I’m not sure what language they speak here, but I’m in Wisconsin. I don’t know why. I almost turned back at the border when I saw a sign advertising a Dinesh D’Souza event that said “KEEP WISCONSIN RED”. This is not comfortable territory for me.
I’m scared. Can I go home now?
Dinesh who? Oh yeah, I seem to remember that name vaguely. Ancient history, soon to be completely forgotten.
Run PZ, Run!
I was just in Wisconsin for a funeral for one of the Redhead’s uncle. The road signage confused even the navigation system in my car, causing me problems.
Very happy to be back in blue state less confusing road designations.
Instructions unclear. Accidentally founded a workers collective in Wisconsin.
Trust you AMERICANS to have red and blue reversed,in the rest of the world RED means Left ,and Blue means bunch of wackaloons .
@davidc1: Really, the blue is about consistent with what is blue in other countries. The difference is whether the other party is to the left of it, or even further to the right.
Get one of the shirts. Print a hammer and sickle overlay on it.
As for d’Souza…he is an admitted violator of campaign finance laws…he accepted the pardon.
Welcome to episode 3.231*10e213 of “PZ is confronted with the fact that most Americans aren’t the enlightened ubermensch of Star Trek”.
Seriously, why Wisconsin?
What is wrong with you?
There might be two or three liberals there. A fantasy writer I like (Pat Rothfuss) lives in Madison. I used to think Neil Gaiman lived there too, but… turns out he lives near Minneapolis. Wrong direction.
@9 You mean lil’ ol’ me? I just enjoy poking holes in the progressive thought bubble. You know, the one in which everyone recycles, eats vegan, drinks fair trade coffee (oh, but not after the CDC said coffee might be bad for you) and is anxious about composting and that those who don’t share all that are the straggling rear-guard of an already defeated enemy.
Coming to terms with the fact that we’re the outliers may come in handy with making some genuine progress.
On behalf of my state, I greatly apologize. We used to be a home of progressive thought. Our largest city had several socialist mayors. Then the rural Redneck trash and the Lilly, White-Flight, suburbanites ruin it all with Republicanism.
P.S. Fuck you, Susan. P.Z., please banhammer this pile of Right-Wing sub-human shit. It annoys me.
willj @10
There are plenty of Lefties in the major cities, but politics here is largely dominated by the rural counties filled with gun-toting Christian trash, and Milwaukee’s suburban residents, whose parents left the big citiy in the 70s and 80s to get away from all the scary brown people.
Such an even-tempered and well-considered response, Akira. You do so validate that progressives are intellectually superior.
run! run like the wind! save yourself!!
My sister lives in Wisconsin.
Of course, she’s trying to get out of the state as soon as her medical residency is up.
Susan’s posts are like watching a tornado hit a landfill: all that happens is garbage going everywhere.
@Susan Montgomery:
I wrote a bunch. I deleted it. Your post is a waste of space & I realized I didn’t actually want to have a conversation about it.
“Such an even-tempered and well-considered response”
The sea lions are with us…
Susan Montgomery@11:
I just enjoy poking holes in the progressive thought bubble. You know, the one in which everyone recycles, eats vegan, drinks fair trade coffee (oh, but not after the CDC said coffee might be bad for you) and is anxious about composting and that those who don’t share all that are the straggling rear-guard of an already defeated enemy.
You mean the bubble that exists largely in your imagination?
So the way to burst a political thought bubble is to vomit fallacious stereotypes all over it?
Susan, your rendition of Don Quixote is the least entertaining I’ve ever seen. You do a disservice to the material.
Apparently according to Susan I don’t belong here, since I’m not a vegan, don’t drink any sort of coffee, let alone fair trade coffee, and am not anxious about composting. How can you be anxious about composting? Oh, and my primary interest in recycling is the cash I can make by taking my beverage containers in for their deposits.
Commies in Wisconsin? Well, perhaps they could pull the political spectrum back towards… oh. Oh, that kind of red. Yuck.
ed seedhouse @19
The sea lions are with us…
Yeah. I find it fascinating the way that keyboard technology is so adaptive these days. I’d never have thought it was possible to type with flippers.
timgueguen @ 23:
Have to admit, I’ve never seen the point of getting anxious about composting either. After all, the ecosystem manages to do it just fine all on its own if I pile the kitchen peelings and such around the base of the passionfruit vine.
What do you drink rather than coffee? I’m a tea fan myself (I save the tealeaves from the teabags[1] to put on the ground around the lemon tree) although I’m having to cut back a bit these days after midday and stick with hot water. Ah, the perils of growing old…
[1] See, this is how you can tell I’m a genuine left-winger – all proper tea is theft, after all![2]
[2] Proudly sourced from the British Heritage Joke Foundation.
I am not American, not a vegan (and I do not consider veganism being anything else than a personal dietary choice), I don’t dring any coffee, but… I admit to being anxious about composting. Having a large garden means composting really is important. My neighbour does not compost and her veggies do not grow that well on the depleted soil.
Suzan Montgomery, you are not poking holes in any bubble. You do not know what “poking holes in a bubble” means. I do not remember seeing you put forward any cogent argument whatsoever anywhere, only aspersions, assumptions and pointles contrarianism.
For example, what in this post leads you to assume that PZ (or anyone here) thinks that the Republicans are “straggling rear-guard of an already defeated enemy”? It is quite the opposite, the recognition that they are strong and significant political force for the worse is the point of posts like this. If there were any bubble, it is PZ’s post that would be poking a hole in it. All you are doing is mocking that effort.
You are so desperately trying to be witty and pointy, but you come off only as a halfwit and a rather dull one at that.
I saw a sign for the same event a couple weeks ago and found it equally unpleasant. However, having lived in both, I suspect Wisconsin is not that much more conservative than Minnesota. Or if it is, it is a recent development, given than Wisconsin went for Obama in both 2008 and 2012 by margins comparable to those in Minnesota. Both states have their share of ignorant northern rednecks, especially in rural areas. If anything, Madison is more liberal than the Twin Cities, but it is also smaller and represents a smaller portion of the population, making the state as a whole more of a proverbial toss-up.
We’ve been contemplating returning to Wisconsin to escape Florida. I’m sure plenty of people here know why it would be a step up. As wanderingelf @27 says, it’s because the cities are smaller, and one of the bigger cities, Green Bay, is more rural than city, at least in their politics and such. Just look at the congressional district map; Milwaukee and Madison are carved all to hell without care for keeping similar populations together in order to dilute the Democrat vote. Each city has small blue districts that are a core part of the city and multiple red fingers coming in from all angles that are mostly rural with a tiny sliver of urban area. Apparently the Wisconsin voters who brought the case didn’t prove well enough that gerrymandering affected them. So they could still win if they do that. I haven’t followed the case closely enough to understand why they didn’t prove it, but I hope they remedy that.
@6 Most left wing parties have red as their colour .
The funniest part of Susan’s comments is that I learned about the importance of composting and recycling from my gun totin’ rural living NRA member white republican conservative Christian family. Why, it’s almost like it’s possible for one can accept the relevant, sensible ideas shared among us while discarding the irrelevant, bigoted, or nonsensical. But sure, bubble.
To me, Wisconsin is a glaring example of what happens to a seemingly otherwise reasonable populace when Koch money starts pouring into a state to fund its Teapublicans. Going on nine years now since the first round of protests?
Yeah, I’m tired of Susan’s smug/snide act, too. Banned.
What does “Hola auf Wasau!” mean?
To me, the title looked like a Spanish/German mashup so I was sort of expecting a guest post by Giliell.
(AFAIK she hasn’t directly disclosed the name of her hometown)
Like quite a few others it seems, my very first reaction to seeing this was believing it to be an ad for communism. I was confused for about a minute until I remembered that you Americans have this weird tradition of Red = Republican, Blue = Democrat. The rest of the Western world, including Canada and the UK is pretty much the opposite, with the left-wing or at least centrist party as red, and the conservative party as blue. Also weird is that in the 50s and 60s, Americans had this big thing against Communism, led by Republicans. Were they really okay with sharing a color with the commie scourge? In the current political age which is defined by symbolism and dog-whistles, where nobody really says what they believe or what they mean (and instead we see people use proxies like “tough on crime” to mean favoring authoritarian policing directed against minorities, and “family values” to mean being against any type of family that doesn’t look identical to the one the user of the phrase grew up in), I find it hard to believe that a color that was a literal synonym for Communist (we gotta fight the Reds) was accepted as the color of the GOP by its members.
I think that the USoA political colour switch is part of the Russian (Red Commies) conspiracy.
(…we’ve always used red for right…)
It’s a hallowed tradition going way, way back to the election campaign of 2000. Surely the rest of the world must cease its stubborn obduracy and fall into line any time now?
Someone should post Better Dead Than Red posters next to them. Nothing like a bit of conflicting right-wing propaganda to confuse shit even more.