The government is "shutting down" in a few minutes. That's what news broadcasters have been warning me all day. The almost constant ambience of crises in American politics in recent years is something that one could easily become inured to, especially as no sky (a la Chicken Little's hysterical world view) has apparently crashed down upon our heads up to and including, for the moment, now.
When the posturing, fault-finding, jockeying for advantage and other often dissembling maneuvers have been spent and revealed to be unprofitable as genuine balm for our national wounds, where do we go? The age old assumption that compromise is the only road worth traveling upon may be called into question, when good will makes itself scarce and dark motives are relentlessly imputed to those whose favored policies are despised. "Let's disagree without being disagreeable" is another chestnut we cling to as some of us wax nostalgic for a supposed gentler time. The recollections may be clouded by wishful thinking. Contentious doings have unceasingly been a part of human affairs, especially those involving national policies. There come however, cyclically, times when socio-political and cultural balances are upset, particularly when flux is the norm and disaffected groups sense an opportunity to challenge established ones. The radicalizing of political views in America is unmistakable. Since the dawn of the century resentments have grown along with frustrations. At that time a glib and adroit politician was completing his last year in the White House. He blew off an impeachment the year before and his would-be executioners chafed from the coitus interruptus of the affair (the political one, that is) as the leader of the Free World skated with the mathematics of the American Senate on his side. The country's ancient ambivalence about public vs. personal morality and cultural wars that first seriously erupted soon after the assassination of John F. Kennedy were encapsulated by the prolonged crisis (the sex scandal and perjurious statements of the nation's forty second president). Extreme irritation about being denied soon was experienced by supporters of "Slick Willie's" former running mate and would-be successor. Weeks turning into months and a Supreme Court decision proclaiming the election in favor of the Republican nominee, though his narrow victory in the Electoral College had contrasted provocatively with his loss of the popular vote, was more than a sore point for his opponents. An atmosphere charged with the seething cogitations and verbal spitfire of vengeful Democrats as well as of darker elements of the already long inflamed sinistre end of that party's political spectrum was ameliorated only slightly by the indubitable re-election of "Dubya" and the shaky but still solid unity of a nation at war.
The economic near calamity in the closing months of the Texan's second term assured the outcome of the next election, despite a successful "surge" in Iraq and the remarkably thin resume of the mulatto candidate of the Democrats. A seminal election it was. Thoughtfulness, a conservative mindset (in terms of careful, prudent decisions favoring experience over riskiness and the unknown) and an informed, educated sensibility were all in short supply. No real Conservative (note the capital letter) choice was offered; McCain was a curious hybrid of maverick and establishment politician and proved to be an extraordinarily poor campaigner with infuriatingly collegial debating techniques, highly inappropriate given his opponent who was soon shown to be even slicker than "Willie" but in reality, the most incompetent and/or most dangerous leader in American history.
Fast forward to mid-October of this thirteenth year of the 21st century: the "shutdown" itself has been shut down for several days now. The Occupier-in-Chief stifled his snickering just long enough to convince the "low information" and considerable portion of the electorate with attention spans of hamsters, of his "above the fray" judicious rule: a complete fiction that his thespian skills still accomplish with the aid of such intellectually challenged citizens and non-citizens alike. There is a nightmarish quality about his ability to prevail. To oppose and defeat his manifestly wrongheaded policies seem at first as challenging as brushing away a fly, but in this dark reverie one's arms are discovered to be leaden and soon even paralyzed. The efforts to stop his pet project: socialized medicine (or "dog food" for all Americans, many hungering for the imagined free ride and "nourishment" of a postponement of sickness and death by an earthly God The Father/Uncle Sam) and any reining in of his uber profligate spending, both fail despite gallant tries against a monolithic Democrat House and especially its Senate manning the high ground much like Wehrmacht forces smugly ensconced atop Monte Cassino and firing downward on The Allies with impunity. This analogy segues with the provocative title of this blog entry.
Is a second American civil war approaching? The ill will is there. A recurrent anger is also a reality every election cycle and even oftener, though it is one with varied causes and still diffuse enough to not encourage determined organizing. The Tea Party is an exception, but not enough Americans are as yet angry enough and perpetual badmouthing and belittling of Taxed Enough Already people by the government controlled (or exceedingly sycophantic) national media has held it somewhat in check (the Big Lie technique and the human inclination to find a convenient scape goat are factors in play here). Folks unfortunately do "shoot the messenger" ("Republicans and T.P.ers are most to blame for the shutdown" goes the mantra) or at least wax ill-tempered, much like one screaming through cheap apartment walls for a neighbor to cease his equally noisy cries, uncaring of the possibility that a homicide (or tyrannical power grab) might be in progress. In short, things would seem to require getting much worse, before intolerance might not "lose the name of action." Our lives are so interwoven with each other's, not because of any tribal kinship, but because of the nature of modern society. This fact also militates, to use a perhaps ironic verb, against armed civilian forces opposing each other or rebelling against any repressions of the current administration. Economic dislocation, extreme inflation or deflation and further suspensions of civil liberties by the government (radical and massive implementation of eminent domain powers for example) could yet light a fuse. Still, unlike our bloody War Between The States of one hundred and fifty years ago, geography neatly congruent with ideological, economic and cultural differences is not as simply bifurcated today. Yes, huge contiguous areas of the West and South form a natural "nation" and the assumed opposing "state" of the Northeast and East coast together with the West/"Left" coast might argue for a plausibly imagined "two Americas" with the latter group a bit like the old East and West Pakistan.
But why would we countenance such a sanguinary sundering or even a bloodless one? Well, the fact that we've "fallen out of love" might be one reason submitted to an imaginary National Divorce Court by either or both sides. Again, the fault lines of our national politics have been especially active in recent decades and so-called progressive elements (the whole range from brown nosed do-gooders to hardcore Bolsheviks) have seen their opportunities large and juicy before them with the election and re-election of the messianic Hawaiian/Indonesian mongrel. Then too, old orders seem about to be upset with the homosexual aggressiveness and the illegal alien cancers on the body politic. These "revolting developments" as observed by Mr. Chester Reilly, an Everyman comic character of working class values and of America's brief mid-century honeymoon with peace, prosperity and the hegemony of traditional culture, together with modern conservative "culture warriors" such as today's Mr. Bill O'Reilly, spiritual son of Chester but Harvard educated and with a Jimmy Connors-like, delightful, pugilist world view, all could spell RUMBLE.
Combine all the above described animosity with the fecklessness of our politicians and their stomach turning panderings and one cannot rule out power vacuums that could lead to bloodshed, especially as litigious efforts grow less satisfying and other corruptions and delays of justice ("justice denied") frustrate a public beyond its boiling point. And finally, like the urban parking sign on many a homeowner's garage door that reads "Don't Even THINK Of Parking Here", the tinkering with any laws that might weaken the Second Amendment come under that trip-wire category for a huge chunk of our nation's citizens who, thank God, admonish forcefully every day to gun control freaks "don't even THINK about abridging this one (and with their arsenals mutely concurring in this warning to any aspiring secular king or queen)."
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