I just got back from the Capitol Building here in Madison. My thoughts below the fold if you are interested.
The time was around 8pm when I was down there. The streets around the capitol are all open. Foot traffic is a bit above normal. There are the odd one or two people here and there walking around outside with signs. I ran into the typical amount of drunk college kids. There is a LOT of trash around the capitol building. The streets department has simply left the barricades on the streets around the capitol so they can just slide them over tomorrow or Monday for the next round of rallies. The cops and everyone else will probably get a break tomorrow as we have a major snow and ice storm scheduled for Sunday. That will no doubt keep the crowds down a bit.
Inside the capitol there were quite a few people, but fewer than I expected. I was able to walk right up to the center of the rotunda, where people were yelling and banging drums. The volume is absolutely terrifying. The sound in the rotunda is good – it was louder on the upper levels. I have no idea how the people in there can stand it. It would drive me totally bananas. I don’t know how anyone will sleep in there tonight, but people are bedding down.
It appeared that members of the UW band were the drummers. The vast majority of the people I saw there were either college kids or dead enders.
Most of the people who looked like they were bedding down for the night were college kids. Someone was delivering free pizzas (boy did those look nasty) to the protesters. They also had bottled water there. I took one to deplete my enemies’ supplies.
The bathrooms were surprisingly clean. I have seen much worse at Soldier Field.
The entire capitol building is covered in signs. They are taped all over the place. It looks like shit.
I have tons of photos and video I will upload in the coming days.
Am I like totally weird in that, when I was an eighteen year old college freshman, even at that tenderest of age I found my fellow collegiate “activists” to be utterly insufferably arrogant, and could not figure out for the life of me where these yapping little puppies who had never held a long term job, founded a business, raised a family, payed significant taxes, served their country, none of it, got off assuming they knew a damn thing about how the world works, or had even a hint of credibility about same?
I read a lot of people saying, “Oh, I was like that, then I got older and started thinking differently, etc etc” and bless their little hearts…. but isn’t it logically self-evident that people that age still have a lot to learn? (God knows they have A LOT to learn.) I mean, this dynamic has gone on for centuries I suppose, but am I some sort of frikkin’ sooper-jeenyus that I figured this out as a freshman?
Never did quite get that.
And GOD ALMIGHTY…. college activists are the most insufferably insolent wretches.
When I was leaving today I saw the pass-the-Bill, Pro-Walker, Tea Party crowd taking their signs with them and I saw no trash being left behind.
Andrew X – I thought the same thing about the college kids. If you could actually sit down with them and try to have a conversation, I am sure you would get a lot of blank stares. The other thing I thought was that I had two major things I needed in college. Girls and booze. I imagine a lot of the guys down there were there to impress a female, or possibly to tell one that they meet there whatever they wanted to hear to lead to some things later.
Lex – when I upload the photos Monday you will be amazed. That beautiful building has been essentially vandalized from top to bottom, inside and out. The hallways were lined with signs, and they are taped up all over the place. When this is all over the custodians will have a LOT to do. The garbage cans outside of the building are all overflowed, and there is a ring of garbage around them on the ground.
How many states allow the public to have sleepovers in their capitol building like Wisconsin apparently does? What a boon that must be to the homeless!