One by one, longtime Naperville stakeholder groups and civic organizations continue to fall by the wayside. The latest being the Naperville Area Homeowners Confederation (NAHC). NAHC for decades did an excellent job vetting local policy questions. It provided a welcoming nonpartisan venue for local candidates and officials to meet with neighborhood groups and community leaders to talk about the issues of the day.
This loss is not unexpected as NAHC has waned in activity for a few years now. It’s a significant blow nonetheless and follows many other longtime prominent groups who are either closing up shop or who are really struggling.
NCTV has made it no secret that they are hanging on by a thread financially.
Ribfest is no more and both the Exchange Club and Jaycees are a shell of what they used to be in activity and numbers.
The Naperville Chamber has gone from being a prominent force at City Hall and in local politics to being …. what exactly? A social club?
North Central College suddenly can’t keep a President.
The Naperville League of Women Voters has gone from being a moderate, professional, nonpartisan voice to being a blatantly political liberal activist group which few neutral observers take seriously anymore.
The before-mentioned groups have all, in their own ways, played enormous roles over the years in making Naperville into what continues to be one of America’s top suburbs.
Who will fill their shoes. So far it looks like it’s Facebook and Twitter and a handful of newer groups most of which look and sound awfully partisan. This is all a terrible step backward.
The Watchdog echos previous calls for Naperville civic organizations to once again find their mojo and to drop partisan banter and to focus on leading Naperville into future years in the same local spirit previously community leaders held dear.
When someone labels Women’s Reproductive Rights “partisan banter”, it’s not surprising this person would view the Naperville League of Women Voters as “a blatantly political liberal activist group”. This organization’s purpose has always been to advance women’s rights and help women develop and become leaders in their professional, political and personal lives.
Naperville community organizations like Rotary, the Exchange Club and Jaycees have been struggling for decades because of a lack of support from residents. This low watermark of support had been pushing these organizations to make major changes (do a “reset”) but doing this without getting labeled the way the Watchdog just labeled them was impossible. If not for the Pandemic forcing these organizations to do the hard reset, they would continue to slide and events like the Last Fling and Ribest would not just be smaller, they would be gone.
What we are seeing is not the result of these organizations, or their leadership and members, failing in anyway. It is the result of a society that has become more about connecting through smartphones, social media, cyber life, etc. than with each other in the world where we live and work daily.
Partisan political activists and politicians encouraging people to not trust anything anyone tells them except for these partisan people, only encourages anti-social behavior. Encouraging people to believe scapegoats are the cause of our social issues rather than the truth that they are a product of how we have changed our behavior and thus change our society is a fallacy. These social issues are the result of choices we made, not choices forced on us.
Humans are, for the most part, herd animals (social beings) and the current trend of divisive partisan politics to use “group think” (herd mentality) to promote the delusional that the complex problems of our country can be solved with simple solutions (simple acts) is dangerous to our future. This is like trying to cure appendices with herbals, diet or spiritual healing. These solutions will at best provide the patient with a painless death.
Jim- you might want to re-read (actually read it properly, and look up the tough words) the re-posting instructions (directions on the label from your handlers) that come with all of the propaganda (talking points) that you disseminate (blindly copy pasta with added grammatical errors).
Your parenthetically over-burdened regurgitation of social attraction theory calls out simple acts as delusional as agents of change. Guess every single increase in our levels of oxytocin from witnessing acts of kindness never happened in your delusions. And you might want to steer away from offering medical advice based on your personal and very inaccurate opinions on natural medicine and healing. Are you a licensed doctor or medical professional of some sort? You’ve just stated that diet and spiritual will kill people “at best”. Perhaps the Illinois Board of Professional Regulation and Licensing needs to make a review of your public health pronouncements.
WOW, you really do have a comprehension problem.
My comment on diet, herbal and spiritual healing was in reference to treating appendices. There are no documented cases of a person medically diagnosed with appendices being healed (cured) by diet, herbal or spiritual means, but there have been numerous cases of people dying from appendices while being treated by one of these means. This does not require a medical degree, just the ability to read (and comprehend what is read). But if you can find a board licensed Medical Doctor that says otherwise, I would be interested in discussing this with them.
As to grammar, I covered this in a previous post. You should try reading it.
Not sure what a hormone associated with sex and reproduction has to do with the political delusion that complex problems can be solved with simple solutions or acts.
If this hormone reference is meant to refer to the tenancy for people to seek comfort in groups, you should know this behavior has nothing to do with sex or reproduction.
Appendicitis is the actual medical condition. Appendices (as in the plural form for the singular appendix) are rarely the cause of death by themselves. The definitive treatment for acute appendicitis is surgical removal of the appendix, also known as an appendectomy. However, in some cases, antibiotics alone may be an option. So, as an unlicensed medical expert dispensing potentially life-altering advice under a pseudonym online, I always leave room for a holistic option in my make believe cosplay.
Interesting that you view local issues and problems as “cosplay”
For most of us truly concerned and actively involved Naperville residents and voters, there is nothing “made up” or imaginary about these problems and issues. They are real and concerning, with the potential to have real and significant impacts on the quality of life of Naperville citizens and as well as the community as a whole.
In other words, this is not some kind of “dress-up” or “costume” game being played in some fictional or imaginary world.
Let’s engage those third grade reading skills from our public school educations, shall we? Cosplay was a direct and exclusive reference to the dispensing of medical advice by unlicensed online pundits, like you and I. Cosplay being the imitation of fictional storylines with unrealistic situations and characters, and not a valid basis for discussing life-saving (or ending) medical practises.
And how ’bout that topic up there^^^? Homeowners Association next community based group to fade away due to the exact type of partisanifying you are engaging in here. Why are Service Clubs failing? Why is RibFest gone? Why have events designed to bring us together in community and celebration become political theater?
It is a direct result of the progressive agenda of making everything political. As taught by Marx, Mao and Alinsky. It is the very act of making our local League of Women Voters the familiars for the witches who want to codify murdering the unborn. Our Rotary Club doesn’t have time to talk about scholarships for local high school students because we are locked in death spiral debates around partisan Councilpersons who need to root out the fictional systemic racism at City Hall. Our RibFest was moved and then canceled because the commercial interests that benefit from them not being here were better at lobbying, and the fights over splitting up the take for favorite charity. We lost our sense of community and pride when our elected officials knelt with the racists and terrorists who attacked our downtown, selling their souls on the altar of political correct television appearances to sop the masses, and then those same officials welcomed and advocated for taking sides in a tribal squabble in the Mideast, here in Naperville. Our local community is lost somewhere in the debate over paying for proxy wars in the Crimea or the Fertile Crescent and the level of outrage over the Paris Olympics opening. Who has time to worry about hometown issues when the criminal incompetence of our City Council permitted busloads of criminal invaders to be dumped at our train station? So- short answer: it’s you guys. With your need to make everything the final charge up San Juan Hill, the valiant ride of the 300 over every absurd expression of political correctness. Pronouns. Transvestites reading to children in public libraries. Breaking down the barriers keeping toilets gender specific, and keeping your sons out of the pool when our daughters are competing. Your guys decided to make all these life and death issues that had to be smeared all over our conversation. You made it really clear to all that thinking about each other and our shared hometown is a waste of time when there are so many more vitally important issues. This is YOUR legacy of globalizing and institutionalizing and making every conversation about earth shattering precedent-setting ever so vital point making about your agendas. It becomes tiresome to fight in every public moment over every issue. The Left has no standing to speak on this topic, it is their creation.
Jim- it’s the liberal/progressive agenda that has befouled our conversation with politics. Sneaking just one little concession in, allowing one pronoun reassignment, one social balancing experiment- that’s when it all goes down the drain.
Thank you for making my point about your gaslighting the real points in my comments about the issues in this WD post by going off on an example provided by me.
It is interesting how when you went off on this example you had no problem with the fact you were avoiding actually discussing the points I make in my post. But I guess exhibiting “third grade reading skills from our public school educations” is okay so long as you are the one doing it.
And as to posts that have nothing to do with anything the WD has written about, that is almost exclusively you on this website. When I called you on this behavior, you justified your actions with some lame excuse about not having a venue you could use to post about the things you want to discuss.
This is, by the way, exactly what you did in your reply to my comment. You basically use anything anyone posts on this site as an opportunity to twist and redirect the conversation to what you want to discuss.
Finally, if anyone on this site is engaged in “partisanifying”, it is beyond all doubt you.
Which I did by directing us ALL back to the topic of the thread by my posting…