It will probably be awful but it will definitely be interesting

“In the end all that’s left are flotsam, jetsam and photographs….” This used to be a pretty damn good country. Sorry to say used to be; however, things are definitely going wrong. My wife caught a few minutes of Sarah Palin’s Alaska by accident and then summed up our current reality with “What country do I want to move to?” Instinctively, Crusader AXE bristles at such remarks, but the instinct was muted last night...every place I'd want to go is either going to hell too or has already arrived there. 

Paul Krugman is becoming our Cassandra. In today’s column, he eviscerates Alan Simpson and the old coots comments about how he can’t wait for the bloodbath when the tea party people want to slash spending as payback for increasing the credit limit. As a soldier, I never had a subordinate worth a damn from Wyoming…Simpson is from Wyoming…Dick Cheney is from Wyoming. Nothing worth a damn is from Wyoming. I've been to Wyoming and I've met a lot of nice people there who really seem to have their heads screwed on straight. I guess the diseased, deranged and useless are driven out by the remainder cullign the herd. Simpson’s remarks remind me of that, which I do not find at all reassuring.

Krugman’s column today is well worth the time, but I’m going to cut to the climax. He writes

How does this end? Mr. Obama is still talking about bipartisan outreach, and maybe if he caves in sufficiently he can avoid a federal shutdown this spring. But any respite would be only temporary; again, the G.O.P. is just not interested in helping a Democrat govern.

My sense is that most Americans still don’t understand this reality. They still imagine that when push comes to shove, our politicians will come together to do what’s necessary. But that was another country. (And besides, the wench is dead…)

It’s hard to see how this situation is resolved without a major crisis of some kind. Mr. Simpson may or may not get the blood bath he craves this April, but there will be blood sooner or later. And we can only hope that the nation that emerges from that blood bath is still one we recognize.

My guess is that it will be worse than we can think, if only because the linked nature of everything wasn’t so great before. It’s uncomfortable to admit, but I think Krugman nailed it on his blog yesterday when he wrote that Obama appears to have bought into the right-wing myth about the New Deal and the way the world works…and, we should have known it.

More and more, it’s becoming clear that progressives who had their hearts set on Obama were engaged in a huge act of self-delusion. Once you got past the soaring rhetoric you noticed, if you actually paid attention to what he said, that he largely accepted the conservative storyline, a view of the world, including a mythological history, that bears little resemblance to the facts… And confronted with a situation utterly at odds with that storyline … he stayed with the myth. 

Governing in a Republic is not about power – it’s about using power to make things work for the electorate. In our country, the electorate includes all citizens over the age of 18. It’s not just the voters of your particular stripe, print or plaid – it’s about all the voters. This means having the sense to do things that are perhaps electorally unwise but that need to be done. It means being able to respond to the environment the way that it is. It doesn’t mean going off to sulk or hopefully get your head patted in India. It means getting mad and getting things done.

Not happening on this guy’s watch. The reason that we are in our current situation is not because of the Tea Party. The Tea Party came to be because of some structural things wrong with this nation and the inability or unwillingness of the President to do what needed to be done. He’s worked so hard to square the circle that he ended up with a trapezoid, and doesn’t get it yet. Nancy Pelosi got legislation passed, but Harry Reid and the Senate failed to do what needed to be done. It’s interesting that every time it looked like Reid would actually send for the mattresses, the Republicans would suddenly become reasonable on their various filibusters. But, in the interest of maintaining civility, the President and the Leader would collude…for what?

So, I think the senile gloating of Alan Simpson combined with the babbling of John Kyl and the rest of the Washington establishment points to a new day. A bad day, probably. Perhaps the President ought to take a page out of the Marine Corps’ book. My thought when hearing that the Marines were bringing some Abrams Main BattleTanks to join the party in Helmand province was along the lines of “What kept you?” While I wouldn’t recommend using them in Waziristan, the idea of laying down 120mm covering fire in an area of that Goddamned place is very attractive. There is nothing restrained about the Abrams Weapons System.

Here’s a thought about restraint? I keep hearing that the Congress has to recess for Christmas and Thanksgiving? Why? Bring that stuff to a vote – Unemployment Extension, Defense Authorization, Aid to the States and lay it out simply. If you don’t extend unemployment, this is what happens. If you don’t pass this Defense Authorization Bill, this happens. If you don’t pass the Aid to the States, this happens. And, get the goddamn mattresses out in the Senate…

Or not.  Jim DeMint has a lean and hungry look; Rick Perry and DeMint would make a great Cassius and Brutus. While no oratorical Cicero, I can see McConnell waiving his hands and babbling about Caesar’s tyranny and continuing to encourage this nonsense. Sarah Palin and Dick Armey make a great Clodia and Clodius…The thing that reassures me the most is that between the military, the media and the academy, we have more going for us than the Romans did. But, I’d beware the Ides of March this coming year…

 

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