Ayn Rand was not a very good writer. Regardless of how you feel about her personal politics or the American conservative movements they helped to spawn, this fact, at least, is fairly indisputable. Her prose strays so far to the border of bald rhetoric that one could turn to almost any page in her seminal Objectivist work Atlas Shrugged and fail to find any supposed human being talking like a real human being, instead prescribing to a (presumably deeply annoying) version of reality in which people commonly abandon all semblance of rational speech in favor of hyperbolic, laissez-faire bombast.

And now they are making her book into a movie. Three movies, to be exact, Atlas Shrugged parts 1, 2, and, yes, 3.

Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum, was a Russian immigrant, turned author, turned political activist, turned philosopher who’s crowning achievement was her creation of what she chose to call Objectivism: a life philosophy that considers the greatest moral right to be that of personal achievement. In setting out to write Atlas Shrugged, a novel that itself was created with input from the likes of Alan Greenspan and Leonard Peikoff, Rand was attempting to put the whole of her philosophy into a fiction that would rouse the masses. Perhaps that’s why the work ends up reading like some sort of proto-Twilight, escapist, anti-communist fan fiction. Its heroine, Dagny Taggart, (clearly a surrogate for Rand herself,) is a super-individualist, a hard-boiled, sexual being who’s struggles against an overbearing government are Promethean, ripe with peril and coupled with a self-assuredness that rivals even the author herself, who once characterized herself in an interview with Mike Wallace as “the most creative thinker alive.”

The novel’s release in 1957 was met with disdain and acclaim in equal measures. Well, maybe a bit more disdain, for both the book and its author.

Here, a quote from an original review of the book by Whitaker Chambers in 1957:

Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal. In addition, the mind, which finds this one natural to it, shares other characteristics of its type. 1) It consistently mistakes raw force for strength, and the rawer the force, the more reverent the posture of the mind before it. 2) It supposes itself to be the bringer of a final revelation. Therefore, resistance to the Message cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be merely honest, prudent or just humanly fallible. Dissent from revelation so final (because, the author would say, so reasonable) can only be willfully wicked. There are ways of dealing with such wickedness, and, in fact, right reason itself enjoins them. From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: “ To the gas chambers — go!”

Gore Vidal, in 1961:

This odd little woman is attempting to give a moral sanction to greed and self interest, and to pull it off she must at times indulge in purest Orwellian newspeak of the ‘freedom is slavery’ sort. What interests me most about her is not the absurdity of her ‘philosophy,’ but the size of her audience (in my campaign for the House she was the one writer people knew and talked about). She has a great attraction for simple people who are puzzled by organized society, who object to paying taxes, who dislike the ‘welfare’ state, who feel guilt at the thought of the suffering of others but who would like to harden their hearts. For them, she has an enticing prescription: altruism is the root of all evil, self-interest is the only good, and if you’re dumb or incompetent that’s your lookout.

And Nathaniel Branden, Ayn Rand’s lover and intellectual partner, to whom the book was dedicated, in 1984:

[If] you really study what the story is saying, if you pay attention to what the actions of the characters are saying, and if you pay attention to the characterizations, you will find abundant evidence to support my observation that the work encourages emotional repression and self-disowning.

Atlas Shrugged: Part I is almost completely funded by Tea Partier-cum-fitness equipment magnate John Aglialoro. After languishing for almost forty years in what in Hollywood is known as “development hell,” the film’s release on what is traditionally tax-day in the United States comes with all the subtlety of a marching band. The film is clearly a Tea Party project, made for an audience of Tea Party members, designed to reinforce Tea Party ideals while broadening the Tea Party’s base.

Lindsay Boerma at the National Journal:

FreedomWorks, the Washington-based tea party organization headed by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, has undertaken a massive campaign to push the movie into as many theaters as possible. So far, they’ve lined up 63 for opening day in major cities nationwide; FreedomWorks hopes to push that number to 300.

“In a lot of ways this project reflects the ethos of the tea party,” said FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe. “You had both Republicans and Democrats who felt rejected by the establishment, and the same process is going to happen with Atlas Shrugged: We’re going to build a constituency of people who believe in limited government and individual liberty.”

The Rand novel, about a dystopian state and the martyred industrialist who battles the degenerate government that controls it, already has a big fan base in the tea party. The opening line of Atlas Shrugged — Who is John Galt?” — appears on signs and T-shirts at tea party events nationwide, and posters of Rand decorate FreedomWorks’ Capitol Hill offices.

The Tea Party is an offshoot of pure-Libertarianism that, while ideologically opposed to Rand’s anti-Religious Objectivism, has illogically embraced her as a storied folk-hero, as something of an FDR for the small-government set. They could have chosen Reagan, but the upright Right still claims him, and if there’s one thing the Tea Party wants you to know, it’s that they’re not your grandfather’s militant conservative Republican offshoot.

In the hands of the right people, Atlas Shrugged: Part I could be exactly the rallying cry that the Tea Party needs to push them towards the critical mass necessary to field a successful Presidential Candidate in 2012. Tim Pawlenty, for instance, has been a friend to the movement.

The movie has the potential to transcend the stilted prose that Rand produced to encapsulate her philosophy. It could be a masterstroke of a political thriller, heavy with tension and a chant-able query, “Who is John Galt?” The Tea Party needs a figure to hold up as the genuine ideal, and the novel’s mysterious genius could be just such a man. Young Republicans will see this movie, perhaps in droves. It could inspire them. If all goes well, if the movie is perfect, it might even rally young moderates to the celebration of individualism, small government, and pure capitalism. Picture thousands of youth, incensed by a grand cinema, standing on the capitol steps shouting “I am John Galt! We are John Galt!” Chilling, if you’re a socialist, but for the Tea Party, an answer to Obama’s charisma.

Unfortunately for them, it appears that the film has failed in very nearly every respect:

Mick LaSalle at the San Fransico Chronicle: “A low-budget film with more than a whiff of amateurism in its writing and direction.”

Kurt Loder at Reason Online: “Sitting through this picture is like watching early rehearsals of a stage play that’s clearly doomed.”

Roger Ebert at the Chicago Sun-Times: “Let’s say you know the novel, you agree with Ayn Rand, you’re an objectivist or a libertarian, and you’ve been waiting eagerly for this movie. Man, are you going to get a letdown.”

Silas Lesnick at ComingSoon: “Look, the problem with adapting Atlas Shrugged in the first place is that it’s just not a great story.”

And, why not, Joe Morgenstern at the Wall Street Journal: “Don’t hold your breath for parts 2 and 3.”

With a current aggregated score of 6% on RottenTomatoes, it’s unlikely that the film will see wide release. Parts 2 and 3 seem all but murdered in their cribs. The movie will probably find some afterlife in private screenings for Tea Party loyalists, but such a damning critical opinion means this particular vanity project has essentially exploded in the hangar. Station, if you’d like to continue with the book’s train plotline. Like the novel before it, Atlas Shrugged: Part I seems to have failed itself through an ignorance of its medium. Ayn Rand wrote a long novel that didn’t make a particularly good piece of fiction, and John Aglialoro et al made a long movie that didn’t make a particularly good film. At the very least, it’s not quite the grand unifying artistic achievement that Rand envisioned. Even if it becomes popular among the Tea Party regulars, it lacks the momentum needed to break into mainstream, respected political channels. In one fell swoop, the whole of Rand’s heritage is relegated, finally, to the basements of fringe conservatives.

So this is Ayn Rand’s legacy: a Hollywood flop and an army of small-minded hypocrites who will tattoo “Who is John Galt?” on their arms and pretend they read her books. Rand may have believed in the virtue of individual achievement, and rallied against an America that coddled its weak and stripped its geniuses of the power of their own invention, but her philosophy has found its place among those Americans who Rand herself would have despised: the religious, the fearful, the group-thinkers. One can almost feel sorry, if not for the woman, then for the work. If to a fault, Atlas Shrugged is too bold for the Tea Party. They’ll claim it anyway, and loudly. This is the last vanguard of Randian Objectivism, and while we might not be exactly sad to see it go, we can at least pity its end at the hands of a voting block who won’t even read its seminal work.

But hey, at least they saw the movie.

Ayn’s Stupid Legacy was originally published in Midwasted on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

*Actually not.

JoAnne Kloppenburg defeated Incumbent judge David Prosser for a seat on the state of Wisconsin’s Supreme Court by a margin of about 204 votes. Out of 1,465,563 (give or take a few.)

There will be a recount, that much is certain. The state provides the service for free if the margin of victory is less than .5%, and that margin in this case is somewhere around 0.00013%. It’s going to be a long, bloody fight on both sides as municipalities quabble over the results on a ballot-by-ballot basis. And regardless of who the winner is once every vote is recounted, people are going to claim the spiritual victory for Prosser. I, and many an actual political analyst, was expecting this election to reflect the unrest and anger that Wisconsinites harbor over the stripping of their collective bargaining rights. These numbers, they will argue, a race this close, doesn’t reflect that. If a month of capitol protests can’t provide a landslide election for a left-leaning judge over a right-leaning incumbent, what will? Maybe Walker really does have as many supporters as he claims. What a scary thought.

On the other hand, that feeling might be completely wrong. Greg Sargent at the Washington Post (Long read, but great commentary:)

The emerging GOP spin on this race, according to Ben Smith, is that the razor-thin closeness of the contest constitutes vindication for Walker, and proof that the right can stand up to the labor goons. One GOPer tells Smith (who was appropriately skeptical) that this is a “massive bummer for the bad guys” because labor and Dems threw “everything they have” at this race.

Sure, GOPers will be able to crow if they win, but this is still mostly nonsense. Here’s why.

First, the current results reflect a massive and astonishingly fast swing of support away from Prosser and in Kloppenburg’s favor. In a primary election in February (Wisconsin judicial elections are nonpartisan, and the top two primary victors face off in the general), Prosser beatKoppenburg by 30 points, 55–25. The current results show she doubled her vote share in just over six weeks, while Prosser has lost ground. This huge shift happened for one reason: Scott Walker.

Second, it’s extremely rare in Wisconsin to oust sitting Supreme Court justices. In 2008, Louis Butler was unseated, but as University of Wisconsin professor Charles Franklin points out to me, he had originally been appointed and not elected. The last time this happened before that was 44 years ago, and it only happened three times before thatsince the court was created in 1852.

Third, for all the talk about labor muscle in this race, labor and Dems were actually outspent on the air by a sizable amount. According to ananalysis of outside spending by the Brennan Center, the pro-Kloppenburg forces spent $1.3 million, while the pro-Prosser forces spent a total of almost $2.2 million, nearly $1 million more. You can argue that TV spending doesn’t matter that much in this race, because a lot of this was driven by on-the-ground organizing, but if anything, the race’s closeness would make it even clearer that labor’s ground forces outperformed expections.

No question, a loss for Kloppenburg would allow GOPers to claim a much-needed victory and boast that they held off labor’s onslaught. But even without a win, labor and Dems will have exceeded expectations big time, and will have proved that the grassroots energy unleashed by Walker’s overreach is still in full force. And of course, if Kloppenburg does pull this off, it will constitute a huge win that will only lend more momentum to the recall drives and confirm that Walker remains as politically toxic as ever.

So, disheartened progressives, keep that in mind as we move forward.

Kloppenburg Wins Wisconsin Supreme Court Seat In Landslide* Election was originally published in Midwasted on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Remember this? Minnesota State Senator Dan Hall made this statement about removing his kids from the Minneapolis public school system:

“I took them out of Minneapolis because they ruined our neighborhoods with integration and segregation. I was appalled and took my eight kids out.”

Why would you say that, Senator Dan Hall? You’re reading off of a piece of paper, even, which means that at no point during your editing process did you decide that sort of blaming integration for ruining Minneapolis was a bad idea.

More over at CityPages.

Why Would You Say That, Senator Dan Hall? was originally published in Midwasted on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I loved when you appeared in that vaguely homocidal campaign ad where it kind of seemed like you wanted to cut off Obama’s head with an axe.

So, obviously I was concerned to hear you admit your family is struggling on your $174,000 a year Congressman’s salary.

It must be really hard for you. It’s too bad the constituents in that video don’t understand how hard you have it. You worked hard for your money, and if your $174,000 can pay for six kids, their $55,000 can pay for four. Tell you what — if you need a little extra help with your finances, you have my permission to go ahead and tax the poor. Those guys don’t know how good they have it.

I’ve also heard that you and your staffers are doing your damnedest to remove all traces of this video from the internet. I’ll help you out by requesting that everyone who reads this forwards the link to ten of their friends, so they don’t accidentally watch it in the future. Good luck, ol’ buddy! Here’s hoping things turn around for you soon!

Poor Sean Duffy was originally published in Midwasted on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Remember that article I posted a while back, the one that compared Pawlenty to a boring dad?

Well, CityPages just posted an awesome article lauding the possibility of a Pawlenty Presidency. And it’s hilarious.

Author Hart Van Denburg basically nails it:

Pawlenty has the conservative social mores angle locked down. How family-values is this guy? Well, in 2008 he voted to pardon convicted sex offender Jeremy Giefer because, he explained, Giefer had done the right thing and married the 14-year-old he was convicted of statutorily raping. True, the wisdom of the gesture was called into question last year when Giefer was charged with serially raping the underage daughter he had with his first victim, but the important thing is that Pawlenty recognizes the sacred relationship between a predator and his child-bride.

Follow the link for nine more gut-busting reasons to vote Pawlenty in 2012.

City Pages On Pawlenty was originally published in Midwasted on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A study by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau found that Scott Walker’s controversial budget repair bill would, surprise!, actually raise spending in Wisconsin by 1% over the next two years. Embarrassing.

Jason Stein at the Journal-Sentinel:

When the Republican governor unveiled his budget proposal on March 1, his administration said it would cut overall spending by more than $4 billion, or more than 6%. But those amounts included spending cuts that would simply amount to transferring certain funding for entities like UW-Madison and a new agency to replace the Department of Commerce off the state’s books.

“It’s not like UW-Madison is not going to be spending any money. We’re just going to have to look somewhere else to get those dollar amounts,” said Dale Knapp, research director for the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance.

The Taxpayers Alliance did its own separate analysis in which it found that if the Department of Commerce and UW-Madison were excluded from the state budget, Walker’s proposal would raise overall state spending by 1.5% over the two years.

This is actually a huge surprise for me. What’s the next step here? Will Walker’s people look over the bill and make changes to actually do what they said it would? Wasn’t this whole collective bargaining thing necessary to reduce state spending? Because, and I could be wrong here, but if stripping collective bargaining rights wasn’t actually going to do anything to help our state spend less, then why should it be in there at all? I guess it’s kind of a moot point now as Republicans took things into their own hands anyway, but it still raises a bunch of burning questions. Such as, who elected this guy, anyway?

Walker’s Budget Will Increase State Spending was originally published in Midwasted on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As if to prove that whatever Wisconsin does, Minnesota will beat, GOP legislators opened up a weird can of worms by including, among motions to render teacher’s strikes illegal and a 70% reduction in integration funding, a section of bill that completely repeals the school integration section of the Minnesota Administrative Rules.

Via the Cucking Stool:

It’s well-known that Republicans would target school integration aid, which is the subject of Section 124D.86. But the repeal of the regulations under part 3535 would literally remove “Minnesota’s commitment to the importance of integration in its public schools” from Minnesota regulations. Additionally, it would eliminate regulations requiring collection of data about segregation and requiring action to integrate racially segregated schools.

Nick Pinto at Citypages got a quote from Representative Pat Garofalo:

Rep. Pat Garofalo (R-Farmington), who chairs the committee, says the goal of the change is to focus more on school’s academic achievement than diversity of the student body.

“Desegregation is an important goal, but a more important goal is reading, writing, and arithmetic,” Garofalo told City Pages today. “Candidly, I think it’s somewhat insulting to say that in order for a black child to be learning he needs to be sitting next to a white child.”

Am I crazy for thinking this sounds crazy? No. This is insane. Look how Garofalo tries to make us feel racist for suggesting that somehow integration is bad for black children. I’m almost speechless in how much I want to grab that guy by the collar and scream, “This is not the way the world works!”

I’m not saying that I think Pat Garofalo and the other Republican supporters of this motion are racists. I do, however, think that repealing integration seems like something a racist might want to do.

Way to go, Minnesota. I’m disappointed in you. Couldn’t you just be happy trouncing your neighbors in baseball every year? You’re well on your way to out-weirding Wisconsin. Good job, I guess?

Minnesota Republicans Want To Eliminate Desegregation… Yes, Really. was originally published in Midwasted on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As of yesterday, Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty became the first Republican to officially announce his intention to run against Obama in the 2012 Presidential Election. I’m a native Minnesotan, and I don’t hate teachers, so Tim Pawlenty isn’t my man. But that’s just my bias. Who’s to say this boy-next-door with the nickname “T-Paw” (closet autotune fan?) doesn’t have what it takes to win the hearts of an entire disaffected Republican populous and lead the Right to their next great victory; undoing everything Obama’s Democrats have fought to pass during the last four years?

What are the stats? This guy is a social conservative’s wet dream, and I don’t mean that in a gay way. He’s anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-social security, anti-medicare, and he’s promised to reinstate “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” should he be elected president. Totally gnarly, right? Badass, like a Midwestern Gandalf or something. You can almost see him, standing in front of Congress or whatever, waving his arms over his head: “This bill shall not passssss!” Pawlenty is the anti-Obama. Not only has he been critical of Obama’s policies during the last few years, he has all but said he’d reverse all of his major Progressive victories. Just straight up erase the dude’s legacy.

Obviously, that’d be a huge win for Conservatives. Not just anybody can be as balls-out anti-Progressive as Tim Pawlenty and expect to serve two terms. Maybe that’s all he hopes to be; the eraser to Obama’s (erasable?) pen. Okay, bad analogy. Maybe he just wants to undo what he feels are poor fiscal decisions by Obama (basically the funding of anything that can actually help people) and disappear into history, retiring to write books with titles like Stairway to Freedom, or Tough Choices: How I Beat Obama and Saved the World.

Tim’s biggest problem is probably that nobody knows who the hell he is. He’s never served in D.C., and only really made national headlines once during his Governorship when he went all Rambo, citing unallotment and balancing the state’s budget all by himself. He doesn’t have the charisma of opinion-poll favorite Mitt Romney, nor the drooping jowls of Newt Gingrich. He’s basically just a backwater politician from Minnesota.

And Minnesota hasn’t been represented in the country’s two big seats since Walter Mondale, and he was only a Vice-President. How exciting is it to be Vice-President? I’ve never run a country, but I’m guessing it’s probably less interesting that being President. Nobody names a library after you when you’re Vice-President. Pawlenty agrees. In January he said, “If I decide to run it would be for president, not vice president.” So Pawlenty won’t settle for anything less than the best. But just who would T-Paw choose to stand by his side during his (frankly unlikely) Presidential Campaign as the GOP’s nominee? How about Michele Bachmann?

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A Pawlenty/Bachmann ticket. Oh, my. Bachmann’s fiery brand of far-Right Conservative Crazy might be just what Pawlenty needs to balance his wet-blanket image. Pawlenty running against Obama is like your uncool dad coming downstairs to say, “Alright, Liberals, the party’s over. Tell your friend Barack to go home.” Adding Bachmann to that ticket is like your mom coming downstairs high on meth, grabbing you by the collar and screaming: “HOLD ON TO YOUR BUTTS, THINGS ARE GONNA GET WEIRD!”

But the Tea Party might like weird. So far they’ve applauded Michele Bachmann, especially her bizarre throwbacks to McCarthyism. Pawlenty might run into trouble if the Congresswoman decides who make her own presidential bid. The Republicans could hit two birds with one, fucked-up stone: integrate the Tea Party into a new, far-Right leaning GOP, and pat themselves on the backs for supporting a female candidate.

It remains to be seen whether the GOP will fully embrace this new, faux-militant brand of Republicanism. Nobody can really figure out if the Tea Party is made up of Libertarians who also want to give up their principals to vote on social issues, or Social Conservatives who really did intend to read For A New Liberty but “skipped all the boring parts.” My vote is on the latter, and that’s what Pawlenty needs to bet on. He’s not a thinking man’s candidate. He’s not really anybody’s candidate. But maybe, with the help of that witch from the 6th District, he can start enough chants at Tea Party rallies to get that voting block behind him. It’s kind of his only chance.

Recent polls show Tim Pawlenty is no Mitt Romney, though both of them are uncool enough for the Right to rally behind. Polls change, and Pawlenty could actually find himself the front-runner as soon as more than 49% of people polled recognize his name. He’s shown he has the strength and courage to ignore his constituents and balance his state’s budget at the expense of education and social programs. He’s promised to put his personal opinions before public will. And, of course, he’s not really down with The Gays. On paper, that makes him the perfect candidate for all of those Tea Party hypocrites who decry Big Government, except when it suits their own bigoted ends. The deciding factor for Pawlenty’s involvement as a legitimate threat in the 2012 Presidential Election lies with Reince Priebus and the rest of the GOP. Will they embrace what so far has been regarded, even by Republicans, as a fringe political element? Honestly, I don’t know.

All I can do is hope that the man that tore down every good social institution in my home state during his eight years as Governor doesn’t get the chance to do the same to the country that I love. Stay out of the basement, Pawlenty, this party is just getting started.

Republican Roundup 2012 — Tim Pawlenty was originally published in Midwasted on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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A judge in Dane County has allowed a temporary restraining order blocking the passage of Wisconsin senators’ anti-Collective Bargaining bill.

Douglas Belkin at the Wall Street Journal:

Judge Maryann Sumi said a lawsuit filed by the Dane County district attorney had enough merit for her to issue a temporary restraining order to prevent Secretary of State Doug La Follette from publishing the bill while she reviews the case. The law takes effect only after it is published.

In his complaint, District Attorney Ismael Ozanne argued that the state’s open-meeting laws were violated when Republican leaders whisked the bill through committee last week without giving a 24-hour public notice.

This move is not entirely unexpected. State Dems promised to fight against the Republican violation of the Open Meeting Law mere minutes after the bill was passed. While this delay is only temporary, if the judge’s ruling stands it might force the bill to be re-introduced and passed for a second time. Depending on the timeline, Wisconsin Republicans might see their numbers diminished as Recall efforts continue.

Collective Bargaining Still Legal… For Now was originally published in Midwasted on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Now that our illustrious Governor has, with a few wobbly strokes of his golden pen, made official the bill his Republicans rammed through over the past two days, one can almost feel a chill come over Wisconsin. Folks are depressed and crabby in equal measure, and god help you if you come across someone in the middle of that particular venn diagram.

We’ve lost the battle, that’s for sure. The bill is law, so our options moving forward are definitely limited. What will the unions do? It’s hard to say. As state Republicans have pulled the trigger on the “nuclear option,” union activists considering the idea of a general strike might almost feel unburdened; mutually assured destruction worked to keep the USSR and USA from blasting each other into the stone age during the Cold War, but you can bet if the missiles had actually started flying whichever sap was in charge of hitting the button would have lit a cigarette and let ‘er rip.

So it remains to be seen what exactly the Unions might do. Public opinion seems to be in favor of a strike, (or folks on Twitter are particularly bloodthirsty,) but so far no official word has come down one way or the other. It seems impossible that Union leaders would take this slap on the face without issuing some retaliation, though perhaps they’re still shocked that it came at all.

Scott Walker hasn’t exactly shown himself to be hyper-aware of the demands of the people he was elected to lead, so I’m not sure he’ll respond to anything short of a state shutdown. He’s done a fine job of ignoring everyone so far. Maybe a general strike is what it’ll take to shake loose the golden, Koch-branded earplugs he’s shoved deep into his ear canals.

It feels like we’re on the verge of something, but it’s hard to say what. It’s clear that Walker and his Republicans need a wake up call. Hell, they need a cold bucket of water. Recall efforts on eligible senators are underway, as are petitions of support for a recall of Walker himself, (though he will not be eligible until January of 2012.) If a general strike is called, I’m afraid it might have to last quite a while before the conservative legislators cave. If they do at all. We might not see change until there are new faces in charge. It’s quieter today, but that’s not complacency. It’s always quiet before a storm.

Walker Makes It Official: Now What? was originally published in Midwasted on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.