How’s everyone’s weekend going? Thanks for spending a portion of it with the Six.
Many Chicagoland school districts opened their doors this week to mark the start of the 2023-24 school year. It’s an exciting time, as the new academic calendar ushers in an atmosphere of optimism and possibility around campuses.
For the 3,200 or so students enrolled in District 113, a district that encompasses Highland Park and Deerfield High Schools, the environment they entered Wednesday was one of panic and defeatism, all generated by school administrators that continue to fail their students.
On Aug. 14, police in Highland Park charged a 16-year-old, Estiven Sarminento, with murder. Authorities say the alleged victim, Omar Diaz, also 16, was a student at Highland Park High School.
In response, D113 administrators decided to install weapons detectors before the first day of classes Wednesday. In an email to parents in advance of the first day of school, Superintendent Bruce Law wrote, “until we learn more, the weapons detection system will not be at every door every day. It will appear at different doors on different days at both schools so we can learn how to make arrival go more smoothly and assess the impact on school culture.” Law also used the popular Covid Hysteria phrase “abundance of caution” to justify hijacking any resemblance of normalcy from the first day of school for students.
Let’s party like its 2020!
What remains astonishing about this latest absurd decision made by the pinheads that run D113 is how they have not learned a single lesson from their brainless governance of last three-plus years.
The five-member school board voted 3-2 to install the weapons detection system. This action went against the advice of consultants, who according to a Chicago Tribune article, advised school officials to install detectors “only when community violence spills into the schools.”
BOE member Jodi Shapira said this to the Tribune about the vote:
I’ll be honest with you all, this decision is harder than the ones we made during COVID…during COVID, we made our decisions on what the experts said to us
Her comment begs the question–––why now choose to defy the experts?
Because people like Shapira and other myopic Covidians, in moments when clear-eyed stewardship is needed, default to fear.
Of course they chose to spend gobs of money to “fix” whatever they deem to be an affliction. It’s a heckuva a lot easier then admitting to the actual problem. That school and local government leaders have failed their constituents.
District 113 is the same district that voted time and time again to keep schools locked down for almost the entirety of three semesters between March 2020 and May 2021. Those in charge were early adopters and advocates of the SHIELD vaccine-test grift. The Highland Park city council saddled area businesses and restaurants with ridiculous Covid-response vaccine and capacity requirements. The owner of the Highland Park restaurant Bluegrass told an area newspaper at the time, “As a family-owned business, turning away families with unvaccinated kids has been really tough on us.” Local reports at the time said the city had a 40% commercial business vacancy rate. These shenanigans were still going on well into 2022.
In the months and year after the horrific July 4 shooting that same year, the mayor of Highland Park, Nancy Rotering chose to launch a negligent gun-blame campaign. She said this in June to Chicago’s ABC 7 news about those who oppose a federal ban on assault weapons:
So, those who are supportive are clearly very supportive. Those who are not, there's one more that comes to my mind. That word is 'craven'
Rotering demonizes anyone with a dissenting opinion, a very popular tactic amongst the leftist political ruling class in Illinois.
But for those of us possessing rational, discerning world views, we see right through the deflection. Rotering refuses to acknowledge this painful reality: in 2022, a young man who grew up in Highland Park murdered seven people during the city’s Fourth of July parade.
How does that happen?
Not our fault, says Rotering.
The solution: ban assault rifles.
A common thread between school district administrators like Law and politicians like Rotering is exposition and spending and blaming and shaming of others. But what there’s not a lot is self-examination or self-reckoning on decisions and choices made by those still in charge.
And so on Wednesday, students in D113 entered school on what should be a Celebration Day. Instead, they were subjected to weapons detectors before entering school property.
Not our fault, says the adults in the room.
Must be the guns.
Let’s proceed with the Six.
1. Trump Indictment Forces 2020 GOP Reckoning.
Monday, Donald Trump will give a press conference. His reasoning for the event is present a detailed and “irrefutable report” on voter fraud from three years ago. According to this write up in Politico, the announcement on Trump’s social media feed, “had all the whiffs of a Four Seasons Total Landscaping moment. And it quickly transported the Republican Party right back to a conversation it studiously has tried to avoid for nearly three years.” That of course, is re-litigating the 2020 election. Trump’s competitors for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination are regularly asked about it on the campaign trail and will most certainly be subjected to questions about what Trump says Monday during Wednesday’s debate in Milwaukee. Will Trump show up in Milwaukee? Reports say no and that he’ll go on Tucker Carlson’s TwitterX show instead.
2. Why Vivek Ramaswamy For President? Watch This.
We know that Iowa is ground zero for the 2024 presidential election. Primary candidates spend many resources in the state in advance of the caucuses to take place early next year. Right now the state fair is under way in Iowa, presenting an opportunity for candidates to stump the local citizenry and for voters to evaluate for whom they might cast a ballot. One GOP candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, was in Iowa this week mingling with the local folk. During one meet and greet, he got cornered by a reporter referring to herself (himself?) as “pansexual.” Watch Ramaswamy’s answer to her question about same sex marriage, one of the best I’ve heard from a politician (or business leader) when provoked by activists.
3. The Cart Narc And His Camera.
A really good read via The Ringer. The reporter goes on a "ride along" with a self-proclaimed "cart narc”––a private citizen who voluntarily patrols parking lots at California supermarkets and robustly insists that people return their carts to the designated area. When he catches an offender, he issues a punishment. From the article: "Davis placed a lazybones magnet on the hood of their car, gently, like a teacher handing back an exam paper with a big, red F on it.” The “cart narc,” named Sebastian Davis, has built a large YouTube following (so he’s monetizing the venture) and has tapped into an insatiable American voyeuristic desire: street justice.
4. Buy Me A Chair.
The perfect gift for a bookish friend: buy their name on a university professorship. You can find the prices online, and, while the sticker shock may be cost prohibitive, as a form of immortality, these naming rights seem quite cheap—UCLA wants $5,000,000 for "an endowed chair that creates a new position," $2M for a chair that "supplements an existing position." Duke asks $3.5M for a full chair, $2M for a head coach "other than football or basketball.” The article via the Systematic Hatreds newsletter, quotes a former university professor in describing the collegiate academic business model: “To provide sex for the students, sports for the alumni, and parking for the faculty.” Not all too far from the truth.
5. Before And After Maui Fires.
Things just continue to get worse in Maui as the death toll is expected to rise much higher than the confirmed count (over 100). The recovery will take years and years and the island may never fully recover. CBS News publishes a article with before/after the fire photographs. The town of Lahaina, hit the most hardest by the fires and one of the islands most scenic areas, is now almost unrecognizable from what it was before. A horrible and likely preventable tragedy.
We know what happens when Rocky meet Apollo Creed or Clubber Lang. Or when Alien meets Predator. What about Leopard vs. Baboon? A whole lot of hysteria.
Thanks for reading everybody and have a great rest of your weekend.
There will be no Sunday Six the next two weeks. We’ll be back here on Sept. 10.
Have a suggestion for The Sunday Six? Send email to jonjkerr@gmail.com.
"The environment they entered Wednesday was one of panic and defeatism." You have outdone yourself with this, Jon! And maybe I'm losing it, why not? , practicalities and loose ends keep me trapped in Ill-inois so why wouldn't I be, but I laughed out loud. Really loud. ;(
What a way to start the school year! Wow Aren't some of these kids. that have been around during this time of crisis psychologically destroyed by now?
What poor examples these characters in charge of the youth keep setting with every crisis, -----reall, perceived or manufactured.
Yayyyy, let's grow up to be wimpering cowering serfs and slaves in a police state ---- gun detectors mandatory. Why not install them permanently and at EVERY. entrance?? And while we're at it why don't we hire some TSA-style goons to pat down the kiddos as they enter their buildings to be state sponsored indoctrinated. What could possibly go wrong? And pay no mind to that 4th amendment; we want to Protect you and We Know better. Ughhhh
And I loved your point re: experts! To these creeps. EXPERT opinions are only useful if they will buttress their intended outcomre(s). How disingenuous! And btw, how much were the consultants paid to come up with a result that the adminstratos did not want to hear, much less use?
It's getting beyond frustrating to me to observe justb how misguided these fools are --- living in their. little world of little minds with their warped ideas. They make the wrong decision believing it's a solution EVERY SINGLE TIME.
I Ihad not heard about this murder.. And parents who are true thinkers. GET YOUR KIDS OUT of these Marxist learning camps. And the rest of you WAKE UP!!! You will not like where you are complicit in taking us.
Jon, I wanted to ask u abt Substack, as I was thinking abt signing up. Would u mind giving me your email address? If not, that's okI'
( Im not on X. or FB or others)