But What If It's True?

Before going on to autopsy all the different flavors of fallout that will likely arise from the impending GOP destruction of the global economy, Paul Krugman quite rightly noted that the immediate financial consequence itself is "anything but trivial":

Failure to raise the debt limit — which would, among other things, disrupt payments on existing debt — could convince investors that the United States is no longer a serious, responsible country, with nasty consequences.

But here's the rub, Paul: we are no longer "a serious, responsible country".

We are a country where a serious, reasonable minority is (in the immortal words of "Chase Me Ladies I'm the Cavalry") 'chained to the village idiot' and being dragged along towards yet another nation-mutilating Republican catastrophe across the prostrate bodies of an oblivious Majority who can't be bothered to drag their glassy, cow-dumb eyes away from "Jersey Shore" and "The Real Doxies of the Fourth Circle of Hell" long enough to notice that their world is being axes to atoms all around them.

All this is now more-or-less openly and lavishly funded and directed by evil men, because why bother with awkward disguises and figleafs anymore when the cops, the judges, the politicians and the journalists are mostly cowed into silence or on your fucking payroll?

Paul, this is not the sting of noble battle you are feeling: it is the sensation of being one of the last, aware brain cell trapped inside a dying empire in the last stages of Cultural Sclerosis as it lurches and twitches towards an otherwise predictable and preventable catastrophe.

If we could just move our fingers...if we could only get our legs to listen to reason.

But of course legs and arms and feet and hands are all too busy clapping for Bachmann and stomping for "Shut!It!Down!"

I don't know how this will end, but I do know nothing short of a sharp and substantial drop in the number of Republicans participating in the political process in America is going to prevent this kind of criminally reckless behavior from happening over and over again.

Because the Pig People have discovered the sheer animal delight of holding a gun to the heads of the poor and the sick in order to make their betters dance.

And they will never surrender that power until they are forced to.