High Stakes

Wisconsin had a reputation for almost a century as a "laboratory for democracy." As a birthplace of Progressivism, experimentation in regulation and tapping academic talent for state government served as a model for improving society at the state level and trickled up to the federal government.

Now in the Twenty-First Century it seems we are becoming a "laboratory for authoritarianism" and all the experiments seem to revolve around harming the public. More importantly, getting large swaths of that public to not only endorse but enthusiastically support an incompetent servant of monied children of darkness in his dismantling of Progressive achievements. Instead, the state has become more malleable to corporations and the agenda of maximizing capital gains. Elite hierarchical control where the regular people have no say in their government or how much of their lives is controlled by outside forces.

What is at stake is not simply what happens to the people of this state, whether workers have any rights or are merely rental property of their employers, whether women have any rights or are merely property of their husbands and subject to any state whims, whether children can learn or just be programmed to accept the state of submission. The Progressive magazine recently put forth a concise summation of these stakes. Larger than this though is what will happen beyond the state line if walker is able to buy his way out of the recall. If big money can impose their will on the people of Wisconsin, it can do it anywhere.

There used to be an understanding of the fundamental divide between "the people" and "the interests." We are faced with deja vu, Robert M. LaFollette campaigned on behalf of the people against the interests at the end of the Gilded Age, when big money had a stranglehold on government as well. He headed a movement of people to take government power away from the interests and improve the lives of regular people, a century later we find ourselves in the same situation. Only this time, the forces of business present themselves as champions of traditional values, an insurgent force fighting on behalf of people against government. Muddying the waters of political perception like this has won them an intense and passionate crowd of boobs, willingly walking the plank of surrendering their rights for the interests of billionaires.

The Wisconsin Uprising has put the question of whether you stand with your boss, or with your neighbors back on the map. The mere recognition that your interests and those of your employer are different is a great triumph. For all the people with "I stand with walker" signs though, the submission to authority is evident. They need to identify with authority and cannot differentiate their interests no matter how loudly they trumpet their independence.