Thinking Citizen Blog — Carl Sagan, Scott Walker, Nancy Pelosi, and the Occupation of the Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin in 2011
Thinking Citizen Blog — Sunday is Political Process, Campaign Strategy, and Candidate Selection Day
Today’s Topic: Carl Sagan, Scott Walker, Nancy Pelosi, and the Occupation of the Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin in 2011
Political process reform begins at home. Are we looking through blinders ourselves? Talk of unity comes cheap. Are we going through the hard work of sifting through all the evidence? Have we walked for a mile in the moccasins of the other side? Do we think of our side as having principles, facts, and solutions, while the other side has no principles (only base interests), no facts (just “fake news”), and no solutions (other than snake oil)? Is our side in fact as guilty of double standards as the other side? Yesterday, a friend forwarded me a link to an article about Carl Sagan’s “baloney detection kit.” Sagan was an astronomy professor at Harvard and then at Cornell who published 600 scientific papers and 20 books and eventually won a Pulitzer Prize for a work of popular science and two Emmys for Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, the most widely viewed show in the history of American Public Television. He urged citizens to look at all the evidence and from all points of view. Attached to the same email was a reference to an event in Madison, Wisconsin in 2011 that did not get much play at the time and I had long forgotten. Do you remember it? Should you? Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
GOVERNOR SCOTT WALKER’S PTSD AND NANCY PELOSI’S PRAISE (excerpt from article in the Washington Post by Marc Thiessen, 1/14/21)
1. “Thousands of protesters rushed to the … Capitol Wednesday night, forcing their way through doors, crawling through windows and jamming corridors.” That is how one newspaper described the storming of the Capitol — not the one in Washington last week, but the state Capitol in Madison, Wis., a decade ago.”
2. “Back then, thousands of pro-union activists — many bused in from out of state — rampaged through the historic building in an effort to stop a vote on collective bargaining reform legislation. So, when I saw the images of a pro-Trump mob rampaging through the U.S. Capitol last week, my first thought was: What is Scott Walker thinking right now?”
3.“It’s like I’m having PTSD from a decade ago,” the former Republican governor of Wisconsin texted me.”
NB: “Most conservatives have condemned the right-wing mob that assaulted the U.S. Capitol. But 10 years ago, Democrats embraced the left-wing mob that occupied the state Capitol in Madison. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) praised the occupiers for an “impressive show of democracy in action” and tweeted as they assaulted the Capitol that she continued “to stand in solidarity” with the union activists. In other words, Democrats were for occupying capitols before they were against it.”
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE REPUBLICAN SENATORS IN THE MADISON CAPITOL?
1. “The police retreated in the face of the horde, giving up the first floor, then the second. “The protesters ran amok, chanting ‘This is our house!’ and ‘This is what democracy looks like!’ … And they then began searching for the Republican senators who had dared to defy the will of the unions.” As the crowd scoured the building looking for the offending legislators, police sneaked them out through an underground tunnel to a government building across the street. But a Democratic representative posted on social media that the Republican senators were escaping through the tunnels, so when the senators came up into the lobby, the mob was there waiting for them.
3. “The tall windows that framed the lobby were plastered with people yelling and banging on the glass,” we wrote. “They were trapped. The senators hid under a stairwell, out of view, while the police ordered a city bus to pull up in front of the building. Officers then formed a human wall on the sidewalk, parting the sea of protesters and creating a pathway for the senators to reach the bus.” Once the senators were on board, “the mob on the street began punching the windows and shaking the vehicle. … The police told the senators and staff inside to keep their heads down in case a window shattered.”
NB: “Thankfully, no one was killed. But during the course of the occupation, Walker received a steady stream of death threats against him and his wife, including one that promised to “gut her like a deer” and one threatening to kill his sons. Police found dozens of .22-caliber bullets scattered across the Capitol grounds. The occupiers drew chalk outlines of fake dead bodies etched with Walker’s name on the floor, and carried signs that read “Death to tyrants,” “The only good Republican is a dead Republican” and one with picture of him in crosshairs with the words, “Don’t retreat, Reload.”
WHAT ARE THE LESSONS OF THE EVENTS OF 2011 AND 2021?
1. “I asked Walker this week what lessons we might take from the two occupations. “On the positive side,” he said, “the angry mobs did not deter elected officials from their responsibilities in either instance.” The Wisconsin legislature approved Walker’s bill in 2011, just as Congress reconvened to certify Joe Biden’s victory last week.”
2. “The good news is that our democracy has once again proved itself resilient against mob rule. The bad news is that some on the right now emulate the left-wing mob Nancy Pelosi celebrated and conservatives rightfully condemned in Madison a decade ago.”
3. “That will be among President Trump’s most shameful legacies.”
IMAGES: first is of Carl Sagan, second Scott Walker, third, Nancy Pelosi
The Baloney Detection Kit: Carl Sagan’s Rules for Bullshit-Busting and Critical Thinking
Opinion | Democrats were for occupying capitols before they were against it
Thousands storm Capitol as GOP takes action
Here is a link to the last three years of posts organized by theme:
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned in the last week related to political process or campaign strategy or 2020 candidate selection or anything else for that matter.
This is your chance to make some one else’s day or change their thinking. Or to consolidate in your own memory something worth remembering that might otherwise be lost. Or to clarify or deepen your own understanding of something dear to your heart. Continuity is key to depth of thought.
