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| Home Front: Politix |
| Wisconsin protestors losing grip on reality |
| 2011-03-02 |
| Ann Althouse Prof. Althouse and her husband Meade live in Madison and have been posting photos and YouTube videos of the protests for several weeks. She observes that ...as the protest drags on and protesters are sleep-deprived and frustrated and tired of nothing happening but standing around chanting and listening to drum-beating for hours on end, logic and proportion is flopping away. There was some serious aggression yesterday. Let's go to the tape, as they say: There's very tense confrontation, and it flips into paranoia and incoherence. At 4:35, you hear a woman say, "Are you a plant?" At 4:57: "I think we know you're a Walker plant?" At 5:00: "You [are a Walker plant] on this gathering and we can tell." At 5:17, a large man barges into Meade and grabs the Flip camera, and actually gets it out of Meade's hand. No one in the crowd does anything to help Meade in this assault, and Meade grabs the man's arm and wrests the camera out of his hand. This man says "Get your hands off me," as if he's a victim.... I see some people descending into irrationality — beginning to form a cultish mentality that demonizes outsiders. Meade was at a demonstration, photographing it. A demonstration is — to a clear-thinking person — a collection of people asking to be seen, wanting to be photographed. Yet when they perceive that Meade isn't one of them they flip — it's a Flip camera — into fear. Meade had been trying to talk to them rationally about why the pro-Walker woman might not want to debate her ideas in that setting, and instead of seeing Meade as a citizen who's finding out what's going on and helping 2 women who are surrounded and outnumbered, they spread their "plant" theory. And it's not just a theory. They know he's a plant. But he's not a plant. He's a human being. An individual human being. And so are all the protesters, but I fear they are losing their grip on that reality. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #9 Union members are knuckle draggers. They don't have the intelligence to make it in life on thier own. Laziness, mental and physical, ignorance, pride of what? Union is another name for a pack of wild animals that suck the blood out of something until it is dead. |
| Posted by: Helmuth, Speaking for Chusose8118 2011-03-02 20:38 |
| #8 This will be a very effective tactic when they seek to recall those Republican senators who won the close races. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2011-03-02 20:13 |
| #7 The problem with thugs is that they have no discipline. When something really nasty happens you'll see the usual senior suspects arguing that they can't be held responsible blah, blah, blah. Well, if you can't control them, you can't represent them either. And if you can't control them, then what happens to them is their own comeuppance. BTW, the police union members had better talk to their National Guard people about their experience in Iraq and Afghanistan where they witnessed the behavior of local police who had to go home every night in to the community. Seems that some of that ineffectiveness and 'looking the other way' had something to do with being able to physically go back to work the next shift. Unless your going to establish barracks and walled communities for your union brethren to live in, being isolated in the open community grants you no protection. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2011-03-02 19:37 |
| #6 I think the unions would ultimately win their case through public support - if they could behave. But no, they act like thugs and pigs; when they trash the Capitol they show their colors and a lot of decent, sympathetic people turn away (no doubt a number of them are union members who turn away in shame.) |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2011-03-02 19:24 |
| #5 There's another post here which shows still images of some of the same people. There's Whistleblower in the cardboard sign, the Walkerwomen, and the Creepy Grandma in the purple coat and the Solidarity sign. It starts getting interesting (i.e. loud) at about 4:50. At around 5:15 The Enforcer shows up. At 5:24 he grabs the camera. At 6:54 the Whisteblower turns and you can see the Dept. of Corrections patch on his shoulder. At 7:24 the Grandma of Death toddles up to tell Meade that "You are a person against all of us. The whole nation is looking at you." |
| Posted by: Angie Schultz 2011-03-02 18:39 |
| #4 Losing grip? They had a grip? Seriously, unions are a 19th century solution to a 19th century problem. And since when does collective "bargaining" mean "violence"? But it gets even better. These are government employees using violence against elected officials, and by extension, the taxpayers they work for. Please remind me what we call violence against the government? What was that word? |
| Posted by: Clyde Sleager3535 2011-03-02 16:57 |
| #3 I've never been a fan of any unions, as I think they're basically commie scum. And uh, these morons, aren't exactly changing my opinion. I'd like to see them all fired, that's callous I know, but that's just how I roll. |
| Posted by: Jefferson 2011-03-02 14:22 |
| #2 Sleep deprivation my ass. These thugs are little better than brownshirts. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2011-03-02 14:15 |
| #1 It's not sleep deprivation, it's knowing what cops (unionized public workers) will look the other way. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2011-03-02 14:07 |