Gary
Younge
Guardian/UK 17 October
2013
Just as the House of Representatives
was finally voting to reopen the government and save the nation from reneging
on debt and inviting a downgrade, a House stenographer appears to have
suffered a breakdown. Grabbing the microphone, she started defending
God's honour before the nation. He will not be
mocked. The greatest deception here is this is not one nation under God. It
never was. The constitution would not have been written by freemasons. They go
against God. You cannot serve two masters. After being removed and
questioned, she was taken away for psychiatric evaluation.
Her mental health is no laughing matter. But the description of
her interjection by much of the media as a "bizarre" interruption to
the House vote deserves interrogation. Because everything about this was bizarre.
From the moment Ted Cruz got up
and started quoting Ashton Kutcher and talking about Star Wars into
the wee hours, this entire process has been nothing but bizarre. America, once
again, took the familiar road from the height of dysfunction to the
brink of default – until reality grabbed it by the scruff of the neck and
slapped it straight, before it did itself and others grave harm.
Because America is powerful, the world has to take
notice of these self-inflicted crises. But because it has become so predictably
dysfunctional and routinely reckless, they are difficult to take seriously or,
at times, even fathom. To the rest of the world and much of America, this is
yet another dangerous folly. The fact that the nation did not default should
come as cold comfort. The fact that we are even talking about it defaulting is
a problem.
This particular flirtation with fate
was driven by a visceral opposition to the moderate provision of something most
western nations take for granted: health care. The reforms they opposed had
been passed by the very body of which they are a member and had been been
approved by the US supreme court, the
guardian of the very constitution they claimed to be defending. For this, they
started a fight they never had the numbers to win and carried on waging it long
after it was clear they had lost.
"We're not going to be
disrespected," insisted
Republican Indiana Congressman Marlin Stutzman, last week. "We
have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even
is." Nor did anyone else. That's
why the Republicans went
down to humiliating defeat. As South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham
admitted:
“We took some bread crumbs and left an
entire meal on the table. This has been a really bad two weeks for the
Republican party.”
But to couch this episode only as a
Democratic victory would really miss the point. For the process by which such a
shutdown and breakdown could happen is not just the work of a few cranky Tea
Party types. It is rooted in an
electoral system that is heavily gerrymandered, where only those who
can pay, can play. The reason the Republican dissenters could proceed with such
unstrategic zeal is because they are in safe, rigged seats and so risk no
challenge at the polls.
Indeed, given that they only have to
fear nomination within their own party, rather than election by the nation at
large, there is an incentive to act out in this way because it appeals to the
base. When constituencies are so heavily contorted in the interests of
incumbents that there is precious little consequence to anything a politician
does, then you don't really
have a democracy, you just have the vote. This temporary resolution
buys them time, but it does not buy them any real solution – since there is
absolutely nothing to prevent a repeat performance. Which is what it is: a
performance. As said Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid put it on Wednesday
night: “I'm tired. Concluding this crisis is
historic. But let's be honest: this was pain inflicted on the nation for no
good reason. We cannot … we cannot, cannot make the same mistakes again.”
Unfortunately, they can. Almost certainly, they will.
.http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/17/america-skewed-democracy-debt-ceiling-shutdown
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