Signs of infestation in Oak Park of all places (for Harris: 90% vote in 2024). To start with, at the very core of Trumpian rot is bigotry, plainly so.
In 2015/16 Bone Spurs crashed the GOP, Lincoln’s party, as The Great Emancipator of Hate, asserting that Obama was not U.S.-born. The KKK was on board immediately (the Fall 2016 edition of their publication, “The Crusader”). About 10 years later this degenerate — who praised Nazis in Charlottesville in 2017 and has vandalized our White House, our international standing, and our democracy — posted on social media a depiction of the Obamas as apes (2026). Such has been his decade-long response to the provocation “endured” by future MAGA during those eight years (2009-2016+) when our country was blessed with an elegant, articulate, family-values Black guy at the helm. So the stage was set for a racist, as overtly crude and vicious as any in American history.
But the “rot” that is the focus here is not primarily conventionally understood bigotry, but an infestation adjacent to it — that is, the directly connected animus toward democracy. The link is self-evident: democracy is grounded in our 1776 pronouncement of the equality of all, endowed with inalienable rights. The bigots reject equality and, with that, are hostile to democracy.
Representative democracy — which we justifiably expect to flourish in Oak Park — is predicated on an ethos that our elected officials will be receptive to the policy preferences of their constituents. That “receptivity” — legally non-binding for sure — begins with “curiosity.”
In voting against an advisory referendum on zoning changes, the five trustees demonstrated an undeniably disgusting incuriosity that is antithetical to democracy’s legitimate operation. Their unsuitability for continued public service as trustees is manifest: the equivalence of a teacher who doesn’t like children, a physician too bored to listen to the symptoms of patients, or a bus driver subject to seizures. Obviously, these are folks in the wrong line of work.
The strategies to ensure welcomed diversity of housing are likely technical, but also varied. Additionally, there is nothing “nuanced” about the appropriateness of a survey to measure popular support for a zoning change (one that, btw, objectionably smacks of ex post facto law). An advisory referendum would provide the opinion survey presently lacking.
This owner of a townhome located in a mixed-use-zoned neighborhood will be a one-issue “no” voter for the re-election of any of the village trustees who have so stunningly demonstrated such a contemptible, anti-democratic indifference to public opinion.
Gregg Mumm
Longtime monthly SPLC contributor and resident since 1992
in an Oak Park townhome community that faithfully operates
democratically, New England style.