"[G]ather your justice and humanity"
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker's 2025 State of the State Address Summons Illinoisians and Americans to Combat Donald Trump and Elon Musk's Totalitarianism and Oligarchy.
On Thursday, while I worked on today's original post, a clip from Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker’s 2025 state of the state address came across my YouTube newsfeed.
Of course, I changed my plans.
Toward the end of Pritzker’s state of the state and state budget address, where he had laid out Illinois’s budget and fiscal obligations, including those for affordable healthcare and k-12 and higher education, he alerted Illinoisans like me that the authoritarian regime in Washington D.C. “plan[s] to steal Illinois’ tax dollars and deny our citizens the protection and services they need,” including Meals on Wheels, food safety and healthcare.
Pritzker, who in 2023 had signed the first state law in the United States that makes book banning illegal for institutions that take state funding, stressed that the negative consequences from Felon 45 and Hair Plug Hitler’s fiscal criminality would be too massive for the Illinois budget to remedy. But most terrifying was Pritzker’s warning.
He alarmed viewers and listeners that the Illinois and U.S. constitutions could be dismantled like the Nazis dismantled Germany’s Weimar Republic. Because of our current developing dystopian reality, he summoned Illinoisians to battle despotism. This portion of his address went nationwide:
My oath is to the Constitution of our state and of our country. We don’t have kings in America – and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one. I am not speaking up in service to my ambitions — but in deference to my obligations.
If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this:
It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.
. . . .
Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the “tragic spirit of despair” overcome us when our country needs us the most.
In a past national interview, Pritzker said he does not fear Felon 45. As a Jewish and Ukrainian-American, Pritzker fully understands the persecution of his people over millennia that culminated in the ultimate horror of The Shoah. He also knows what happens when human beings appease totalitarians and obey them in advance.
The clip below from Pritzker’s state of the state address includes him referring to the planned 1977 Nazi rally that originally was to take place in Skokie, Illinois; that rally ended up occurring in Chicago where 2,000 people came out to protest the just 20 Nazis who marched.
Beneath that clip, I have also included two Illinois Nazi clips from The Blues Brothers inspired by this history. Mel Brooks has said ridicule defangs Hitler and the Nazis. We must remember not only the power of satire but the power of the people this year.