Happy Shutdown Eve

With dysfunction the norm and with the extremists in control, shut downs are likely to become more frequent. So we need to invent a whole panoply of shut down humor, salutations, and perhaps even note cards we can send each other. Heck shut downs may become a national holiday right up there with Thanksgiving. I suggest we switch Shut Down Day with Labor Day, since the latter is no longer about labor but risk takers and job creators.

Meanwhile.

There are no signs of progress. There is nothing left to say. America is descending into a third world level of hapless, stupid, and crony driven governance. It’s politics are quaintly out of date, corrupt, flooded with cash, rigged, and totally biased towards one segment of the population. That this is way different from the image the nation wants and likes to project merely highlights the collapse.

This has all come about because of the lack of leadership within the Republican party. There is an extraordinary lack of political courage on display. No one wants to break ranks, call the Tea party bluff, and purge the extremists.

I think the only way we will rid ourselves of the blackmailers is to precipitate a major crisis. We need to go over the cliff and show everyone just how dangerous they are. This will involve a permanent shift in the world’s view of America – especially its fiscal reliability. But that shift simply would surface an existing truth. America is divided. It has abandoned its status as a land of opportunity. It is riddled through with class divisions, and it has diluted its democracy.

Exposing this as concrete truth will allow the healing to commence. Up until then, as long as we pretend to be the America of days gone by, we cannot clean things up, because too few of us will understand the gap that now yawns between the myth and the reality of America.

Step one in our rehabilitation is to demonstrate that we will not be bullied by extremists.

That’s the only positive spin I can put on the lamentable state we are now in.