It's Closing Time

The shutdown, the shutdown.  When I last worked in Washington, apparently adults frequented the halls of Congress. Even when St. Ronald of Reagan ruled the place, inspiring both lavish praise and equally lavish disdain from his opposition, no one spoke of shutting down the government in order to defeat whatever St. Ronald was trying to do. Now, given that St. Ronald was all about despising the government he ran ( “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem”)  it might be surprising that there was no government shutdown during his tenure.  One could even speculate that some effort might have been made by someone during Shrub’s tenure to shut down government, if only to quell his rather elaborate war machine that was fueled by lies, more lies and damned lies.

But no, such an action would have been seen as counterproductive and perhaps even as anti-American.

When Gingrich decided, foolishly as it turned out, to shut down the government in 1995, he was simply gambling that he would outlast Bill Clinton. Turns out Gingrich wasn’t clever enough by half to outwit Clinton.  So, Gingrich rolled the dice and Clinton used the shutdown to fuel his re-election campaign. One might have imagined that some lessons would have been learned by that absurd effort by the GOP.

Apparently, the idiot-savants who now run the GOP, assuming that anyone actually runs the GOP, learned nothing. Now, having succeeded in shutting down the government, they spend most of their time whining about the fact that Obama won’t talk to them.  The poor babies.

It may now be time for the remaining adults within the GOP to reassert control of their party—maybe John McCain should try smacking Ted Cruz across the forehead with a 2 x 4, you know, just to get his attention. And then perhaps Cruz could be sent to stand in the corner for the rest of the year, while the adults take charge.

And apparently, we ain’t seen anything yet. Wait until the debt ceiling is reached.  It is said that the teabaggers are licking their chops and drooling in anticipation of destroying the full faith and credit of the United States Government.

And we worry about Islamic terrorists.

Perhaps we need to begin worrying more about ourselves.  Lincoln, spoke to this very point:

“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."
(from "The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions: Address Before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois" January 27, 1838)
One suicide . . . coming up.