It is mid-July, and the debt ceiling hysteria is peaking. What is the significance of this debate? What is its real meaning for ordinary Americans? These questions can be answered at two different levels, from inside the consensual reality box and from outside that box. Although I don't agree with Dmitry Orlov's dystopian visions of the near future, he framed the answer from outside the box in this quote—
Although people often bemoan political apathy as if it were a grave social ill, it seems to me that this is just as it should be. Why should essentially powerless people want to engage in a humiliating farce designed to demonstrate the legitimacy of those who wield the power?
Orlov has hit the nail on the head. The debt ceiling debate is a humiliating farce designed to demonstrate the legitimacy of those in power. Bill Hicks (a pseudonym, not the dead comedian) described how The Farce typically works in his post America’s Plutocrats are No Different than the Leaders Who Ran the Soviet Union into the Ground.
Social issues are merely a distraction to keep the plebes fighting with one another so they won’t notice that the likes of Lloyd Blankfein are stealing their country right out from under them. The dynamic usually works something like this.
Step 1: Some wingnut commentator says something outrageous, or some far right Republican Congressman introduces an outlandish piece of legislation that has no chance of ever passing.
Step 2: Mainstream liberals and progressives get themselves all in a huff about it—maybe Jon Stewart lampoons the originator on The Daily Show or Keith Olbermann does a Special Comment about it.
Step 3: The overwrought liberal and progressive reaction causes an equal and opposite supportive reaction on Fox News and right wing talk radio.
Step 4: Both sides send out fundraising letters citing the issue and imploring their supporters not to let the other side “win.”
I don't agree completely with the author, but the article is certainly thought-provoking. I'm sure more than a few Americans no longer feel "represented" at the federal level, for example.
The debt ceiling is not significant at all. 14 Trillion or 16 Trillion? What matters is the long term promises and sluggish economy. That is what needs to be addressed. And the entitlement/age problem has been well known for decades and ignored.
If you want to be, press one. If you want not to be, press 2
Republicans are red, democrats are blue, neither of them, gives a flip about you.
Joe wrote: The debt ceiling is not significant at all. 14 Trillion or 16 Trillion? What matters is the long term promises and sluggish economy. That is what needs to be addressed. And the entitlement/age problem has been well known for decades and ignored.
