"It’s impossible to determine a single root cause for the overall sense of anger and frustration with government..."

"... but there is a fairly obvious hinge point after which voter fury grew, about 20 years ago. That’s when the Iraq War grew deadlier while the stated purpose of the invasion — to eliminate Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction — turned out to be false. The housing market had blown up by 2008, causing a financial collapse that left millions of homeowners underwater and, the following year, led to an unemployment rate of 10 percent. Around that time, cable news began breaking away from its early focus on crime and trials and was instead becoming focused wall-to-wall on politics and government, fragmenting into ideological corners just as technology turned phones into instant echo chambers...."

From "Anger is a defining character trait for both parties, new study shows/Updated Pew research shows Democrats are now at record levels of anger toward government, surpassing previous GOP records" (WaPo).

Sample comments: "What a terrible both sidesism essay"/"Before Trump spewed his invectives demonizing our democratic institutions, I was mostly content with our government and felt it reflected our values...."

I like that the essay, by Paul Kane, reminded Democrats that their anger isn't traced to Trump. It was full grown in the Bush era. And you should have seen what it looked like here in Wisconsin in 2011:

"What Greg Abbott and the Texas GOP can learn from Wisconsin in 2011/We won a similar fight using this two-pronged messaging campaign."

Writes former governor Scott Walker in The Washington Post — gift link.

"Keep reminding everyone that a lawmaker’s first responsibility is to vote. If Texas Democrats continuously refuse to show up to do that, they have abandoned their job. At the same time, talk about why Republicans are pushing their reforms. Communicate the need for the plan repeatedly to regain control of the narrative."

I was going to say you can practically hear the Wisconsin accent and maybe that works in Wisconsin, but Texans might be a little more rowdy and rebellious, but I see Walker asserts: "It worked in the Badger State. It will work in the Lone Star State, too." What kind of logic is that? 

There were lots of handmade/"handmade" signs at Madison's anti-Trump rally yesterday.

What would you do if it was your job to create the look of a truly grassroots uprising? Wonky lettering. Off-beat slogans. One thing I noticed was that the signs — most of them — were on uniformly sized white poster board. I'd go with more unfolded boxes — corrugated cardboard — and spray-painted old sheets. And the sign-holders were densely packed in front of the speaker's podium. That's photogenic, but lacking in chaotic energy. 

I was merely driving by the protests, so I can't comment on the mood. Were they angry? But these are people who just had a big political win 4 days ago — the Wisconsin Supreme Court election. They could be happy. Whatever. I'm not a source of information as I was 14 years ago, during the anti-Scott-Walker protests. 

I remember when that mild-mannered character was "Hitler":

"The train that's being built between Los Angeles and San Francisco is the worst managed project I think I've ever seen."

Said Donald Trump, quoted in "Trump slams California's over-budget, behind schedule high-speed rail project as 'worst managed project' he's ever seen" (Post Millennial).

PRESIDENT TRUMP: "The train that's being built between Los Angeles and San Francisco is the worst managed project that I think I've ever seen... Hundreds of billions of dollars over budget... We're going to start an investigation of that." pic.twitter.com/CPEgTdv16w

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) February 4, 2025

I blogged this issue a lot 10 or so years ago. For example, in 2012: "What a disaster! Remember a year and a half ago, when Wisconsin elected a new governor who said he'd kill the high-speed rail deal? I was a single-issue voter for Scott Walker then, and that was my issue." And I wrote this in 2011:

I created a new tag this morning and I noticed an old tag that I can never use anymore.

The new tag: Frugality. This morning's post about the "stingy challenge" in Chinese social media pushed me over the line. I went back into the archive and found 10 old posts that deserved the "frugality" tag — Remember the FIRE movement? Voluntary houselessness? "Financial Secrets of the Amish"? Remember when Scott Walker branded himself with Kohl's? Do you care about Sir Jeffery Amherst? Is Mr. Money Mustache still around? Remember me seeing "potential for resurrecting the old division-of-labor model in which one spouse earns a good income and the other contributes in kind, unpaid, saving many expenses and keeping the couple's tax-bracket low"? Want to know how frugality links the "Xi jacket" to the "Mao suit"? How Salon tried to make us hate Trump for his cheapness? It's all there, under the "frugality" tag.

The old tag: "Written strangely early in the morning." There's no earliness in the morning that can be strange anymore. I used to think it strange to put up the first post in the 4-o'clock hour, but now, it would only be strange if I put up the first post before midnight, and that wouldn't be "morning" yet — no "a.m." The last post in this once-important tag was January 23, 2022 — "Why Ayn Rand is trending on Twitter under the heading 'Sports.'" — published at 3:10 a.m. Yes, that seemed notably early, 3 years ago. But now, when I wake up, feeling refreshed after what seems like a long sleep, and I look at the iPhone hoping it's not too early — which wouldn't be strange at all — I'm pleased if I see it's at least 3 a.m. Yesterday, when I looked — ready to leap out of bed — it was only 12:35 a.m. There are so many old posts with that tag! Here's the first one, in my first year of blogging, 2004: "Did you see that the first post today has a 4:33 a.m. timestamp? And yesterday's was 5:02? My two-hour 8 a.m. class has completely transformed my biorhythms, apparently. I was already a morning person, but this is a bit eerie. At least the NYT is already here at that hour...." That was 20 years ago, back when "the NYT" referred to a folded paper concoction stuffed in a blue plastic bag.

All this likening of Trump to Hitler has got me looking back to my 2011 posts, when Wisconsinites likened Governor Scott Walker to Hitler.

From March 19, 2011: "Scott Walker is like Hitler because 'he doesn't do nice things'" (the quote is from a young protester, in a video interview by Meade). 

From February 17, 2011: "Scott Walker compared to Hitler" (with video of Meade questioning a woman who is carrying a sign portraying showing Walker with a Hitler mustache).

Also from February 17, 2011: "I asked the woman if she thought Scott Walker was like Hitler, and she said 'Yes.' So I said, 'Are you saying that you think fascism could come to America,' and she said, 'It's what's happening.'" Here's the photo I took of the woman — hiding her face — and the Walker-as-Hitler poster:

"Whereas Republicans once talked openly about [Jan. 6th] being disqualifying for the former president, today it is little more than..."

"... a litmus test in GOP circles of a candidate’s MAGA bona fides. None of them want any part of it. For a primary candidate, said Scott Walker, the former Republican governor of Wisconsin, going after Trump for Jan. 6 is 'a huge risk.'... If anything, the tone and tenor of the [CPAC] conference suggested that Republican presidential candidates may feel pressure from corners of the base to talk about Jan. 6 in positive terms — and rally to the defense of people arrested following the riot....Two years ago, Walker said, Jan. 6 was worthy of condemnation. He said so at the time. But it makes no sense for presidential candidates to be talking about it now, he added, when most people have moved on. Anymore, he said, 'Nobody cares.'"

From "Once an albatross around Trump’s neck, Jan. 6 is now taboo in the GOP primary/The insurrection was supposed to be the party’s breaking point with Trump. Now, no one running against him wants to talk about it" (Politico).

"I was totally naïve when I took the job. I spent my time and didn’t succeed. I realized the system didn’t work. I just wasn’t smart enough. I don’t know how they can build it now."

Said Michael Tennenbaum, "a former Wall Street investment banker who was the first chairman of the rail authority 20 years ago," quoted in "How California’s Bullet Train Went Off the Rails America’s first experiment with high-speed rail has become a multi-billion-dollar nightmare. Political compromises created a project so expensive that almost no one knows how it can be built as originally envisioned" (NYT).

Fun with Scott.

pic.twitter.com/BR1D21nVEA

— Professor Trestrial (@Trestrial) April 25, 2022

"But the Democratic Party establishment distanced itself from the Wisconsin uprising. Notably, President Barack Obama did not go to Wisconsin..."

"... during the Act 10 protests, betraying a campaign promise to 'put on a comfortable pair of walking shoes myself' and 'march on that picket line with you' if collective bargaining rights were ever under attack. (Vice President Biden did not go to Wisconsin either.) Outrage over Act 10 prompted an effort to recall Mr. Walker that garnered nearly a million signatures and forced him to face a new election in 2012. But Mr. Obama deliberately avoided campaigning with Tom Barrett, the governor’s Democratic opponent. 'This is a gubernatorial race with a guy who was recalled and a challenger trying to get him out of office,' Stephanie Cutter, Mr. Obama’s deputy campaign spokeswoman, told NBC News. 'It has nothing to do with President Obama.' The fallout from the financial crisis, and Mr. Obama’s tepid economic response to it, helped enable the Tea Party backlash, allowing the movement’s funders to realize long-held ambitions of weakening the labor movement and the public sector under the guise of austerity. That effort was made easier by the Democrats’ embrace of their framing. A few months before Mr. Walker announced Act 10, his predecessor, Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat, bragged that he made steeper cuts to size of the state employee work force than any governor in Wisconsin’s history. Mr. Obama, too, championed public austerity, imposing a two-year wage freeze for federal workers just after the 2010 election...."

From a NYT op-ed titled "Scott Walker’s Wisconsin Paved the Way for Donald Trump’s America."

The notion that Twitter's the place to go to see what's happening — destroyed by Twitter.

I would love to read an essay on the ever-morphing definition of misinformation/disinformation. Seems that it has gone from being a description of Holocaust denial/anti-vax to a word to tag any content that seems to help the political right? https://t.co/jdwLu2Uxdv

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) October 15, 2020

You're seeing the immense, unchallengeable, unaccountable power of Silicon Valley giants over the flow of information. Imagine if Google joins in.

What's so amazing is that they never wanted this role. It was foisted on them by people, led by journalists, demanding they censor: https://t.co/cFBfV97Ylt

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 14, 2020

Congrats to twitter on its Streisand Effect award!!! 👏 👏 👏 pic.twitter.com/xQXqIDqwFT

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) October 15, 2020

Want to get back at @Twitter and @Facebook for censoring this story? Post this screenshot of the story and encourage people to see it for themselves at https://t.co/JK8929vegs. pic.twitter.com/oKgDWA2hmA

— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) October 15, 2020

UPDATED: "Twitter CEO admits handling of blocked Post article was ‘unacceptable’" (NY Post).

Did Scott Walker hang up on Anderson Cooper?

Scott Walker, whose 2016 campaign autobiography was titled Unintimidated, gets a tough question from @CNN’s Anderson Cooper and... appears to turn off the video link.pic.twitter.com/Q2KQKV64Ic

— John Nichols (@NicholsUprising) August 28, 2020

Why is the name Scott Walker trending on Twitter? Because he tweeted this:

Hard to imagine any other @POTUS having the guts to walk out of the White House like this: @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/R9Da6W7Hhb

— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) June 2, 2020

I'll just gather some of the responses without troubling with links: "A five minute walk literally surrounded by armed men, going to place he ordered brutally purged of demonstrators so he could take a picture. Yeah, that's balls of steel"/"Didn't attend service. Only stayed long enough to get his picture taken with an unopened Bible, then left with his entourage"/"Scott, he had the path cleared by tear gas, pepper spray and flash bombs. I'll sit in the bleachers at a Brewers/Cubs game with that kind of support. By the way, President Richard Nixon met with protesters at the Lincoln Memorial after Kent State."

Ha ha. Yes, and remember the credit Richard Nixon got for that? As I remember it, he was regarded as out of his mind and a complete weirdo.

"First Amendment rights are really pretty cool. There’s a lot of sacrifice we’re asking… in order to save lives. Some people may not get the message and focus on what’s being taken away."

Said Governor Tony Evers, quoted in "'Reopen Wisconsin' protest permit denied; organizers say it’ll happen anyway" (Madison365).

Here's something I wrote in October 2013, "Scott Walker gives up fighting for the permit requirement for protests in the Capitol":

Under pressure from an ACLU lawsuit.

Under the new rules, groups must notify the DOA of a gathering of 12 or more people two business days before the event takes place. The notification may be sent by phone, email, in person or by a state form, according to the statement. There is no limit on the number of notifications groups and individuals can submit.

That's a good resolution of the problem. There's a long tradition of spontaneous protests in the Wisconsin Capitol building, and the permit requirement interfered with it. Yeah, sometimes the protests get way out of hand, and the building does require security that varies when a lot of people show up at once, but focus on those real issues. Don't have a policy that's designed — or seems to be designed — to suppress spontaneity.

As for this week's protest — the organizers of the protest seem mostly concerned about getting access to the Capitol so they can use the bathrooms or at getting an outdoor permit so that
portable bathroom companies will work with them. But the Capitol building is closed and won't be opened and, as for the outdoors, the Department of Administration (DOA) says the planned protest "poses a hazard to the safety of the public." So the permit was denied.

Whose slush?

$35 million for the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. ?

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH FIGHTING THE CORONAVIRUS?!?

Show this to anyone dares question if @SpeakerPelosi is playing politics. pic.twitter.com/syx0QHdhcA

— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) March 24, 2020

"Trump impeachment drive has similarities to Wisconsin recall."

ABC News is just noticing.

I don't need a refresher on the Wisconsin uprising against Scott Walker, but the key similarities lie in the future. After Walker-haters stormed their way to a recall election, they not only lost the recall, they lost the next regular election.

The ABC article tells us:

Walker ultimately won the recall election in June 2012, becoming a conservative hero on his way to a short-lived run for president in 2015. In a testament to Wisconsin’s political division, just five months after Walker won the recall vote, Obama cruised to victory in Wisconsin on his way to reelection....

Yeah, but Walker won his next election. That fact is tucked away in the article, here:

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker re-named the state capitol "holiday tree" the "Christrmas tree," and the new governor, Tony Evers, renamed it back to "holiday tree"... and declared that it would "celebrate... science."

Students are always invited to make ornaments for this tree, and this year, the invitation — from the Governor — was "to make holiday ornaments that celebrate what science means to them, their families and their communities" — HuffPo reports.

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald called it “‘PC’ garbage,” while Assembly Speaker Robin Vos tweeted: “We all know it’s a Christmas tree no matter what @GovEvers calls it.”

But Walker had the biggest reaction, firing off multiple tweets, including these...

You'd expect something really harshly judgmental to follow, but it's just a photo of a very conventional Christmas tree in a private residence and the line "This is a Christmas Tree that is used by people celebrating Christmas 🎄 / This is not a holiday tree." There's a second tweet: "Type this word on your iPhone and look what emoji comes up: Christmas 🎄" — which seems to be a new form of the kind of quip that goes if you look X up in the dictionary, you'll see a picture of Y.

The HuffPo article proceeds to embed 12 tweets reacting to Scott Walker. 11 are from "blue check mark" people. The best one is the one that's not a blue check marker: "Oh, is it War on Christmas season again? Already? It seems to start earlier every year... 🙄"

I'll just feature the blue check mark person Matthew Dowd — because I have a tag for him and because he's using that asshole tactic of being informative:

You do know that trees were stolen from a pagan holiday? And Christ wasn’t actually born on December 25th? It was a day celebrated by Roman pagans and taken over by the church in the fourth century. And that many faiths put up trees that aren’t Christians.

Stolen! Does Matthew Dowd know that stollen is a traditional German fruit and nut cake that is popular in Wisconsin during the Christmas season? Does Matthew Dowd understand that all culture and tradition is handed down and borrowed and adapted and that it sounds very mean to say "stolen" and it's triggering when the homophone "stollen" is the very cake we share amongst ourselves at Christmastime in the hinterlands of Wisconsin?


CC-Ulrich van Stipriaan

HuffPo has nothing about the science theme given to — imposed on — the children this year. The tree becomes a free-speech forum for the children, and it would violate free speech to have viewpoint discrimination, so how can there be a science limitation on the ornaments? Presumably, the ornaments will be accepted even if they express the idea that "what science means to them" is that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so you could believe in him and have everlasting life.

Has the Tony Evers science tree attracted any litigation? I haven't looked. I hope not. Can't we all be generous and kind during the dark cold weeks that are so well stocked with holidays... like raisins in stollen?

"[T]he authoritarian rot that produced the current president* is present in the Republican Party at all levels.... And, if you need further proof, take a jaunt with us up to Wisconsin..."

"... where the voters had the audacity to vote in Tony Evers, a Democrat, and turn out Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage that particular midwest subsidiary. Democratic success in elections, unless it is achieved by overwhelming margins, is in the eyes of Republicans prima facie illegitimate. It started with Bill Clinton and it’s gotten worse ever since...."

From "The Authoritarian Rot That Produced This President* Is Present in the Republican Party at All Levels/Need proof? Look at Kentucky and Wisconsin" by Charles P. Pierce (in Esquire).

The asterisk doesn't have a footnote to go with it. Maybe Pierce established in some earlier column that when he refers to "the current president" there's some reservation, but it would be weird if the idea is that he doesn't regard Trump as actually the President, since in this column, he's taking the position that Democrats who win an election (without an overwhelming majority) are not considered legitimate by Republicans.

What's the "authoritarian rot" that's so obvious in Wisconsin, according to Pierce? It's just one story about how the state senate voted not to confirm the governor's choice for the state agriculture secretary, Brad Pfaff. The GOP senators said Pfaff's manure storage rules would hurt farmers. The governor (a Democrat) accused the GOP senators of — in the words of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel — "punishing Pfaff for sticking up for farmers and publicly criticizing Republicans who control the Legislature for holding back suicide prevention funds."

That all sounds very obscure but how is it "authoritarian," let alone "authoritarian rot"? The governor's choice for agriculture secretary required senate confirmation. That's a check on executive power. Where's the authoritarian rot Pierce is talking about?

Evers, the state's chief executive doesn't seem to be authoritarian. He's disappointed to lose Pfaff and can only complain about how badly the other party's legislators treated him. The resort of public complaining reminds me of Trump. Evers worried about his other appointments and whether these people would get negative votes from the senate if they spoke: "If I was a total cynic I'd say, 'Keep your damn mouth shut,' but I'm not. I want them to be forthcoming. I want them to be professional. That's why we hired them. To think that they're going to have to keep their mouth shut for the next, who knows — four years — in order to get approved by this Senate, this is just absolute bullshit."

It's funny to use "bullshit" when the controversy is (arguably) over manure storage rules. And Pierce didn't resist making an overt shit joke:

[The Republican senators said] Pfaff had put in place new manure storage rules that would hurt the state’s farmers. (This ignores the fact that the largest manure storage unit in Wisconsin is the building in which they work in Madison, but we digress.)

"Good. Beto O'Rourke was abysmal in the debates. It seemed like he wasn't thinking through what he was saying about issues like gun bans and tax exemptions for churches."

"Once the consequences of his statements were pointed out to him, he seemed weak and confused. Beto will join Scott Walker, the Republican former governor of Wisconsin, in showing that a politician who makes a big splash in their own state can't necessarily transplant their local star power onto the national stage."

My son John reacts to Beto O'Rourke's dropping out of the presidential race.

Did Beto make a big splash in his home state? He never held statewide office. The most you can say is he lost a Senate race by a narrower margin than in other recent Texas Senate races. Scott Walker was a 2-term governor who made huge changes and set off an immense protest (and a recall election). And Scott Walker dropped out of the presidential race — I think! — because Jeb Bush dominated the fundraising. Walker started out making a big impression, and if he'd had access to money, he might have had a chance. Also, Walker had to outshine Trump to look like a star on that stage. Who did Beto have to outshine? The Democratic candidates are all pretty dull compared to Trump.

"Whether this is a walk for the exits of public life, or voluntary entry into a cryogenic experiment to ride out the rest of Trump era is yet to be seen."

From a Bulwark article that begins, "Former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker will soon have a new job: President of Young America’s Foundation."