![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
AMERICA: IT COULD ALWAYS BE WORSE
Oct. 16th, 2013 10:03 amThis is a little old, so you may have already seen/heard it. But it’s new to me, and it’s worth trotting out under the circumstances.
It says a lot when you have to point to Hitler, Caesar and the Spanish Inquisition to make yrself look like a good deal in comparison.
Though I’m not sure the rest of the world feels that’s a good excuse.
As you can imagine, round these parts the govt shutdown and squabbling over the debt ceiling isn’t being well received. Of course you expect China to be unamused – they always are – and hey, who cares what a bunch of Damn Commies think?
But I do think the shutdown has demonstrated to everyone who didn’t already know that America has somehow become the weakest link in a increasingly fragile global economy – and that link is under the management of two highly polarized parties, one of which is influenced by a batshit wing that seems convinced nothing bad will happen if we miss a payment.
Sure, we’re not Greece. But Greece isn’t the linchpin of an increasingly fragile global economy. And believe me when I tell you that every other country in the world is watching the shutdown argument and thinking, “THOSE are the dingbats we’re depending on – and investing billions of dollars in – to lead the Free World to global prosperity?”
Granted, we’ve been here before. And I do think that Congress will pull a deal out of its collective ass at the last minute. As usual. And it’s always possible that a year from now we’ll look back on all this and laugh. “Ha ha, that was a close one, Jim.”
But it’s getting harder not to think of the last lines in the above song:
And it’s hard not to wonder how much longer even our allies will put up with our shenanigans, or what they’ll do if the Tea Party doesn’t get its ass handed to it in the mid-terms. Because if they don’t, yr probably going to see more of this. And for those of you convinced that the Democrats are going to clean the GOP’s clock in 2014 because of the shutdown, Nate Silver has some disappointing news for you.
The really sad thing is that if the rest of the world eventually writes us off as has-beens (albeit dangerously well-armed has-beens that you should never turn yr back on), there's a very good chance that Republicans and Democrats alike will spend America's twilight years making sure the other side gets all the blame for the country’s problems instead of working together to fix them.
Which is of course how we ended up here in the first place.
Disorder in the house,
This is dF
It says a lot when you have to point to Hitler, Caesar and the Spanish Inquisition to make yrself look like a good deal in comparison.
Though I’m not sure the rest of the world feels that’s a good excuse.
As you can imagine, round these parts the govt shutdown and squabbling over the debt ceiling isn’t being well received. Of course you expect China to be unamused – they always are – and hey, who cares what a bunch of Damn Commies think?
But I do think the shutdown has demonstrated to everyone who didn’t already know that America has somehow become the weakest link in a increasingly fragile global economy – and that link is under the management of two highly polarized parties, one of which is influenced by a batshit wing that seems convinced nothing bad will happen if we miss a payment.
Sure, we’re not Greece. But Greece isn’t the linchpin of an increasingly fragile global economy. And believe me when I tell you that every other country in the world is watching the shutdown argument and thinking, “THOSE are the dingbats we’re depending on – and investing billions of dollars in – to lead the Free World to global prosperity?”
Granted, we’ve been here before. And I do think that Congress will pull a deal out of its collective ass at the last minute. As usual. And it’s always possible that a year from now we’ll look back on all this and laugh. “Ha ha, that was a close one, Jim.”
But it’s getting harder not to think of the last lines in the above song:
“The end of an empire is messy at best / And this empire is ending like all the rest”
And it’s hard not to wonder how much longer even our allies will put up with our shenanigans, or what they’ll do if the Tea Party doesn’t get its ass handed to it in the mid-terms. Because if they don’t, yr probably going to see more of this. And for those of you convinced that the Democrats are going to clean the GOP’s clock in 2014 because of the shutdown, Nate Silver has some disappointing news for you.
The really sad thing is that if the rest of the world eventually writes us off as has-beens (albeit dangerously well-armed has-beens that you should never turn yr back on), there's a very good chance that Republicans and Democrats alike will spend America's twilight years making sure the other side gets all the blame for the country’s problems instead of working together to fix them.
Which is of course how we ended up here in the first place.
Disorder in the house,
This is dF
