Shutdown and Shut Up

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.