Every time someone drives the US government into a brick wall, I think of the day that one of my high school teachers presented the American trinity -- the legislature, the executive and the judiciary -- as the most highly-evolved state of democracy. It seemed pretty convincing.
The view that the Founding Fathers, in their superpaternal wisdom, intended to make it extremely difficult to make law seems strange to me. It's not as if the world doesn't ever change. But now that the US goverment has gone into a pointless and damaging shutdown over a law that has been blessed by each stage of the trinity -- passed by the legislature, signed by the excutive and endorsed by the judiciary -- it's impossible not to wonder what the hell went wrong.
Since the Republican Party achieved a majority in the House of Representatives, its members have voted to repeal or dismantale Obamacare 46 times. Now they're happy to take everyone else down with them. They don't seem to see a downside to this. This view may alter if and when they lose control of the House in the mid-term elections, which the polling on the shutdown seems to suggest is on the cards.
As Jon Stewart puts it in the video below:
This is not a game of chicken. This is when someone is driving to work and a car comes directly at them in their lane. That is not a game of chicken, that's an asshole causing a head-on collision.
And the troubling thing is, the next collision coming is the US debt limit. As Bill English noted today on Morning Report, if that results in the US defaulting on its sovereign debt, the implications for the entire world economy are potentially disastrous.
I, for one, wish to register a protest at my family's well-being and security being put at the mercy of a gang of crazy people.