This is the government shutdown nobody thought would happen, and it is now running into the absolute necessity for Congress to authorize the payment of U.S. government debts in the next two weeks, or a completely unprecedented crisis will occur in the tightly knit and very tightly wound world economy.
Everybody is against these people. Many traditional GOP corporate allies are against it. The latest polls show that Americans know that the GOP's apparent first priority is opposing President Obama regardless of consequences; that they disapprove of defunding or delaying the Affordable Care Act (which as a conservative pundit points out, is fading as an issue as the House tries to cherrypick which aspects of the federal government it wants to fund.)
The media and members of Congress themselves say this is the work of a small minority of GOP House members, and that they are driving this suicidal venture through the one man who has the power to stop it, speaker of the house John Banal.
As I reflect that prudent people should now be preparing for possible economic apocalypse, and cannot count on a lot of the immediate future--from getting tax refunds and government services to retiring on their mutual fund-fueled retirement accounts (for as this goes forward the stock market is more and more likely to tank like nothing since 2008.) And that prompts me to wonder if in the minds of those insane few this isn't the point: the thrill of the apocalypse, the end times to this sinful civilization, the Rapture of the rapacious.
I would not forget, by the way, that this is also the week of the new IPIC report which confirms the climate crisis in its most definitive language, with a call for stringent action. The enormity of this future that for one reason or another people cannot admit, or can only think of in crypto-religious terms, could well be having an unacknowledged psychological impact.
Speculation aside, all I know is that a small faction of GOP congressmen is threatening the nation and the world economy in a way that no terrorist group could realistically accomplish. A weakness in our constitutional government is being exploited, and in the next two weeks we're in real danger of blowing it out of the water, in an inexorable and uncontrollable cascade that could take months to play out but will leave us with a very different reality.
The influence of political party organizations in general aside, in this instance I do very much wonder whether there is a specific source of financing that's fueling this (beyond the small donations such conflicts gin up for both sides.) 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. It may seem fantastic but somebody better start taking that possibility with the utmost seriousness. And that somebody is the speaker of the house.
Update: The latest offer the GOPers have rejected came from President Obama: fund the government, pay the bills and we'll open a negotiation on the budget.
As the risk of repeating, I've monitored sites that publish pundits and political reporters and political scientists, and nobody has a clue on how this ends well. Something else that's different this time, since the paying the country's debts authorization is being "debated" while the government is shut down: no new information is going in or coming out of the government. That the monthly employment figures, due out Friday, will be delayed is just the beginning. Citizens who want to express their opinion or outrage to members of Congress may not be able to do it if that particular member has furloughed staff during the shutdown. There may be nobody to answer the phones or collect and collate the mail.
Meanwhile, small businesses can't start up or expand without the Small Business Administration, lots of people can't buy homes with the FHA, the National Weather Service is on skeleton crew etc. So the economy is stifled and more vulnerable to sudden emergencies. That's just now, that's just for starters.
That's another quality of terrorists: they don't care who they hurt as long as they make their point, even when it isn't clear to anyone what that point really is.
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