Whitewater’s tired, stodgy town fathers, and chief bureaucrat, aren’t really conservative or liberal: they’re simply reactionary.
So when a few working people came to town, to protest lawfully near a politician’s house, one read about this as though Whitewater were besieged by barbarians by pickets(!) from Milwaukee.
That’s Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Madison, Wisconsin — as though Madison or Milwaukee were on Mars. Has no one from Whitewater been to Marquette, or Summerfest, or a Bucks game? Has no one from Whitewater been to UW-Madison, or the Kohl and Alliant centers? Intimating that people from these cities are somehow sinister interlopers is too funny.
They are Wisconsinites, as Whitewater’s residents are.
They are working people, as we have in town.
Had they represented the slightest danger, or committed any crimes, they would have been arrested. They didn’t, and so they weren’t.
Like the vast numbers at the Capitol, they were peaceful.
But if one obstinately believes that protesters are thugs, then it leads to all sorts of political mistakes.
When protesters came to Rep. Wynn’s house, he took umbrage, and one saw on the website of a Wynn-supporter pictures of the protesters on one side of the street, and Wynn and his supporters on the other.
This was meant to be clever, to show that Wynn had anticipated the protesters’ arrival.
It might have been far sharper if, in the photo of Wynn’s supporters, one saw a coffee urn and donuts for anyone protesting. Wynn would have shown that he anticipated the protesters’ arrival, but that he was non-plussed about their presence.
Unfortunately, ire overcame a truly sharp photo, and so Wynn stuck to the contention that the very presence of the protesters was illegitimate.
To make the point clear, the supportive website assured nervous, quaking readers that those savages from another city were met with a heavy police presence.
It was a tone-deaf response.
It makes one wonder if result in the last election for the 43rd was simply dumb luck, and that the new incumbent won’t be able to deftly manage the tensions within a narrowly-held district.