"The Best Ruling Class There Is"

Something to that effect—part of a Gore Vidal quote I'm sure I've read but can't locate where. The gist is that they've so successfully hoodwinked so many for so long—of course no one does it better.

Which is also the gist of pre-election reports from Wisconsin.

Athenae, on family and friends—the hurting middle-class, assigning blame where they've been told it lies—

...what I keep coming back to is fear, among the Walker supporters, among those who say things like "we can't afford to keep paying for pensions" and "we can't afford anything but the lowest of low taxes for corporations" and "we can't do anything we did 40 years ago because of reasons I don't understand but I know, in my bones, that we can't, we just can't." And I'm being reminded of how radical a message it really is, how radical it always is, to say we can achieve what we want to achieve.

Because it's not just the cavalier "I don't wanna, I got mine, screw you," not from all of them. Not from those who aren't billionaires but from those who've listened to what the billionaires have to say. Who've been fed hate and fear for months now, hate and fear of their neighbors, hate and fear of their own futures, and worst of all, hate and fear of their own history.

Charles Pierce, on a retired postal worker and Walker fan: a former union worker forced into early retirement by Republican moves against the PO, and resentful that his teacher sister-in-law has dental care.

Another Vidal quote will serve: "Envy is the central fact of American life." (cited here)

The best of all ruling classes can pay for a Scott Walker to test market in one state then, as Rick Perlstein says, to turn Scott Walker's Wisconsin into

... Scott Walker's America: dirty tricks and intricately nested corporate-sponsored lies, states competing with one another to out-Dixie Dixie, glittering simulations of democracy on TV commercials paid for by cruel lying billionaires, passed on verbatim by reporters too lazy to care.

It's always been about divide and conquer.

But there's also what Athenae writes about today—

There's not a lot this life asks of us. Just fight the fights in front of you, that's all, and you pick what those fights are. People who picked these fights, they weren't planning on having it easy. Do you know how long it's been since there's been any demonstration of union strength in this entire goddamn country? Do you know how far back into history people had to reach?

I can tell you this, for certain: We are no less free, because thousands of people in Madison and Milwaukee and upstate and downstate and east and west, city mice and country mice and mice in the burbs, stood up and said no more. I can tell you this for certain: We are no poorer, for the past 18 months. We are no dumber, we are no weaker, we are no more afraid.

We are no less.

After the returns came in, and the crowd quieted, and the TV crews turned their lights off and went home...

...the songs rose up, over the city in the pale orange light of the setting sun.

Just a few more weary days and then
I'll fly away
To a land where joys will never end
I'll fly away.

I hope they heard it, that song, rising up. I hope everyone heard it. I hope it rang through the halls of power and I hope no one ever forgets.