How the Other Half Thinks

Scott Walker got punk'd yesterday, and had a 20 minute phone call in which he spoke quite candidly about what's going on in Wisconsin with Ian Murphy of the Buffalo Beast (or 50 Most Loathesome fame), thinking Murphy was David Koch of the Koch brothers.

You can listen to the call here:



and here:



Edited transcript here.

No real surprises, and no admissions of overt wrongdoing, though there was at least one tactical error in describing the quorum trap Walker's people are working on.  Still, that's just political hardball, and my panties remain unbunched despite its dirtiness.

No, the real takeaway is the mindset behind Walker's moves, and the coziness of the oligarchy/parasite class with the officials their money helps elect.  Posing as David Koch, Murphy gets right through to the governor (whose face must be pretty red, now that this has gone public), which of course I would expect, but expecting and hearing firsthand are two different things.

It may be that Walker genuinely believes that he's doing the right thing.  He probably does.  After all, no one is a villain in their own mind, and people generally do what they think is right, or find ways to paint doing what they want or what is to their advantage as the right thing to do.  But it's also clear who the man's real constituency is, and who he really represents.  And it's not the working people of Wisconsin, who are only useful insofar as they have been made to suffer, and can be convinced to desire the suffering of others like them, to provide cover for the plutocracy to make everyone suffer even more, so that they can have what little wealth remains outside their immediate control.