America's Number One Terrorist

"To weaponize the debt ceiling, you must be willing to inflict harm on millions of innocent people. It is a shockingly powerful self-destruct button built into our very system of government, but only useful for the most ideologically hardened or borderline sociopathic."
Jonathan Chiat

Over the weekend US forces raided sites in Libya and Somalia to capture known terrorists.  Meanwhile the world's foremost terrorist went on national television to assert that the United States is on a direct path to default, which he and his GOP congressional cronies are causing.  Just as they have caused the federal government to stop working.  And he won't stop it, by simply putting it to a vote.

If Speaker Banal and his cronies continue and accomplish default, they are in all practical terms guilty of sedition.  At the moment they are terrorists, terrorizing the American people with unparalleled power to make good on their threats.  What they have been unable to accomplish through democratic means, they mean to accomplish through extortion.

Someone suggested a little thought experiment be put to them: if Democrats threatened to shut down the government and drive the world's most economically crucial nation into default unless Republicans in Congress got rid of the sequester, voted for a much needed infrastructure program, passed effective gun control and raised taxes on the rich--would they consider that a legitimate strategy?

I recently suggested the possibility that there's money behind this callous insanity: This is one case where a billionaire or two--no matter what their agenda might be, corporate greed or crypto-religious apocalyptic anarchism--can start the process that ends up in a national and world economy in shambles, and real anarchy in America.  That turns out to be true in a way, and it's the Koch brothers, of course.  The conspiracy reportedly began as the second term agenda for thwarting Obama, with this exact scenario  in mind: shut down the government to destroy Obamacare. The billionaire Koch brothers, Charles and David, have been deeply involved with financing the overall effort, says the New York Times.

Chiat writes further:

The standoff embroiling Washington represents far more than the specifics of the demands on the table, or even the prospect of economic calamity. It is an incipient constitutional crisis. Obama... now has to crush the practice completely, lest it become ritualized. Obama not only must refuse to trade concessions for a debt-ceiling hike; he has to make it clear that he will endure default before he submits to ransom. To pay a ransom now, even a tiny one, would ensure an endless succession of debt-ceiling ransoms until, eventually, the two sides fail to agree on the correct size of the ransom and default follows.

This is a domestic Cuban Missile Crisis. A single blunder could have unalterable consequences: If Obama buckles his no-ransom stance, the debt-ceiling-hostage genie will be out of the bottle. If Republicans believe he is bluffing, or accept his position but obstinately refuse it, or try to lift the debt ceiling and simply botch the vote count, a second Great Recession could ensue."

Update: If you're not already anxious and depressed, read Josh Marshall's perspective on what's happening and what's ahead.  The weak Speaker overwhelmed by events sounds like a Shakespearian screenplay, if there's an economy left to support one when this is over.