Debt ceiling madness, part 2: It's over

[openspace4life]

Predictably enough, when fiscal terrorists threatened to destroy the global economy, Democrats surrendered.  Obama could have used a Constitutional override and unilaterally raised the debt ceiling, if he were principled enough about not negotiating with terrorists, but that would have meant admitting that our democratic system had gone so badly wrong as to allow people who are effectively terrorists into Congress, which of course is counter to the Democratic Party line.  Of course, the terrorists wouldn't characterize the trillion-dollar cuts they got as a real surrender, because they want so much more--but they needn't worry, because they can do it again any time they please.

 

As a result, American democracy is effectively over.  You have four choices in the next election: You can vote for the terrorists, you can vote for the people who surrendered to the terrorists (like my Representative, Jay Inslee), you can vote for the people holding up the sane minority and help slow down our government's slide into oblivion a bit, or you can vote for someone who wants to roll back the most damaging cuts but who is unelectable due to Citizens United etc.  None of these choices will change the fact that every time the debt ceiling needs to be raised, or an important spending bill needs to get through Congress to keep the government running at all, another large chunk of services that millions of Americans depend on will be extorted away.  (And yes, they might cut some military spending at the same time, but that's a pretty thin silver lining.)

 

Of course, by the Principle of Mediocrity, all of the above is probably a gross exaggeration.  Since most Americans and even most Tea Partiers want to keep Medicare and Social Security intact, the terrorists may well be destroying their electoral base, who could replace them with less extreme candidates in the Republican primaries and thus shift the political center a little bit to the left.  But on the Democratic side, it's hard to muster any enthusiasm for voting at all, after watching our party so completely fail to uphold its principles.  When we elected Obama, we thought it was a huge step forward for progressives, but now he talks like a Tea Partier himself, demanding that the government shrink itself to solve the supposedly all-consuming "debt crisis," regardless of the cost to the little people who paid for half of his election campaign.

 

So the conservatives have managed to convert me, in a sense.  I now see the government as a sick, twisted monstrosity, and can't see any way to seriously believe that it will get better (though admittedly my imagination might improve after a hypothetical good night's sleep).  The difference, of course, is that I don't want the government to become so small that I can safely ignore it.   I see it as "sick" with a particularly ugly and self-destructive autoimmune disorder, and I want it to stop the seemingly inexorable process of destroying anything and everything good that it has ever done for the people it supposedly serves.

Comments

[bdunbar.livejournal.com]

The difference, of course, is that I don't want the government to become so small that I can safely ignore it. I see it as "sick" with a particularly ugly and self-destructive autoimmune disorder, and I want it to stop the seemingly inexorable process of destroying anything and everything good that it has ever done for the people it supposedly serves.

You can't have that. Because people suck. Government getting sick is part of the plan. It's built in. A feature.

Setup the perfect system of governance. The people that started it believe in and do the right thing because they experienced what came before.

It changes over time. It must, a system with no flex is brittle and breaks real easy. But the changes you allow for flex allow people to expand their kingdoms and grab power.

This is natural. It's the default program for people.

It takes a real honest man not to grab power and build kingdoms. People lie to themselves and say 'well I won't abuse new power x'. Sometimes they don't.

Their successor will.


All government sucks, just in different ways. Myself, I think the general good is served best by a government that is small and inoffensive, easily ignored.

Sure, it can't do as much good as you would like. But it also cannot do as much harm. Government does not love you: the same government that will enforce ADA ... is the same government that will bomb bomb Libya.

[scifiben.livejournal.com]

This argument is pointless. I could tell you that I know governments do horrific things, but that they also do wonderful things, things no one else can do, but it won't matter. I could tell you that terrible wars will go on regardless of whether governments or megacorporations (or some combination) are calling the shots, because war is profitable, but it won't matter. I could tell you that without government regulation, unscrupulous corporations will flood our air, water, and food supplies with dangerous chemicals and life expectancy will drop like a stone, but it won't matter. I can even tell you that Bill Gates, perhaps the most famous living exemplar of capitalist success, wants to more than double government investment in basic energy research, but it won't matter. Nothing I can say will change your mind in the slightest, and nothing you can say will change mine, at least not if we stick to a reasonable tone. Only simplistic emotional appeals stand a chance. Ideological disagreements suck that way.

Your side is winning the emotional battle. 58% of Democrats were convinced (http://www.wbir.com/rss/article/178795/16/Poll-Thumbs-down-on-the-debt-ceiling-deal) that the trillion-dollar spending cuts were better than any alternative, whether because the behavior of insane conservative politicians made them disgusted with government in general, or because they were terrified of the economic collapse that now seems to be happening regardless. Our side tries to do the same thing, endlessly repeating the graphic stories of extreme weather events that drown or set aflame inconceivably huge swaths of landscape, but conservatives have seemingly perfected the art of refusing to notice or care that human actions may have had some substantial role in triggering these calamities.

But since neither of us is interested in playing that game, let's change the subject. Are you coming to this year's Space Elevator Conference? I'll be there representing a website called SpaceWiki (http://spacewiki.com), and my colleague Brandon Sanders is giving a talk on Sunday about how to motivate people to work on a project that would, in his words, "fundamentally change how the human species relates to the cosmos."

[firelizard5.livejournal.com]

This about sums up my feelings on the whole thing:

http://slowclapforcongress.com/