Mapping Out a Hopeful Future

Liesegang features on a rock formation in Southern Illinois

Now that we live at least part of the year in Illinois, I thought it might be interesting to see how and where people in the state voted for their preferred candidates. Fortunately, AP has an interactive map to pinpoint the number of votes cast in any particular county. You can hover over or click on the dots representing counties to identify them and check their voting stats. Alas (and ick!), the county we live in shows up as a “blue” island surrounded by a sea of red. I know why. This county has a state university, once upon a time a respectable teacher’s college, and invariably trends Blue come election time. The Marxist/leftist/humanist ideology taught there has a chokehold on nearly every academic major and oozes out into the community. It wasn’t quite so pervasive when I attended back in the late ‘70s. I think its heyday may have peaked though. Tuition is ridiculously expensive compared to a neighboring state’s institution, the quality of coursework has suffered from years of not hiring professors based on merit (among other things), and the school’s enrollment has been tanking for over a decade. For some reason, prospective students notice these things. Perhaps the toxic ideology will Code Blue itself one of these days, and the county and state we live in part-time will once again prosper and thrive.