If you want to know why Illinois politics is such a freak show, look up yesterday’s debate between Tammy Duckworth and Mark Kirk. Both have been trying to outweird each other for months and the result is predictably pathetic.
The state is falling apart around them, and these two useless clowns are arguing about such a ridiculous and outdated nation-state trapping as ” Daughters of American Revolution.” These endless appeals to cheap patriotism have got to stop. And Duckworth has got to realize that the line of ” I’ve been here longer than that more recent off – the – boat trash so I have more value” will eventually be turned against her. Rolling out ancestries is outdated and ridiculous.
Clarissa's Blog 
” ridiculous and outdated nation-state trapping”
If no national politician has the balls to say “We’re dismantling the nation state, get used to it!” then why should a couple of state politicians want to offer any more insight into what’s going on?
What kind of arguments should they be using? If the US is not going to be a country any more then what will Illinois be? How can you make “we don’t care about history or people, all we care about is the unfettered movement of capital” into a winning campaign?
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I don’t know how winning it would be but I’d like to see the following argument: “We can all see what’s happening. Borders are crumbling, people are moving, and those who stay put handicap themselves to the point of being completely displaced from the job market. Unless we do something to counteract this, we will end up in a world that is segregated by immense inequality. Let’s decide together which elements of the nation-state model are too crucial for us to lose and start shoring them up against the flows of liquid capital right now.”
I’ve been making a variation of this speech to different small groups of people, and you know, it works. People understand and react with interest. I don’t think people are stupid. I believe it’s possible to be honest about what’s happening and get people to care.
A state has to derive legitimacy from somewhere. I would like it to derive legitimacy from addressing what is actually happening. Instead, one politician after another distracts our attention by these cheap scandals.
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US Senate races are about what those running will do for state in the context of the United States.
They don’t have official power to deal with the intra-state conflict between the governor and the state legislatures.
In my state the governor turned down infrastructure funds that the US Congressional representatives worked for years to get for the state (for a rail between two major cities). Two state legislature senators tried to fight it to compel the governor to take the money but to no avail. Meanwhile the highway that goes between the cities is one of the deadliest interstates in the US. Rail would have alleviated the traffic on that highway. Average commute times in my area are some of the longest in the nation.
Make of that what you will.
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Lord. Who are these freakazoids and why are they so numerous?
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These governors I mean.
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I think you’re missing a larger point here, one that has nothing to do with the decline of nation states, crumbling borders and such.
Tammy Duckworth knows that her Republican opponent will do anything and say anything to diminish her in the eyes of potential Illinois voters. As you know, downstate Illinois voters (for non-Illinois readers, “downstate” = the large chunk of the state that is not the immediate Chicago area) are deeply conservative and, let’s be frank, many are racists. By emphasizing Duckworth’s Asian heritage, Kirk is blowing a nice loud dogwhistle that downstate voters—especially the most conservative and racist—clearly understand. He’s trying to say that Duckworth, for all her military valor and accomplishments, and years of public service, is not “one of us,” you know, a “real American.”
In reply, Duckworth—proud as she is of her Thai heritage—is trying to countr this by establishing her own “American” bona fides by mentioning being a Daughter of the American Revolution, on her father’s side of the family. This, combined with her military service, may go a long way toward making her less “other” and more “American” in the eyes of many undecided or more moderate downstate voters.
And also, seriously, take a moment to imagine Duckworth replying to Kirk’s asinine statement with a 60-second excursion into issues of the decline of the nation state, the world’s collapsing borders and so on. She’d be sliced and diced ten ways by pundits, attack ads and the press (cf. John Kerry and “Swiftboating”).
I’m not saying your premise is wrong, but it would be stupid politics. Duckworth is not stupid, and she wants to get elected Senator, not hired as an adjunct instructor in International Studies. (And given the fact that Kirk is an idiot, even by the standards of the current Congress, let’s hope she wins.)
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If you watch the whole thing on YouTube, you’ll see that Duckworth started moaning “I’m a daughter of American Revolution” before Kirk said anything. He was only responding to her wails.
But yes, you are right, she will win. Voters are easily distracted from what matters by outlandish discussions of George Washington, ridiculous fantasies about building walls, etc. As a result, we are sitting here without health insurance. Serves us right for buying into these cheap tricks.
Until people wake up and respond to every “I’m a daughter of American Revolution” with “I don’t care. Where is my health insurance?”, we’ll be up to our ears in this shit. That this dumb broad should discuss her idiotic “heritage” while the state is literally falling apart and still have a chance of getting elected, shows how easily we allow ourselves to be duped.
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