone else for that matter. Though he claims to have received death threats, nobodyhas ever actually killed Mr. Andres Serrano after he dunked a crucifix in a jar of his own urine, photographed it, and passed it off as a work of art aptlycalled “Piss Christ” in 1987. Until Wednesday, you could even purchase a printof the work from the Associated Press, who meanwhile enforced a policy of censoring "offensive" images of Muhammad, such as the Hebdo cartoons, or the similar works that incited the Danish cartoon incident years ago. The AP has just this week quietly suspended selling “Piss Christ,” just after Wednesday’s attack.

Or, as Kevin D. Williamson wrote in an excellent piece at National Review Online Wednesday,

“When the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints found itself the subject of an unkind Broadway lampoon, The Book of Mormon, its leaders did not bomb the theater or even try to force the show to be shut down as ‘hate speech.’ Instead, they decided — in a brilliant stroke — to offer theatergoers copies of their scripture through an advertisement in the show’s playbill: ‘You’ve seen the play, now read the book.’

What’s an extremist Mormon going to do? Bake you a pie?”

The only group that regularly shows an unwillingness to step outside of this civility is radical Islam, and “the big show in terms of violent extremism is the never-ending circus of jihad.” And once again, while I do not endorse nor would I necessarily ever elected to have printed any of the cartoons that were put out in Charlie Hebdo, for that magazine to have relented to past pressure and thereafter not published material critical of Islam (while continuing on as they were with other groups) would have done its own share of harm; to do so serves only to widen the gap between the world’s societies Williamson so wonderfully highlights when he writes “That’s where the world is: Stuff from science fiction coming out of Stuttgart and California [in reference to self-driving car projects being announced], stuff from the Middle Ages coming out of Mecca, Riyadh, Baghdad, Tehran, Damascus, Karachi, Kabul…”

In large swaths of his life Charb may have been at most a distant backbencher in freedom’s House of Lords, but he is now most assuredly a member. Charb declared for all to know that it would be liberty or death for him, if it ever came to it; in an interview a couple years back, he boasted "I am not afraid of reprisals, I have no children, no wife, no car, no debt. It might sound a bit pompous, but I'd prefer to die on my feet rather than living on my knees." It can hardly be said how unfortunate it is he had to live up to his word.

Freedom forever, there are few things so fine.

                                                                    

Stéphane "Charb" Charbonnier, dead at 47. RIP.

There are few things so fine as freedom (courtesy: Investor's Business Daily).

-Mitch Carter, a history/secondary education major at Aurora University, is an Illinois State Scholar and member of the Kendall County Young Republicans.

Zapruder, Camelot, and "the Real America."

President Kennedy moments before he was assassinated in Dallas, November 22nd, 1963. (Courtesy: People).

(The following was written a year ago to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination.  It was heretofore unpublished.)

“It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.”

-Mark Twain.

“In my stars I am/ above thee, but be not afraid of greatness…

/Thy Fates open/ their hands. Let thy blood and spirit embrace them.”

-Shakespeare (Twelfth Night, Act II Scene V).

In the course of our recent, dare I say uniquely-American, “celebration” of the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas, and the frantic hunt by conspiracy theorists and other scholars to finally discover some long-hidden deeper meaning to it all—a desperate search to finally find out “why?”—I came to a realization that shines light on the story from an entirely different perspective. It’s really the most important perspective that we have; and sadly it’s sometimes overlooked, taken for granted by too many of those who have seen it.

If there is any deeper meaning to be gleaned from the events of November 22^nd, 1963 in Dealey Plaza, it lies with one man, a very certain shooter who was standing on that infamous grassy knoll. No, not that kind of shooter. My meaning isn’t some shadowy character hiding behind a picket fence with a gun. That sort of shooter only lives in the minds of Oliver Stone and his ilk. The shooter I reference, on the other hand, is very real and easily defined. He was armed not with a sniper’s rifle, but with a Zoomatic 8mm video camera. He shot not bullets at the President, but instead the most important 26.6 seconds of grainy silent film ever taken in American history.

His name was Abraham Zapruder. And as Jack Kennedy slumped over into his wife’s lap and died, it was Zapruder who quickly became the most important man on the scene. In an oddly prophetic way it seems appropriate that it would be the Ukrainian-born dressmaker who filmed the only visual evidence of the most infamous murder of the twentieth century. Especially considering his origin, that he ran halfway across the globe to escape the horrors of the Russian Civil War and the consolidation of Lenin’s hold on power, it comes across as a darkly perfect example of an “only in America” moment—the idea that anyone from anywhere can be anything—that the foreign-born small business man would have his name forever attached to the name of one our nation’s most revered leaders, immortalized for the ages by the ghastly sight of “Zapruder frame 313” (the ever-chilling image of the third bullet tearing through Kennedy’s head).

But that’s not really enough, is it? Something larger tugs at the mind. Perhaps this is something grander in scale, a proof of Shakespeare’s human universality that “some have greatness thrust upon 'em,” that anyone can by chance (be it luck, fate, or however else you might have it) become, if not powerful, at least of the highest importance.

Perhaps we really have been looking in the wrong direction. Perhaps we’ve spent too many years looking for why Jack Kennedy died and not enough time thinking about what his death really meant. For what it’s worth, I don’t hate Kennedy. On balance, I have something of a respect for him. A man whose platform was for tax cuts, balanced budgets, and civil rights was an admirable man indeed. Throw in a hard line against the Soviets and communism, and that goes double. His firm stance during the Cuban Missile Crisis, worthy of its long remembrance in the American mind, was rightly the genesis of his legacy. But, fittingly enough, his was a legacy that to survive almost had to be sealed in blood.

“Camelot,” that gaudy monstrosity of a name by which we’ve been told we are to remember that lurid time, was a lie, even if it was a good one. From his supposed perfect marriage to the fashion icon wife, to his rock-star persona (with the built-in personality cult), and the constant parties, the omnipresence of refined culture and high society, everything surrounded by regal furnishings, it was all a hollow sham. In his real personal life he was anything but virtuous. He was an idealist, and maybe a great one at that, but he was a much better at saying than he ever was at doing. “Getting things done,” as we call it, would be left to that wretched lug Lyndon Johnson, and get things done he sure did (not just stopping at the just and noble goal of civil rights; but continuing on to an alarming big government state, his “great society,” whose own legacy ought to be forever questioned in its own right).

No, much like the mythic King Arthur and his court, the Kennedy Camelot wasn’t real. More importantly it wasn’t the real America. Shakespeare’s quote from Twelfth Night has two other parts; a large fraction of the other great leaders in American history all did great big things, they were amongst the some who “achieve greatness.” Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Reagan, both of the Roosevelts, Eisenhower…the list of names that come to mind goes on and on. Kennedy, however, was different. Jack Kennedy was “born great,” but achieved little. Jack Kennedy, whatever good there is to say about him, is nothing quite like anyone on the list above (regardless of how you feel about him or anyone on that list). He was a rich kid with connections and a good war story (this is not to discredit the valor of his service), “chosen” by his father to be President because his older brother had the bad fortune of dying young.

Abraham Zapruder, on the other hand, was exactly what defines “the real America.” He was a self-made man, not of great distinction, but not of poor disposition, either. He came to the other side of the globe not for any guarantees, but for a chance to succeed (not at all unlike my own grandfather, incidentally). In the course of many years spent in the shuffle of the free market, he had the good fortune of doing well for himself. By that good fortune he bought a movie camera, a top of the line model.

This fairy tale of Camelot simply could not survive forever. At some point the bubble would have to burst, yet no one could ever have expected it to play out the way it did. It all ended with a crack of thunder when the President was slain in the back of his own limousine as it rolled down Elm Street. And Zapruder just stood there and watched, and filmed. Jack Kennedy died, and the car sped off. The metaphor in there is dark, but it can’t be denied. Zapruder and his film are the real America, watching in stunned silence, as the great sham falls apart in front of them. And then, as he rolled off screen, the real America switched off its camera and moved on. The lie was now unraveled, even if violently and unexpectedly so. It was now relegated to memory, an image of a time that was. But Zapruder’s world, the aforementioned “real America,” is grounded in firmer reality, and so outlived Camelot.

In the end, regardless of any symbolic meaning that may be gleaned from the circumstance of his death, the fact remains that Jack Kennedy really and truly died for nothing.  While many specifics will always remain vague, general motive is unbelievably straightforward: Lee Harvey Oswald, the discontented Marxist sociopath, struck out, alone, just so that he could finally prove to the world that he was powerful (Peter Jennings and computer animator Dale K. Myers, in The Kennedy Assassination: Beyond Conspiracy, present a powerful visual argument that lays sole responsibility on Oswald). Around this, the who, what, when, where, and how of the crime all fall into place with relative ease. The complete opposite of Lincoln and Booth, Oswald’s personal interest in Kennedy was all but negligible. Kennedy was condemned by sad coincidence; Oswald’s animus against Kennedy stems only from that fate had decided to drive the President past his place of employment before anyone else of public importance could be. The homicide of the century was set in motion not by hungry schemers, but by total chance. A roll of the dice, if you will.

Such a concept ultimately leads to a sort of psychological disconnect. We can’t accept this, William Manchester explains, so we let ourselves believe in things that we can’t prove. He says, “to employ what may seem an odd metaphor,” we don’t have any problem accepting the Holocaust, because if the two sides were put on a scale “you have a rough balance: greatest crime, greatest criminals.” Put Kennedy and Oswald on either side of the same scale, however, and the President weighs it down. So “you want to add something weightier to Oswald. It would invest the President’s death with meaning…He would have died for something. A conspiracy would, of course, do the job nicely.”

Somehow, after all of this, yet one more strange twist of irony remains. Whatever personal resentments Oswald may have harbored against Jack Kennedy, killing him may very well have only served to set him free. A brief examination of contemporary history shows that the constraints of time (particularly second-terms) have a long record of causing fatigue. Influences wane, and new guards are swept in. But this isn’t so with the dead Kennedy; there are no term limits on martyrs, and for his personality cult, that’s what he had now become.

“Camelot,” as a name for the time, wasn’t even a thing until after he died. Jackie came up with it. Camelot was a musical, and apparently his favorite line was "Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot." Evidently she wasn’t sure if that was obvious enough, so she kept going until all of her doubts were erased. "There'll be great Presidents again," she goes on, "but there'll never be another Camelot again … it will never be that way again."

But what if he hadn’t died? What if that “brief shining moment” hadn’t been so brief? Would Jack Kennedy have been such a uniquely great President, would that spot still have been known as Camelot? Well, in a word, no. Had he lived to see the end of his first term and moved into his second, I see a Presidency that would have played out like a watered-down Johnson administration. With his support for civil rights and fierce opposition to the communists, he still would have crushed Barry Goldwater in ’64. Like Johnson, he would be long remembered for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but in his own time likely affected by Vietnam. No, this Camelot wouldn’t have ended under a storm of bullets, and wouldn’t have been remembered as such. This Camelot would’ve collapsed under the weight of hard reality, washed away by the second coming of Tricky Dick.
-Mitch Carter, a history/secondary education major at Aurora University, is an Illinois State Scholar and member of the Kendall County Young Republicans.

The Neat Idea That Worked

Illinois Governor-elect Bruce V. Rauner (R). (Courtesy: Chicago Sun-Times).

I’ll have to be frank and admit that when I got the idea last Tuesday night to write this it was at a point when I actually thought Bruce Rauner was on his way to losing the gubernatorial election. After jumping out to a lead in the very early returns, the numbers from Cook County really started to come in, and things were swinging in favor of Gov. Quinn. At that point I began thinking to myself, “you backed this guy, this socially moderate, Mitt Romney-esque venture capitalist outsider from the beginning…what are you going to say when he loses?” The answer I found was actually pretty simple: to be spoken in my best imitation of Ollie North, “well, it was just a neat idea.”

Well, fortune smiled on us Tuesday night, and Rauner began to pull ahead in the results just as the Cook County returns began to taper off. Before too long, it seemed, he cracked 50% of the vote and never gave it back. At about 11:30, the Wall Street Journal online feed refreshed, and posted banner proclaiming “Illinois Elects a Republican Governor;” as hard as I wished, part of me had long doubted that I’d ever actually get to see those words.

We are yet, of course, to see how things will pan out with him; we have a full four years, at least, of Governor Rauner ahead of us, which are yet to truly begin. And I do suspect that they will be four long, tense years if Speaker Madigan gets his way.

In just the mere days following his election, he’s already made moves that have piqued the interest. First, he added Bill Daley, son and brother to those Mayors Daley, and chief of staff to that President Obama, to his transition team. And then he declared himself in favor of a minimum wage hike, contra his varying stances throughout the campaign on the issue. But so far I’m of the opinion that these things smell worse than they really taste.

In order for the presence of a Daley to taint your view of this “transition team” beyond recovery is to perceive him as more vibrant a color than he really is in this veritable rainbow of Illinois politics, mixed in as he is with the likes of Gov. Edgar (the last former Governor, of either party, to not wind up in prison), James Meeks and Corey Brooks (the black reverends who stuck their necks out for Rauner, and took some real heat for it), 33 year old Republican Congressman Aaron Schock, Judy Baar Topinka’s chief of staff, a former top staffer to Mark Kirk, and some assorted characters. At the head is soon-to-be Lieutenant Governor Evelyn Sanguinetti, whose passion for saving Illinois I learned of first hand when she sat down at my table at a GOP function last spring.

In short, Bill Daley is nothing more than a nice “bipartisan reach out to the machine” gesture wrapped up inside a who’s who of every non-felonious character-type they could get to line themselves up against the Madigan machine. So I respect the political game he’s playing, and for now I’ll remain unbothered by it.

That thing about raising the minimum wage isn’t really a full cave either, if you take into account all that he actually said, namely that  “the critical thing is that we do it an overall context where we drive up Illinois’ competitiveness, as I’ve always said.” By “overall context,” he means “raising the wage only with a series of tax reforms, tort reform and changes to workers’ compensation laws.” Bruce rode a wave of frustration and populism all the way from virtual obscurity to being elected Governor of the fifth most populous state in the union; that he might attempt to co-opt such a blatantly populist initiative as hiking the minimum wage to $10 on the condition of carve outs for businesses that correspond with his campaign rhetoric isn’t the worst move he could make. After all, it seems almost certain the measure will be approved very near future, notwithstanding mine and other’s objections. If the new Governor could force a compromise on so volatile an issue so early on, I would regard that a good start. If he can’t, it was likely a forgone conclusion anyways. I’ll give him another pass here. For now.

From the beginning, Bruce Rauner’s appeal wasn’t for being a hardliner conservative any sort of ideological purist like that. In the optimal scenario, a fella like Bill Brady would be Governor of Illinois. But we don’t live in that scenario; Bill Brady lost four years ago, and for all I know he might have lost again last week if we had nominated him for the second time. And in that lies what makes Bruce Rauner the “neat idea”: he wasn’t just another Republican archetype out of the state house. He was something new, that we hadn’t done before. A guy who decided to put himself out there because fixing the state means that much to him. And given the common dissatisfaction with Pat Quinn around the state, I figure that it wouldn’t have been that hard for him to have bought off the Democrat primary and sailed to a much easier victory, if he was lying and this was really him working for himself. But he didn’t do that, he signed up as a Republican and decided to take the harder path. That tells me something about him, something good.

I remember when I first encountered his name as the subject of a John Kass column. It was by no means an endorsement, but if you say someone “could be just the ticket to take on status quo,” that’s not an unfavorable introduction, either. “He has millions to spend on his campaign. And that frightens other Republicans, and Democrats, too. Politicians like colleagues who can be leveraged. There's something attractive about a candidate who can't be bought, especially in Illinois, where so many are for sale;”

“What's fascinating about Rauner is his independence. And an unapologetic candidate with his kind of wealth…threatens the political order. ‘I think I'm going to be very dangerous to the people in Springfield,’ he said. ‘I think they're going to be scared. They should be. Because I can't be bribed, influenced, intimidated, threatened. I just want the state fixed and I just want to do the right thing for the taxpayers. You're right, I've done well in business. I'm very proud of it. I've got the resources to do whatever it takes to win, and to do what it takes to help fix the state. ... And the powers down there that like the status quo, they should be very scared,"

“I don't care about a political career. I certainly don't need a job. Getting re-elected is not on my top 10 list. I'll be willing to do things that politicians won't do. Because I don't care who I upset." Interesting, I thought. Very interesting.

Not long after, I happened to run into him at a Reagan day dinner. Tall, deep voice, walking success. Presence. This could really be something. I met up with him a second time at a Republican pig roast function, saw the whole Harleys and flannels thing first hand. Mentioned learning of him through Kass months prior, he said something about John having been very good to him. No kidding there; he might not have said it in exactly so many words until just before the election, but Kass was as much the driving force behind his early campaign as anyone. And John Kass is about the most level-headed guy in Illinois politics, so I took it all to mean something with real potential was brewing.

Chance (and a whole lot of political money) would have it that I backed the right man; Rauner beat back Kirk Dillard in the primary, and now that “neat idea” was moving on to either work out or go down in flames. One really nasty election later, with one Chicago Democrat Governor beaten back, it’s yet to spectacularly go down in flames. It all might still just work out.

-Mitch Carter, a history/secondary education major at Aurora University, is an Illinois State Scholar and member of the Kendall County Young Republicans.

Why Vote?

(Image courtesy: Fresno State News).

The following is adapted from a persuasive speech I delivered to a speech communications class I took at Waubonsee Community College this past summer.

When I had the honor of addressing a gathering of Illinois’ American Legion leadership at their Constitutional speech contest this spring, I spoke to them about the idea of the American system of government being seen through the prism of what I call the “Lincolnian Triangle,” expounding on what stands behind that “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” And within its most important cornerstone, I concluded, lies the vote, the “people’s power to vote, to choose their leaders, to decide their own future;” for which of our precious political freedoms can be greater or purer than the one which allows us to compose for ourselves the government that shall define and enforce the laws which we shall live under?

But unfortunately, it is apparent that not enough Americans see fit not only to “do their civic duty,” but also to take full advantage of this civic liberty of theirs that they are so lucky to be afforded. According to data compiled by Dr. Michael McDonald at George Mason University, between 1948 and 2012, the Presidential election with the highest turnout was 1960 (in which Jack Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon), with about 63% of eligible voters casting a ballot; in this same time span, nine of the seventeen Presidential elections therein have seen less than 60% turnout, meaning that more than 4 in 10 members of the American electorate did not have their opinion counted in the process of selecting their head of state. As noted in an entry in the journal Issues: Understanding Controversy and Society, “In 1996, less than 50% of eligible voters chose to exercise the vote, the lowest turnout since the election of 1924;” and just two years ago, in 2012, only 58.7% of the voting eligible population cast a ballot for President, down significantly after spikes in 2004 and 2008, meaning roughly a whole 92 million Americans chose to sit out the election. Midterm elections notoriously see even lower turnout; in the last three, going back to 2002, turnout has hovered around 41%, this time with 120 to 130 million eligible voters sitting out.

A key, and unfortunate, contributor to the oft-underwhelming turnout in American elections is the reluctance of young people to vote. When I surveyed the my classmates in a speech course I took this past summer, which was overwhelmingly composed of students who may be considered emblematic of the “youth vote,” I learned that though a majority of the respondents considered voting to be fairly important, and despite  that 90% of them will be eligible by for tomorrow’s midterm general election, only 6 of 10, very slim majority, were actually registered.

Glenn Utter, writing in Issues, records that “Student demonstrations against the war…ultimately contributed to the reasoning that young people who are being asked to fight and possibly die should have the right to participate in making government policy,” yet “With ratification of the Twenty-sixth Amendment observers quickly discovered that those 18–20 years old had the lowest turnout rate among all age cohorts.” According to Utter, in a separate entry is this journal, lack of youth participation could stem from anything from annoyance with the frequency of elections, to cynicism regarding the ever-increasingly negative campaign process, to lack of faith in the electoral college.

But whatever the reason, turnout has never been high for the young vote; Utter in another piece writes that “Turnout among the newly enfranchised Americans reached 48.3% in the 1972 election, but in the 1974 congressional election, the turnout dropped to 20.8% among all 18- to 20-year-olds;”  in The New Republic, Cheryl Russell notes that while 53% of all 18-to-29 year olds voted in ’72, “By 2000, the figure had fallen to just 36 percent, a historic low,” even as the 65-and-older vote has increased. Even the spike of participation among under-thirty voters in 2008, a turnout of 46%, seems to have been only temporary, and declined in 2012.

The solution to the problem is both incredibly simple and obvious: for more Americans, particularly young people, such as myself, to register and then vote. There are many who believe that the process of voting is too complex and inconvenient, but this really is untrue. Registering can in truth be quite simple; I myself did it at the Kendall County Clerk’s office this spring, and completed the registration process in roughly ten minutes or so; also, you may register by mail through the National Mail Voter Registration Form, which you may find easily at USA.gov. Even if you are not yet 18, as I was at the time, but will be this November’s election, you still register anyways, and even could have taken part in this spring’s primary elections. The actual voting itself should be even less time consuming; polling places are generally numerous in most communities, and yours is most likely located relatively close to your home; they also, important to mention, are open from early morning well into the evening (6 A.M. to 7 P.M. in Illinois, in 2012).

Many young people who do not vote do so because they believe that their vote will not matter. This is also not true. While not every election will be close, and surely a few votes here and there likely would not alter the outcomes of most elections, every vote still adds up and can become crucial; George Bush won the Presidency in 2000 by a margin of 537 votes in Florida, and Bill Brady lost the 2010 Illinois Gubernatorial election to Pat Quinn by just 32,000 of about 3.4 million votes cast, one of the closet such races ever. Every vote cast does indeed count.

One more, incredibly fascinating pushback against higher rates of voting actually comes not from the misconceptions of those who chose not to participate, but from those who do and who observe the political scene in-depth: they are of the opinion that the idea of voting should not be pushed on the public any more strongly than it already is, for fear that a large number of dangerously uninformed voters may steer the results towards a bad direction for the country (depending, of course, on their varying interpretations on what “good” and “bad” national directions are). I myself share this worry, and it was a point made by one of my survey respondents, who qualified that while voting is important, the most important part of it is that you make an informed vote.

But, contra the fears of many, becoming informed on the issues, and where the candidates and parties stand on them, as well as how current happenings at home and abroad are being handled by our incumbent leaders, and how their opponents would deal differently with them, should not be hard to do. Even if one does not have the time to take in television news broadcasts, or to read through detailed records of current events and opinions regarding them, the most urgent and important headlines and instant analysis can be found quickly, from anywhere, in the palm of your hand. I, for example, have the Wall Street Journal app on the homescreen of my smartphone, as I long have. As you can see, the collected news of the world can be accessed, for free, in mere seconds. With this, and especially with the diffusion of social media, allowing headline news and short-form opinion to be widespread with incredible speed, there is little excuse for anyone to not be able to stay informed and up to date, without having to devote an overwhelming amount of time.

           

Whether you’re voting because you believe, as President Obama expressed, that “voting is the best revenge,” or answering Mitt Romney call to “vote for love of country,” or even something in between, there is no reason that virtually everyone eligible to do so should become registered, stay informed, and cast a ballot in most every election. When you vote, you are exercising the greatest freedom of all: the freedom to have a say not only in who shall be the leader of your nation, but also who shall represent and act on behalf of yourself and your constituency in the houses of Congress, and in the state house, and even in your county and city governments.

And besides, it’s your civic duty, which I’m sure you’ve probably all heard, but you’ve heard it because it is something important to know. By making the choice to not vote in an election, one is not only refraining from having their say in how their world will be shaped, they are neglecting their obligation to do what they can make sure their government is populated with those who have the best intentions for the people. I will make no attempt to be wholly apocalyptic or dystopian here, but at times the cost of inaction can be devastating; Burke, Edmund Burke, the great Whig parliamentarian, is supposed to have said “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” and sometimes “nothing” can be even less than you think. If we desire to see that the government of “this nation, under God” truly “shall not perish from the earth,” it must be because the people stepped forward to keep it.

Mitch Carter, a history/secondary education major at Aurora University, is an Illinois State Scholar and member of the Kendall County Young Republicans.