I think a very telling aspect of this “partial” shutdown of
government is that all those wonderful folks in Congress are still getting
paid. The 800,000 people who are not, apparently, don’t matter. The Tea Party
folks call themselves “patriots.” I wonder if they know what that means. They
are extorting the American people, they say, for our own good. The health
care reform act was passed by both houses and signed into law. Now, guys like
Ted Cruz are attempting to hold it hostage because they don’t like it. I’m not
sure I like it either, but if I follow their example, I can pick and choose the
laws I want to obey.
Well, I kind of do that already, so who am I to talk?
I’m not a Democrat and I’m not a Republican. I think both
parties have damaged themselves with this gamesmanship. We (the American
people) are mostly annoyed by the situation. This is kind of dangerous and can
give rise to other interests gaining listeners (and votes). While that might be
a breath of healthy clean air, it also bears watching very closely. People
should study the politics of Europe in the late
Twenties and Thirties of the last century. Peoples’ disenchantment with the
regimes in power had disastrous results.
The only good thing, I think, to come out of this congressional
ineptitude is that it is providing a rich, albeit squirmy, wealth of material
for cartoonists and humorists. I really wish Mark Twain were alive and writing
and Molly Ivins would be having a ball skewering Mr. Cruz.
It would be interesting to discover who the big insurance lobby is supporting during this whacko situation.
