Unions are a big thing in America; I don't know why Walker thought he could so callously dismiss them. Did he really think there wouldn't be a fight?
Probably he felt that the time was ripe. Neoconservative sentiment is hot right now in America, and the economy is lousy; except rather than making people look towards their own protections, that just helps promote a dog-eat-dog, screw-everyone-else-I-got-mine mentality among the desperate working class. There's also a resurgence of 1950s era anti-communism going around, being used as a tool to discredit and cripple the progressive and human rights movement, covering everything from health care to equal pay standards for women.
You also have a generation that is growing up in America with no memory of what life was like before the unions, or when and why their fathers and grandfathers fought so hard and so desperately for them. See also people who think that "feminism" is a dirty word; since they've lived in a world where women have always had voting rights and always had at least the semblence of equal employment, then they can rest content in their privilege and never have to imagine a world where that isn't so.
Heck, even in race relations this still crops up from time to time, or you wouldn't get people declaring "Racism is over," upon the election of a black man to high office. But at least race issues are still enough in the public consciousness that people know to dismiss such comments as ridiculous. If you try to point out however that women make 75% the pay of men in the same jobs, or that one our of seven women will be raped in their lifetime; or that 1% of our population controls 90% of our wealth and this should be considered a bad thing, you'll simply get laughed out of court.
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Probably he felt that the time was ripe. Neoconservative sentiment is hot right now in America, and the economy is lousy; except rather than making people look towards their own protections, that just helps promote a dog-eat-dog, screw-everyone-else-I-got-mine mentality among the desperate working class. There's also a resurgence of 1950s era anti-communism going around, being used as a tool to discredit and cripple the progressive and human rights movement, covering everything from health care to equal pay standards for women.
You also have a generation that is growing up in America with no memory of what life was like before the unions, or when and why their fathers and grandfathers fought so hard and so desperately for them. See also people who think that "feminism" is a dirty word; since they've lived in a world where women have always had voting rights and always had at least the semblence of equal employment, then they can rest content in their privilege and never have to imagine a world where that isn't so.
Heck, even in race relations this still crops up from time to time, or you wouldn't get people declaring "Racism is over," upon the election of a black man to high office. But at least race issues are still enough in the public consciousness that people know to dismiss such comments as ridiculous. If you try to point out however that women make 75% the pay of men in the same jobs, or that one our of seven women will be raped in their lifetime; or that 1% of our population controls 90% of our wealth and this should be considered a bad thing, you'll simply get laughed out of court.