Day three, of the 27% apocalypse and already there are signs that the media is leaving the reservation of the sane.
John Judis, of the progressive publication The New Republic, has already declared this to be One of the worst crisis in American HISTORY - Apparently Mr. Judis has forgotten about the market crash that led to the great depression, the assassination of Lincoln/Kennedy and several other "crisis" that would make a 27% temporary government shutdown look like the historical nothing it is destined to be.
Suddenly the New York Times Editorial Board are Fiscal hawks worried, as much as they can, about deficits and expenditures. Forgive me for thinking they are crying crocodile tears into the chasm of federal debt that they've advocated all along.
And if the USA Today editorial board was Really worried about America's image, they'd have shuttered their ed-board long ago. This ignores the fact that they've fallen for the great, modern fallacy of portraying your political opposites as worse than they really are through demonization. While I don't believe the people writing this are "domestic terrorists", I do think many of them are daft as a bat. (Your opinion on this largely depends on your party affiliation.)
To be fair, it's a little difficult to totally blame the MSM when they're faced with political leadership of this (low) quality. "We're in trouble" ranking up there with "living in a van, down by the river" as the bottom of motivational leadership. The accepted (by NBC) idea that the man who said he "didn't have to concede anything to the GOP" has "bent over backwards" to work with them is doublespeak to a level that would impress even George Orwell.
In Texas, the Apple Dumpling Gang continues to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that anything more complicated than puff editorials are beyond their logical reach. Use of a dictionary might help them with the concept of "irreparable" but one doubts it.
There was a bracing bit of honesty from The Las Vegas Review-Journal who are smart enough to realize that the 27% apocalypse is being managed to damage the average American citizen to at least the level of sequestration. They could have gone further to declare the age of government as public servant over, but they didn't.
I will though.
200 Plus years after a plucky band of under-equipped Revolutionary forces fought the armies of King George III to a standstill, thus making the British decide that surrender and retreat was a more prudent option, the United States has replaced the rule of one regime for the rule of another. No longer does our government view us as the heartbeat of the country, they have taken over that role. Instead of public servants they now view themselves as the public overlords. They are the ruling class who know best what it is we want and need in life and they have no problem telling us or showing us on a daily basis.
Do not think, for a minute, that this change is limited to the Democrats. Listen to Speaker Boehner or, in Texas, to supposed "conservative" State Senator Dan Patrick talk about how they need to "fix" something for the normal, work-a-day, average citizen. The message seemingly being that we're too slow and witless to handle the issue ourselves. To distract us from what they are doing they snow us in under a mound of supposed partisanship. They convince us that the "other side" is trying to do what they are already doing. In truth the only difference is that the winners and losers are different depending on which side makes the policy.
This shutdown is necessary because it's a case where a dedicated group of idealists are making a stand. You might not agree with their ideals (in which case you might not agree with them taking an obstructionist tack) but you should, at least, respect their right (granted in the Constitution) to make a stand. Because if we, as a country, decide that it's wrong for a few dedicated true-believers to stand in the breach against immense political pressure, then we might as well just roll up the sidewalks of freedom and relegate ourselves to a high-tax, high-regulatory state where income mobility is low, and the government decides which groups, and which industries, have a right to exist and thrive.
If this sounds good to you it's only because your particular industry has not been targeted as of yet.
There was a time that the media opinion would have fallen squarely on the side of the dissidents. They might not have agreed with their beliefs, but they would have applauded the determination and gumption to make a stand. Not any longer. As a matter of fact, it hasn't been that way for a while. That's a bigger problem than anything else going on right now.
