Catholics for Satan

 

Catholics for Satan and Other Head-Scratchers
©2020  Ross Williams

 

 

 

 

I moved to the Illinois-side of St Lose in 1988.  My company’s contract had been moved from MacDill in Tampa to Scott and I had to come with it in order to remain employed.

 

When I came here, there were at least three different steel manufacturers I can think of that had mills in the area, spread over what I’ve been told were at least a dozen plants, all running at least two, and sometimes three, shifts.  Twelve to fifteen thousand people worked these jobs making damned good money.  Over the years, with mergers and acquisitions and downsizing and foreign imports, the number of shifts at the local plants were decreased, the number of plants remaining open were reduced, and − as of late 2015 when U S Steel closed its last plant − there was only one manufacturer, with one plant, running one shift left in the region.

 

Barry Hussein, our [currently] most recent ex-president, very famously informed us all during the last years of his economic recovery that this reduction, indeed emasculation, of US industry, as typified by the shuttering of IL steel mills and the unemployment of virtually all their workers, was the way of the future.  He scoffed at the predictions of then-candidate Donnie Combover of his revitalizing US manufacturing by dint of a slogan.  A slogan.  Can you imagine?

Steel mills are going to reopen just by “Make America Great Again”?  Not “just”, no.

 

Among the things President Cheeto did after he stopped being a candidate was to stare down China.  He imposed a 25% tariff on steel imports − most of which came either from China directly or as pass-through imports from third-party nations who stamped their own label over the “Made In China” sticker.  Canada, I’m looking at you, here.

 

Before the ink was dry on these tariffs, the last steel mill in the region expanded production, and added a second shift.  U S Steel announced they were going to reopen their Granite City steel mill in anticipation of greater demand for domestic steel.  Slowly, expansion in local steel manufacturing grew.  It’s nowhere close to what it had been when I moved to the region 32 years ago, but it was certainly on the right path. …a path that Barry Hussein and his lapdog Veep said was no longer an option and could not and would not be done.

There are nearly ten times the number of steel workers in the area today than there were five years ago.  It is entirely due to Donnie Combover standing up to China for the sake of US manufacturers and dismissing the doom and gloom of his predecessor’s Hope and Change ®.

 

I take my son to school every day.  He’s in private school − Montessori − because it’s not a public school.  Montessori has no buses, so … I have to drive him.  On the road to my son’s school, driving my son to, and driving my son from, I pass a particular house.  Like many houses at this time of the quadrenne, it has political ads staked all over its front yard.  And it is likewise trivially easy to determine the residents’ political sensibilities.

Or, in this case, INsensibilities.

 

Of the many, many political ads staked in the front yard of this house is a Biden/Harris 2020 sign that looks slightly different from other signs in other yards carrying the same sentiment.  Different typeface, different spacing, different coloring … something.  It’s just a little off.  Biden is, of course, the lapdog Veep of the [currently] most recent ex-president who acted to end US manufacturing in general and local steel mills in particular.

 

This Biden/Harris sign carries the endorsement of the United Steelworkers Union, and it says “Steelworkers for Biden” across the bottom.

I hope these people speak Mandarin.