Eye On Illinois: Despite fervent pleas otherwise, violence has been normalized

“We can’t allow this violence to be normalized.”

Cortland Town Trustee Randi Olson included that quote in her statement about a threat made against her political opponent, state Rep. Jeff Keicher, R-Sycamore.

Keicher, along with several other legislative Republicans, had to cancel a senior health fair at DeKalb High School Thursday morning based on a threatening voicemail left at his legislative office. Several Shaw Media reporters have covered the situation thoroughly, and it seems likely police agencies swiftly mitigated any actual danger, a welcome comfort.

Olson’s statement echoed President Joe Biden, speaking after the July 13 attempt on the life of former President Donald Trump. While I agree with their anti-violence positions – as well as Keicher’s hope for using his situation “as a lesson to be able to calm down the rhetoric a little bit and talk about solving our issues” – the pragmatic literalist in me takes issue with anything coded as optimism.

Violence itself is quite normalized in our state: Brown’s Chicken in Palatine. Lane Bryant in Tinley Park. Henry Pratt Co. in Aurora. Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. That’s just one category. Experienced news consumers can make their own lists, which might include a roll call of public buildings subject to bomb threats, as a roster of schools and libraries so affected would scarcely fit in the rest of this column or page.

The history of actual political assassinations affecting Illinois officials is more black and white – as in before color film – like Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak being shot in Miami while leaving a 1933 speech aside President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. That was 40 years after a gunman killed Mayor Carter Harrison in his home.

This is no defense of threats or action. Anti-violence might be my deepest held personal position. But that comes from understanding how much we actually have normalized the scourge.

ON THIS DAY: Though far more strongly associated with Europe and Los Angeles, novelist and screenwriter Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago on July 23, 1888. He’s the source of all sorts of powerful phrases, such as “To say goodbye is to die a little,” from his novel “The Long Goodbye,” and one from a speech that mirrors my own creative process: “The faster I write the better my output. If I’m going slow, I’m in trouble. It means I’m pushing the words instead of being pulled by them.”

A final phrase, cribbed from Chandler’s notebooks in the 1930s, is one I wish I’d included in Saturday’s column about crime statistics, perception and reality: “There are two kinds of truth; the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art.”

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. Follow him on X @sth749. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.