About Time

The following is happening up in Chi-town, where ALEC is having a convention:

http://my.firedoglake.com/kitoconnell/2013/08/06/moral-monday-chicagalec/

I have been hoping for some of these dots to be connected for some time now. Like about four years. When Wisconsin suffered a counter-revolution so severe it's jawbone split in two, and couldn't even expel the rotting tooth with a recall election and Ed Schultz's undivided attention, I was pretty sure things were serious. This was prior to the counter-revolution that hit North Carolina.

The people who started ALEC are long-term thinkers aiming at returning the United States to a time when ordinary working people had zero leverage. They are utterly opposed to unions, to civil rights, and to women's rights. They see no point in making people's elderly lives better. Once ordinary working people stop being able to work, they are exactly what Mitt Romney said they were in an unguarded moment on the campaign trail--"takers." There is little room in the ALEC universe for anyone who does not "produce." There is little room for any aspect of human life not connected to work--if you're an ordinary working person that is. Up there in the lofty heights, there's plenty of elbow room, at least 50 miles of it. That's why Mitt has four mansions. And Mitt is really only on the lower rungs of the elite.

Judging by the first paragraph, this protest is being driven by some of the same folks who have been going to jail every Monday the NC legislature was in session. Good for them. Their sacrifice has begun to matter, at least a little.

The right wing has taken a long time to build their campaign. Along the way they've built whole universities, complete with whole law schools, dedicated to an alternative view of what, in fact, is pretty much reality. As even the Romans knew, good lawyers can successfully argue any side of a dispute. See, e.g., the acquittal of George Zimmerman, official loose cannon of the Shawn Hannity Show. This appalling cancer on the body politic is long advanced.

At least some folks, at this moment, are taking some action.