More than Just Theater of the Absurd

It’s impossible to miss the irony that it was precisely those who went to Congress as economic czars bent on saving the nation who ended up causing a wanton paralysis of their government which senselessly wasted billions of tax dollars and that it was precisely these people, with their anti-Washington obstruction of Congress, who made themselves and their party more unpopular than any other time in history.

People say a nation gets the politicians it deserves, but we stand in open-mouthed bewilderment that these elected men and women who presume to lecture the rest of the world about the right policies, the right economics and matters of war and peace are nonetheless incapable of successfully conducting routine business in their own country.

We wonder how a few dozen tea partiers can shut down a whole government by making ideological demands affecting the nation’s entire budget, thereby denying their government the ability to take on new debt in order to stay in operation. We also wonder about the supposedly “moderate” party leadership that takes orders from its radical right wing. We might engage in idle speculation that U.S. institutions don’t adequately work any longer, that its Congress — with just two political parties — cannot possibly reflect the diversity of opinion in the nation.

The tea partiers, who seem to set the tone in Washington, represent positions that would be considered obscurantist practically everywhere outside the United States. They deny that climate change is man-made; they deny evolution; they oppose environmental regulations; they characterize a bold health care reform program as the most evil thing since slavery; and they fight against any assistance for the socially disadvantaged. That’s not surprising given the fact that most tea partiers are middle-class whites and many people dependent on government assistance are Latinos or African-Americans.

We could think of it all as representatives of a past era, fighting a rear guard action in their own country, who are doomed to soon lose their majority status, or as an expression of America’s most backwoods yokels living as the upper crust. It might well be theater of the absurd.

Except it’s not theater — it’s serious. The self-inflicted crisis in Washington will have far-reaching consequences, even if there’s not any panic apparent yet in the markets. We’ve known for a long time that even in a best-case final act we can expect no solution to the crisis, just a postponement.

A few hours before a U.S. default threatens — including an international shock wave — there will be two certainties in Washington: The current chaos came about on purpose, clothed in ideological trappings, and it will happen again, perhaps before the end of the year or perhaps in just a few weeks.