By any honest reckoning, the American Midwest has long stood as the republic’s last great firewall of common sense -- where decency is currency and a handshake still means something. But lately, the region’s governors have sounded less like the voice of the plowman and more like the echo of a faculty lounge panel at Oberlin. In Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois, the executive mansions seem to have been annexed by ideology, not elected by people.

Let’s begin with Minnesota governor Tim Walz. His administration mandated tampons in boys’ bathrooms -- a sentence that would have been flagged as satire only a few years ago. Here’s a state where winters kill you, and potholes breed like rabbits, yet we’re told the urgent moral crisis is menstrual equity for high school males. Does anyone really believe Tim from Two Harbors, who works 10-hour days and hunts on the weekend, is pounding the table for tampon dispensers in the boys' gym? It’s a cartoonish abstraction -- policy driven not by reality but by performative progressivism. Even George Orwell would have rolled his eyes.

And then there’s Wisconsin’s governor Tony Evers, who referred to a pregnant woman as an “inseminated person.” That isn’t a typo. That’s a full-frontal assault on language and humanity in one breathless phrase. It’s as if someone replaced the Midwestern political lexicon with the instruction manual for artificial cattle breeding. Evers’s comment would be laughable if it weren’t such a naked attempt to erase the distinction -- and the dignity -- of womanhood. The same logic that births “birthing persons” and “chest feeders” now gives us “insemination people,” and the silence from the sane is growing louder.

But wait -- we’re not done yet. Let’s roll east.

In Michigan, Governor Gretchen Whitmer has thrown her support behind what can only be called a crusade to scrub gendered language from the entire bureaucratic structure. Her administration pushed for new guidance in state-run documents and agencies that favor "gender-neutral terminology" over "mother" and "father." A Michigan birth certificate might soon read like a sterile census report: "Parent A" and "Parent B." One wonders: is this what the auto industry died for? Did Motown's legacy of grit and soul give way to linguistic sanitation that could make a robot blush?

Cross south to the state line into Illinois; the fever only burns hotter. Governor J.B. Pritzker recently championed initiatives that ensure “menstruating individuals” -- regardless of gender identity -- receive free products in all public buildings, including men's prisons and locker rooms. His office doubled down when challenged, citing the importance of inclusivity and access. It’s not just that the policy is unscientific -- it insists everyone else suspend disbelief to prop up its illusion. This isn’t governance. It’s theater.

Now let’s pause and ask: what’s going on in the minds of these governors? These are not the raving radicals of either coast. These are executives from states once associated with straight talk, civic responsibility, and -- dare we say it -- reality. We’re living through an elite delusion -- a cultural detour powered by privilege, not principle.

It would be one thing if these were isolated gaffes. But they aren’t. They are consistent signals from people in charge that their worldview no longer aligns with the citizens they govern. Whether it’s a transgender tampon policy, erasing womanhood with technocratic language, or redefining family into interchangeable parts, the governing class has divorced itself from the governed.

The one thread tying together governors Walz, Evers, Whitmer, and Pritzker -- beyond their baffling policies and biologically incoherent declarations -- is their shared allegiance to the Democratic Party. Each governs not as a steward of regional values but as a mouthpiece for a national progressive agenda, more at home in coastal think tanks than cornfields. Whether it's putting tampons in boys’ bathrooms, redefining motherhood with sterile bureaucratic jargon, or scrubbing gender from birth certificates, these policies don’t emerge from the lived realities of Midwestern voters -- they're imports from an ideology-first playbook. The problem isn't geography -- it's political orthodoxy.

The Midwest has always prided itself on being the sturdy middle beam of America’s cultural barn. But when the leaders of its largest states use that barn to host a masquerade ball of ideology -- complete with costumes, new vocabulary, and rituals no one understands -- you can’t help but ask: is it something in the air? The lakes? Is the corn fermenting wrong?

At the ground level, folks still believe in things everyday. They know what a woman is. They know boys don’t need tampons. They understand pregnancy involves mothers, not "insemination people." And they’re not cruel or callous. They’re rooted in nature, tradition, and the common sense that built towns, not Twitter trends.

So here’s the question: How long can a region project normalcy while its leadership writes policy in a fantasy dialect?

The answer lies not in another speech or task force -- but in the kitchen tables, church pews, and factory floors of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, and Illinois. If there’s hope for the Midwest, it’s not coming from the top. It’s coming from the men and women -- yes, women -- who still know the difference between reality and roleplay. And they’re tired of pretending.

Image: Sgroey

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