You see, when the alienated young man returned from the place where he felt alienated, he found that he was still alienated, because his city had changed. It used to be so harmonious, but somehow these people who were not the Madisonians he grew up with had taken over political power..
Well, Mr. McCoy, I hate to bring you down, but the city of Madison is the capital of an entire state, and, sometimes, an election gives the majority and the governorship to — gasp! — that other party, the one the people of Madison would like to discipline its citizens never to mention any positive feeling for. That discipline was the harmony of Madison that you remember, pre-Cambodia. When the Republicans from the hinterlands came to town and began to enact their policies, Madisonians had a collective nervous breakdown in public.
Post-protests, McCoy is bummed out to find Madisonians in a bad mood. They failed, despite strenuous efforts, to deny Republicans the power that had been legitimately and democratically won in a thoroughly fair election
Yes, the ability to demonize "the other" is a good topic. But I'm more interested in the idea that in the budget struggle that affected the entire state, Madison residents are sad they couldn't reverse the statewide tide on their own.
Can we be thankful that Washington, D.C., isn't a voting territory able to exert that kind of pressure on our federal leaders? Indeed, perhaps our states should follow the example of our federal government and create state capital districts outside of the municipal boundaries of state cities in order to provide a little more insulation from locals who feel entitled to run the entire state despite the wishes of outsiders who unfortunately represent the majority but fortunately are too far away to match the locals' numbers on the streets.
We can be grateful the mob lost in Madison, but they never should have been on the field in the first place.
