The only two remaining teams are the Socialists and the Tea Party Libertarians. And while the commies may not have a brain, at least they have a heart. The TPL show no evidence for either.
And rightly so. The Republicans brought a screaming child into a movie theater. So if the Republicans can’t control that screaming terror, the other grown ups in the room have to present a united front and have that parent either control the child or leave the theater with him in tow. The way things stand right now, the child is screaming his head off, the Republicans are shuffling around looking embarassed and offering up excuses for the behaviour of the rotten kid, while the Democrats are looking on in disaproval waiting for some sort or responsible action on the part of the Republicans.
Is that going to happen? My worry is that it will not. What’s worse, the kid having the screaming tantrum will end up ruining movie night for everybody.
Analogies aside… The Tea Party Libertarians (or whatever they want to call themselves) have dug in for trench warfare. They feel like they have nothing to lose by doing so and everything to gain if gov’t becomes so fractured that it will be easier to achieve their goals with a piecemeal approach. They have enough support from the people they claim to represent. They have a political voice in the gov’t. They clearly feel like they are gaining because this shut down is the biggest victory they’ve ever accomplished to date. I see no reason they should change their tactics now. In fact this is a clear signal that what they’re doing is progress towards achieving their goals. It’s not entirely clear what exactly those goals are and I don’t believe they can articulate them either. Many have tried to get them to express it in specific terms and all have failed.
We can speculate and many would agree that a fracturing of the US gov’t and society along these lines would be a bad thing but I believe the TPL’s want exactly this sort of scenario to play out. They want to achieve some sort of fantasy autonomy and break from the federated/republic model to then govern their feifdoms as they see fit. Sure, it’s a ridiculous and immature ideal and would serve to harm many more than it would help. We can try to explain that it would harm most TPL’s and that it would ultimately be against their interests to lose many of the benefits provided to them by the federal gov’t, but we’re not dealing with rational wants. We’re dealing with people who want a revolution for the sake of a revolution; These are rebels without a clue.
Historians, sociologists and psychologists will in time come up with a theory about why such relatively large elements of a well established democratic society decided to take their bat and ball and go home. Maybe they’ll even get it right. But right now, it’s becoming depressing clear that there are people who are determined to destroy an essentially cohesive society by exploiting the very same rights and privilages that are afforded to them because of the society in which they live. They do not realize, or don’t want to, that once they achieve these goals there will be no more safety net and no one to protect their “freedom”.
I don’t know why they are not able to understand the consequences of their desires. For the same reason that inmates should not run assylums, I believe it’s the job of those in gov’t who understand the potential consequences to discourage this sort of hostage taking of the institution. Perhaps not enough have tried hard enough to do so. The Democrats are stepping up but with too little & too late in the way of public support (so far). The Republicans appear to be throwing their hands up in the air and yelling “don’t kill me” to their own TPL members.
It’s a real fuckshow folks. And we’ve got front row seats.
