Shutdown Theater

Have you all been enjoying the show that's been going on for the past couple weeks? What a performance! The House Republicans have been pretending to take a bold stand against Obamacare while the Senate Democrats have collectively yawned, put their hands behind their heads, and shut their eyelids. "Wake me up when the 3rd act is over," they seem to be saying.

You see, these Senate Dems and the President know this is all theater. They know that the House Republicans weren't really going to hold the line on defunding Obamacare. They never do. The GOP lost its spine a long time ago. That's not to say there aren't a few stalwarts in there who would have gladly seen this through to the end, but we all knew, especially and including the Senate Dems and the President, that if they just let this go on long enough that Speaker Boehner would fold. They were never scared and that's why they never felt the need to negotiate.

Truth is, we don't really have a 2-party system in this country anymore. We don't have true checks and balances. While it was a good idea in theory, I'm sure the Founders didn't realize we would soon be electing a bunch of spineless, gutless, remorseless, idiotic psychopaths to run our country. A group of people who are so morally devoid, who lack individual thought, who grew up with and espouse no set of guiding principles, who can't even honor an oath to their spouses nonetheless to a piece of paper, and who have no moral character whatsoever so as to render checks and balances useless, nay, to render even a 2-party system useless. It's not Republicans vs. Democrats anymore, they're all in bed together now. It's the ruling class vs. the rest of us. I'm quite certain the Founders never saw that coming.

And so we get to be entertained by the great Shutdown Theater spectacle. It's like going to watch a play about the Titanic, we all know how it's going to end. The House Republicans, to mollify their base, have to put on a great show about taking a principled stand and not backing down and finally using the system to their advantage. That whips the base up into a frenzy, cheers and shouts and encouragement ensue. The Democrats do their part to add to the drama by engaging in nonstop hyperbole and finger pointing, which gets their base fired up too. President Obama sings the climatic aria by spitefully shutting down the most visible and beloved parts of government to show just how necessary and important Government really is, pissing people off on every side of the aisle. Oh man, this show is really getting good now. It's like the Real Houses of Congress DC. Next we just need to cut to a scene of Harry Reid flipping a table over in anger at a DC restaurant and our masterpiece will be complete. 

Sadly, all good things must come to an end. Just like we knew the Titanic was going to sink, we knew that the House Republicans were going to fold, having pretty much nothing to show for this grand stand despite all the theatrics. But bravo, boys and girls, what a performance! You really had us going there for awhile.

There were many low points of the show, from trying to keep WWII vets out of their own friggin memorial, to kicking people out of their homes which happened to be on federal land, to locking people in a hotel on federal land, to shutting down open waterway systems. There was no deed too petty for uber-villain Obama not to order his minions to undertake.

The one that took the cake for me, though, was when a South Carolina man who voluntarily took it upon himself to groom some of the monuments and mow the lawn at the Lincoln Memorial was told to stop. I think this is just the perfect illustration of what's wrong with things today. The authoritarians in power can't let it be shown to the world that life goes on without government. They can't let it be shown that there might actually be answers to questions like "But without government, who would mow the lawns?" or "But without government, who would build the roads?" Nope, we must maintain the illusion at all times that every stinkin' part of our $16 trillion-dollar-in-debt-the-cupboard-is-bare-there-are-no-cuts-to-make (props to a cameo by Ms. Pelosi for another gem of a statement) government is absolutely essential, therefore no volunteerism allowed during a government shutdown.

The man said he didn't take any money for it or expect to be paid. This in itself provides the answer to many liberals' objections that if government didn't provide these services that capitalist, greedy pig bloodsuckers would take over and price gouge everyone for their monopoly on lawn mowing services. And yet people were approaching the man and offering him small bills for what he was doing, trying to pay this individual for his efforts. But wait, this here again blows up that capitalist, greedy pig myth liberals like to use. You mean to tell me that in the absence of a government service people will voluntarily provide that service and that instead of forcing society to pay for a service that they might not want or need via legalized theft (taxation), that other individuals who do value this service will voluntarily give money for this cause? No way! Waaay. This one man band, in one small but noble deed, just illustrated the system of voluntary exchanges beautifully. That's precisely why he was shut down. We can't show the people how irrelevant most government really is to our lives. It might not have been the grandest gesture or the most ballyhooed, but it spoke volumes to me.

Thus concludes shutdown theater. I think the whole brilliance of the act was not the star performances of John Boehner, who really had (some of) us believing for a moment he was serious about defunding Obamacare, nor Harry Reid or President Obama, who played their role as villains who were ruthlessly withholding benefits and spitefully shutting down open swaths of earth brilliantly. No, the true magic of this performance was leaving the theater feeling not that you'd been entertained, but that somehow the players themselves were winking at each other throughout the entire play giving you the sick feeling afterwards that somehow the joke was on you. I want my money back.