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on the Wisconsin "protests"

In the comments to my earlier post on the Wisconsin vote, Benedict notes:

I [now] have liberal Facebook friends calling for a national boycott on Wisconsin products. Brilliant. Way to show your support for the union folk who make cheese. Dummies.

To which I reply, it’s sickening, isn’t it?

Here’s what these idiot Madison “protesters” — along with their intellectually bankrupt fellow travelers playing Solidarno?? on fucking facebook as if this is just another cause celebre the world has ginned up to keep hipsters feeling “political” — are actively, vocally agitating FOR: no school choice for kids; no merit pay for teachers; seniority raises, and a first hired / last fired policy that promotes mediocrity, disinterest, and underperformance, while providing no incentive for effective teaching; forced union dues; forced political contributions to the Democrat party, made possible by a tawdry money laundering scheme that in many ways works to disenfranchise Republican voters in the union; the inability of tax payers to have any say over local schools; and on and on and on.

I mean, this is what we’ve come to as a nation: form over substance as a fucking installation art form. The pollutant of “progressive” thinking has here culminated in a surreal civic moment, one in which the idealized cultural sexiness of the 60s, and a desire to re-live it, has given us the spectacle of university students chanting in favor of bigger government, less choice, fewer freedoms, and a total subsuming of the individual into an dictatorial, top-down collective. Like a hive of buzzing drones, these people are now actively swarming in hopes of bringing on the deconstruction of their country’s founding ideals by way of agitating for a neutered collective ruled by a top-down union leadership structure, one that splits the profits with the Democrat party while the private sector taxpayer gets higher property taxes to go with the dwindling opportunity available outside the government ranks.

And they pretend to be for the “working man”!

Not only that, but the scorching scorching irony of the chants of “this is what democracy looks like” coming from these useful idiots is likewise blazingly surreal: because what representative democracy actually looks like happened in November, and would have happened again in Madison had the Dems not FLED THE FUCKING STATE TO AVOID PARTICIPATING IN THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS.

Which means that to these “protesters,” “democracy” boils down to “I must always win, or else it isn’t really legitimate democracy.”

Sorry, but that’s fucking TYRANNY wrapped in word stolen from patriotic bumper stickers.

Fuck them. All.

Civil war is coming. And it’s needed.

89 Replies to “on the Wisconsin "protests"”

  1. Stephanie says:

    Lock and load.

  2. Benedick says:

    Next time I post something Jeff might quote above the fold, you bet your ass I’ll proofread.

    I’ve now begun a game. I have too many Facebook “friends” who are, really, merely casual acquaintances from earlier days. I will not un-friend them. I am going to force them to un-friend ME. With unvarnished political exhortations and extreme prejudice. Good thing I’m not FB friends with anyone who outranks me at the ol’ mill.

  3. *clap* *clap* *clap*

    I wuss out and don’t discuss politics irl or on fb.

  4. Blake says:

    OT, but George Will used the term “progressives” in his column about trains.

    http://www.newsweek.com/2011/02/27/high-speed-to-insolvency.html

    I wonder how George Will would react if it was pointed out that Glenn Beck was the first high profile personality to make the case about progressives?

    Ties into your “don’t cede the language” posts, Jeff.

  5. newrouter says:

    Following the vote on the bill, GOP senators were hustled out of the Capitol via an underground tunnel that takes them to a government building across the street. For the past few days, senators have made this walk and been loaded onto a bus that takes them to their cars parked in a remote area. Yet after the vote, protesters had apparently caught wind of this process and surrounded the bus full of senators. One witness told me he had seen protesters surrounding the bus and trying to rock it back and forth.

    The bill now goes to the Assembly, where it is likely Democrats will try to delay its passage by filibustering indefinitely. Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald will likely limit debate, which will lead to accusations that the GOP is “silencing” the minority.

    link

  6. Bob Reed says:

    For these idiots, schooled by the “long march” crew, “democracy” = compromise, where the “compromise” is essentially caving to the progressive desires.

    The mindless chants of, “THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE”, have been driving me nuts for the last few weeks. I can only imagine what it will be like tomorrow.

    In the vein of what Jeff said, that this is all so much an affectation for the young-unz, that this somehow is their version of the 60’s that they’ve heard so much swooning talk of by their lefty professors-who themselves are merely yearning nostalgicly to relive their misspent youths, and has been characterized in hip TV shows and film; tomorrow will be these pinheads big moment!11!1!

    But, unfortunately for them, it most likely will be more DNC 1968, than Lincoln Memorial 1964…

    And never allow an opportunity to remind folks that the DNC, Obama, and OFA are part of the agitators here. Make sure they own this.

  7. Benedick says:

    I hope they bring the general strike. Pleeeease, oh please. Make sure thousands of private sector workers can’t get to work. Make sure they can’t get to a hospital. That’ll win ’em over. Dummies.

  8. Ernst Schreiber says:

    In a sense, the protestors are right. Rule by the “people” (demos) invariably degenerates into rule by the mob, so, yeah TH[A]T IS WHAT [degenerate] DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE. Which is why the Founders, in their wisdom, gave us a Republic. Too bad there’s not much left of it. Time to take a hard look at “democracy” as it’s practiced by one half of the political divide and make up our minds what we’re going to do about it.

  9. Benedick says:

    Cain sounds a little like Samuel L. Jackson. He should end all of his speeches thusly: “And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you!”

  10. serr8d says:

    This is live-feed coverage from the Madison capitol, “The Uptake” on Livestream. Listen to the kids: it’s a pep rally, not a protest. The bathrooms are locked, because people were letting more in through the bathroom windows. They’ll be pissing in the corners next, because if they leave, they can’t get back in.

    Got dry pocketses ? )

  11. Benedick says:

    So, serr8d, they’re treating a physical institution of American political tradition the way they treat American political tradition in general? Sounds about right.

  12. Ernst Schreiber says:

    I bet it won’t take Obama near as long to way in on events in Madison as it did to opine on Libya.

  13. Benedick says:

    In fairness, Ernst, Wisconsin is reportedly ruled by a cruel dictator who HATES DEMOCRACY.

  14. Darleen says:

    I bet it won’t take Obama near as long to way in on events in Madison as it did to opine on Libya.

    Hillary said today what is happening in Libya is a “crisis” but not a civil war.

    But WI? Oh, that will bring charges …

  15. newrouter says:

    The “ultimate threat to human freedom,” Trilling wrote in an account of George Orwell, might well come from a “massive development of the social idealism of our democratic culture.” Such idealism is dangerous because the idealists have disguised their deepest motives even from themselves. In his essay on Henry James’s novel “The Princess Casamassima,” Trilling described the willfulness of the progressive reformer “who takes license from his ideals for the unrestrained exercise of power.” In today’s ostensibly benign social policies, there is more than a whiff of the coercive “will” Trilling dreaded, the “will which masks itself in virtue.”

    link

  16. Ernst Schreiber says:

    As much as I want to crack a joke about waves of U.S. Marshals descending on Madison to protect the civil rights of the peaceful agrarian educational reformers, I can’t. It’s too close to the truth for satire.

  17. Pablo says:

    This is live-feed coverage from the Madison capitol, “The Uptake” on Livestream. Listen to the kids: it’s a pep rally, not a protest. The bathrooms are locked, because people were letting more in through the bathroom windows. They’ll be pissing in the corners next, because if they leave, they can’t get back in.

    A vote doesn’t go their way, they trash the Capitol. Optically speaking, this is WINNING! And not in a crackhead Estevez sort of way either.

  18. Mr B says:

    Listening to the livestream:

    “Walker is breaking the law on a daily basis”

    “people are going to have their voices heard”

    Fighting Bob!

    Hey hey, ho ho. Scott Walker has got to go.

    SCREAMING!!!!!!!

    GOP Greedy Oppresive Psychopaths.

    Who’s house. Our house.

    Crowd subdued. Just standing around. Mild chanting in distance.

    The people united will never be defeated…..

  19. Pablo says:

    Libya is at civil fucking war. Oddly enough, Anderson Cooper is on the subject to compelling effect. Takeaway meme: Does anybody care? Is anyone paying attention? America? Are you there? Hello? Help? Anyone?

    Unsaid:

    America – “Present”

  20. Benedick says:

    We’re not even voting “present” anymore, Pablo. We’re voting, “meh.”

  21. Ernst Schreiber says:

    That C.S. Lewis quote about “omnipotent moral busybodies” endlessly tormenting us for our own good is also apropos.

  22. newrouter says:

    “”Arriving en masse: sleeping bags. Capitol Campout 2011 is back on.”
    “Louder than ever. No 10 pm sound ordinance tonight.”
    Posted by Ann Althouse at 10:42 PM
    Tags: Wisconsin protests ”

    http://althouse.blogspot.com/2011/03/arriving-en-masse-sleeping-bags-capitol.html

  23. Ernst Schreiber says:

    [T]o these “protesters,” “democracy” boils down to “I must always win, or else it isn’t really legitimate democracy.”

    Sorry, but that’s fucking TYRANNY wrapped in word they’ve stolen from a patriotic bumper sticker.

    Fuck them. All.

    Civil war is coming. And it’s needed.

    Remember that crazy Russian political scientist who predicted the imminent crack-up of the U.S a few years ago?

    He doesn’t seem so crazy today.

  24. Benedick says:

    Yeah, I should probably get my ass to Texas one of these days. I’m still here in bitter-clinger land. Wait — maybe my fellow bitter-clingers will . . . nah, nevermind. They’re all “Union Yes.” Dummies.

  25. Mr B says:

    A cop caught them tampering with a window that they opened. They ran off shouting…….”SO LONG TO FREEDOM!”

  26. Benedick says:

    We live in a giant fucking kindergarten. It’s the same feeling I had in college that helped turn me politically. Someone please distribute cookies and milk. Laced with common sense and personal responsibility.

  27. Benedick says:

    Here I am, up past my bedtime on the adrenaline of “what democracy looks like” and nothing but crickets? Feh. I’m going to go handcuff my doors and break a window. Solidarity, Maaaaan.

  28. Mr B says:

    Reps are coming out now it looks like.

  29. Mr B says:

    Mayor of Madison said he can’t support a general strike because it is illegal.

    Large protest tomorrow and largest ever Saturday.

  30. Benedick says:

    I support a general strike. Show yourselves for what you are, you juvenile pigs.

  31. Pablo says:

    Memo to protesters: Next time, win some elections.

  32. geoffb says:

    In 2009, the City of Madison’s highest paid employee was a bus driver who earned $159,258, including $109,892 in overtime, guaranteed by a collective bargaining agreement. In total, seven City of Madison bus drivers made more than $100,000 per year in 2009.

    “That’s the (drivers’) contract,” said Transit and Parking Commission Chairman Gary Poulson.

    That explains it.

  33. Mr B says:

    Kelda Helen Roys (D – assembly) stating Walker is desperate to silence the voices of opposition. Babbled something about the very essence of Government. Dem Senators not coming back. Repubs can’t be trusted. She’s speechless she says.

  34. geoffb says:

    When Democrats get speechless they can never shut up, for days and days at a time.

  35. Mr B says:

    She’s still speechless but won’t shut up. If this passes it means that WI will be taking our state backwards very quickly. Workers no longer have Democracy in workplace. Patients not safe in hosptital. Snowplow safety. High quality schools no longer possible.

    KOCH!!! lmao!

  36. Mr B says:

    Democrats = for the workers

    GOP = for the wealthy, and against the rule of law.

    Anyone that had a pulse and doesn’t anymore. All affected.

    One step in the battle. Repubs are cheating. Violating rules.

    INdependent and fair judiciary. (they are holding out hope for courts to impose. Typical thinking for them).

    OBEY THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE!

  37. Mr B says:

    I look outside. It 10:30 at night. And its dark…….

  38. Mr B says:

    I can’t take the madness anymore. Night all.

  39. JD says:

    WINNING !!!!!!

  40. SDN says:

    “Yet after the vote, protesters had apparently caught wind of this process and surrounded the bus full of senators. One witness told me he had seen protesters surrounding the bus and trying to rock it back and forth.”

    You know, lots of states have provisions in their laws / Constitutions that legislators can’t be arrested for any reason while traveling to or from the session. I’m thinking that essential kit needs to be a couple of AK-47’s and 2.000 rounds each. Oh, and an armored bus.

  41. PCachu says:

    Wisconsin Public Worker Unions: Making Charlie Sheen Look Sane Since [insert date here].

  42. Mr B says:

    I just watched Glenn Grothman on Greta. She inquired about the open meeting law. Glenn’s answer was good then awkward on the follow up. Perhaps due to the audio lag. I was curious, so I looked it up.

    “3) Public notice of every meeting of a governmental body shall be given at least 24 hours prior to the commencement of such meeting unless for good cause such notice is impossible or impractical, in which case shorter notice may be given, but in no case may the notice be provided less than 2 hours in advance of the meeting. ”

    http://www.wisfoic.org/an-openmeetingslaw.html

    That looks like a tough challenge for the Democrats to make.

  43. exanter says:

    All politics in this country now is just dress rehearsal for civil war. — Billy Beck

    ya, things are bad here in WI. I’m still waiting to see if things go overboard, perhaps with a full on strike. but just think: how much worse things will be when federal entitlements are fully against the wall.

  44. Russ says:

    It’s not that they fled the state to avoid participating in the democratic process. Hell, if they don’t want to vote, that’s fine by me.

    It’s that they fled the state to stop everyone else carrying on with democracy. For that they ought to be strung up by their various ladies’ and gentlemen’s bits.

  45. geoffb says:

    Senate Democratic leader Mark Miller of Monona says Democrats will “join the people of Wisconsin in taking back their government,” but he refused to say when.

    Taking it back from…?

    Arrogant piss-ants aren’t they. This was the people of wisconsin taking back their government from the control of the union bosses.

  46. […] Jeff is completely correct I mean, this is what we’ve come to as a nation: form over substance as a fucking installation art form. The pollutant of “progressive” thinking has here culminated in a surreal civic moment, one in which the idealized cultural sexiness of the 60s, and a desire to re-live it, has given us the spectacle of university students chanting in favor of bigger government, less choice, fewer freedoms, and a total subsuming of the individual into an dictatorial, top-down collective. Like a hive of buzzing drones, these people are now actively swarming in hopes of bringing on the deconstruction of their country’s founding ideals by way of agitating for a neutered collective ruled by a top-down union leadership structure, one that splits the profits with the Democrat party while the private sector taxpayer gets higher property taxes to go with the dwindling opportunity available outside the government ranks. […]

  47. JHoward says:

    These fools are nothing less than Nationalsozialistische American Arbeiterpartei. We’re about to live history.

  48. JoanOfArgghh says:

    Oh, it’s exactly what “democracy” looks like: mob rule. He who owns the Mob, rules.

    I grew up in a Representative Republic. I sure miss it.

  49. Carin says:

    That was beautiful Jeff.

  50. geoffb says:

    The fundamental question had to be joined somewhere: Are the people’s elected representatives in charge of the government, or are public employees and their unions a permanent government, deigning to make tactical concessions to the occasional politician who challenges its control? The fury and hysteria of the demonstrators opposed to the Wisconsin restrictions on public-employee unions inadvertently proved the point. Mere politicians elected by mere voters had no moral authority, in the demonstrators’ opinion, to challenge the permanent government’s prerogatives.

  51. geoffb says:

    Senate Republicans were harried by swarming crowds. “We tried to get out of the building after the vote, because they were rushing the chamber, and we were escorted by security through a tunnel system to another building. But, after being tipped off by a Democrat, they mobbed the exit at that building, and were literally trying to break the windows of the cars we were in as we were driving away,” Republican senator Randy Hopper tells NRO. Such tactics, he sighs, were hardly unexpected. “I got a phone call yesterday saying that we should be executed. I’ve had messages saying that they want to beat me with a billy club.”

  52. […] all this leftist crazy, Jeff G nails it. Read the whole thing. This is what “Winning the Future” looks like: I mean, this is […]

  53. geoffb says:

    Wisconsin: Left’s war on democracy.

    Let’s call this what it is: a campaign to nullify the 2010 election, by a sore-loser party that doesn’t like the results.

  54. Sarah Rolph says:

    “…these people are now actively swarming…” They don’t call it the Hive Mind for nothing…

    The first time I heard the term “Cold Civil War” (a few years ago) I thought it fit pretty well but seemed too strong a term.

    Now I am just hoping it stays cold.

  55. Joe says:

    Winning?

    It is that bad.

  56. B. Moe says:

    We cannot tax our way out of this hole. We cannot grow our way out economically. We cannot use demographics to work our way out over time (in fact, we’re barely maintaining a replacement rate of reproduction as it is, and most of that reproducing is among the least productive of our citizenry).

    We cannot vote the problem away. The only solution that would really work — draconian cuts to entitlement programs and a serious effort to pay down the national debt — would require a level of austerity that few Americans have the stomach for. This means that a political solution to this problem is also pretty much impossible.

    Inflation is the only answer then.

  57. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Don’t sweat it Joe. George Will’s “serious” Republicans all have plans to dig slower.

  58. LTC John says:

    Maybe I shouldn’t retire from the NG next year, hmmmm?

  59. Mr B says:

    Oh look, Nancy Pelosi showed up in #WI and #WIUNION to express Solidarity with the workers.

    I wonder if she’ll reply to my question of liking the reverse reconciliation process; the GOP just shoved up their ass?

  60. Mr B says:

    It’s always the part omitted that is crucial to clarity.

    Wisconsin Governor a polarizer , not a compromiser.

  61. Mr B says:

    Huge lag there. Thought the site was under DDOS attack?

  62. SGT Ted says:

    Its what Mob Rule looks like. Not Democracy.

  63. McGehee says:

    Mr B, I’ve encountered those hiccups here for some time. I hope Jeff’s technical team is on top of it.

  64. Entropy says:

    WI is the new AZ.

    UN declarations containing strongly worded condemnations of basic human rights abuses in 3…2…1…

  65. Mr B says:

    Security breach. Racine assemblyman let protesters in through his window?

    http://althouse.blogspot.com/2011/03/last-night-protesters-were-able-to.html

  66. geoffb says:

    Some video punditry by,
    Robert Reich,
    Ann Coulter,
    Michael Moore,
    State Sen. Tim Carpenter (D-Wis)from an undisclosed location.

  67. dicentra says:

    Civil war is coming.

    It’s already here. We just haven’t busted out the guns yet.

  68. Squid says:

    In a properly civil war, one always says please and thank you when shooting at one’s counterparts. And make sure to doff your cap before shooting a lady!

  69. JD says:

    Mr B’s link to the death threats is one to take a look at.

  70. Mr B says:

    Oh look, Jesse Jackson is back. http://www.livestream.com/theuptake

    Chant: One day longer, one day stronger.

    Demonizing American’s for Prosperity. Koch brothers!

  71. Mr B says:

    Fire the terrorists!

    This is what democracy looks like….. Ugh.

  72. Mr B says:

    My default response to leftist comments in discussions from now on:

    Let all chant so we can drown out the last post. “This is what Democracy looks like!”

  73. geoffb says:

    About the idea that the “Public Meeting Law” was violated.

  74. geoffb says:

    Several dozen protesters gathered earlier in the morning in the antechamber and have filled the narrow hallway leading to the office of Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald (R-Horicon)
    […]
    “We’re prepared to do whatever it takes to kill the bill or shut it down,” said Daniel Ginsberg of Milwaukee, an organizer with Students for a Democratic Society.

  75. Jeff G. says:

    I hope Mr Ginsberg and his cadre of human plaque run into some Wisconsin taxpayers who are prepared to do whatever it takes to make sure some community organizer and his dirty fellow travelers don’t get to determine public policy.

  76. Spiny Norman says:

    Mr B,

    There’s that new tone again.

    …wisconsin-republicans-receive-death-threats-justice-investigating

    Is this the Eric Holder Justice Department we’re talking about? It’s more likely that the Republican senators who received the threat are under investigation…

  77. Spiny Norman says:

    cadre of human plaque

    I love it!

    =^D

  78. Spiny Norman says:

    Ah, this is a little more encouraging:

    MADISON – The State Department of Justice confirms that it is investigating several death threats against a number of lawmakers in response to the legislature’s move to strip employees of many collective bargaining rights.

    Among the threats the Justice Department is investigating is one that was emailed to Republican Senators Wednesday night.

    So it’s the Wisconsin DoJ. Good.

  79. geoffb says:

    The members of the Assembly are filing in now

  80. Hopefully the boycott will do for Wisconsin what it did for Arizona.

  81. mojo says:

    Friend of mine at work actually was a member of Solidarity, so much so that he was savagely beaten several times by the Polish security goons, and he eventually had to jump the wall into Germany before it became really fashionable. For health reasons.

    Not that he really minded coming to America.

  82. ProfShade says:

    Wow, Jeff. The best rant ever. Seriously glorious shit there.

  83. […] the Hammer’s “new tone” motif for a minute, because it’s beautiful when Jeff G. gets his rant on:Here’s what these idiot Madison “protesters” — along with their intellectually bankrupt […]

  84. […] Civil war is coming. And it’s needed. […]

  85. Hey! I thought I was the only grumpy person in the Blogosphere?

    Well put sir. Glad to see I’m not the only person who feels this way.

    Earned yourself a quote of the day at my blog.

    -Pat :)

  86. Mikey NTH says:

    So this is how it ends – the revolt of the humanities grad student TA’s.

Comments are closed.