The Great Experiment

[Zanchief]

Well the Libertarians I've spoken have claimed taxes are illegal and should be abolished. All protection comes at a cost of freedom. All interference comes at a cost of freedom. If you want "zero laws" that infringe on freedom, then you are, ultimately, an anarchist.

I think a lot of people see the Liberation movement as the most extreme. If you’re disillusioned by the system, sign up here and we’ll bring it to a crashing halt (in the recent case literally). You may have a more moderate opinion, but moderation is not a very common trait these days.

[Gypsiyee]

I'm just wondering what the current political tactic that involves government shutdown and defaulting on payments to creditors will mean for the future of government and the democratic process generally in America.

Is this a watershed moment? Will things go "back to normal" after this crisis has been averted? Or will this form of political interaction become the de facto standard on how government conducts its affairs in the future?

Or will this be a hallmark in a much more dire timeline, the point at which future historians will point and say 'this was the beginning of the end'?

It's not possible, I don't think, to say "I'm tired of it" and not sound passé -- neither would it be the first time anyone has complained about it.

If fringe Republicans truly despise the ACA, and truly believe it will hurt more people than it will help, then it seems to me that they can eliminate it when they hold the political capital to do so (i.e. when the bulk of the American people have given them that political capital).

Or is it all really just a show for our benefit, so that the bulk of us will keep happily dancing on our little puppet strings and keep doing business as usual?

After all, the death knell for government would be if no one cared. But there are enough people that care and still put faith in the system that it keeps chugging along.

Your thoughts?

the current GOP tactic of shutdowns and defaults is anything but politics as usual. it is not the typical cheap attack tactic used by the minority party against the majority party (which both parties are often guilty of), it is a new and different thing. ostensibly, this entire flap is about the PPACA. but if you look beyond the surface, past all the talking heads on the neutered news orgs desperate to appear unbiased (as well as those on FNC and MSNBC who don't try nearly as hard), you've got the real problem: fiscal terrorism*. some folks don't think that's a fair term to use, but those folks are pussies.

but first, facts about the law. the PPACA was thought up in a conservative think tank, implemented by a republican governor in MA, passed both houses of congress, and was signed into law by the president. Rs took over the house in 2010 (thanks in large part to extremely wealthy people who spent billions on putting a rocket engine under the crazies on the far right fringe) and immediately started voting over and over again to repeal the PPACA. this is, of course, a massive waste of money - why would the D-controlled senate or the POTUS agree to repeal his #1 policy achievement? idiocy. yet Rs and their super loud (and super rich) crazy wing decided to make the 2012 election allllll about the PPACA. for reasons i'm still not sure about, they trotted out Mr. Health Care Reform himself to go head to head against the POTUS, and were handed a stunning** loss - the POTUS was reelected by a comfortable margin, and dems in both chambers gained seats. among other things romney had primarily promised repeal of PPACA, and the american people said thanks but no thanks. to add insult to injury, in june the SCOTUS upheld the law. yet many Rs see the PPACA as unconstitutional . they rail against it day and night, they call it the worst thing to ever happen in american history, they call it socialism***, and worst of all they say over and over again that the american people don't want it - conveniently ignoring the results of the 2012 election, which certainly did not prove that to be the case.

(i know there were some asterisks in the preceding paragraphs. relax, i'll get to that eventually.)

so where are the Rs now? they completely lost a winnable election in almost every sense, they were beaten in every single growing demographic, and their only reliable demographic is shrinking by the day. they hold the house by a slim margin, have only the slimmest of chances to take back the senate, and have to spend the next few years choosing from their stable of clowns which damaged loon they're going to throw against hillary and/or biden in 2016. their approval rating is in the cellar, their far-right platform was roundly rejected in almost every major race, and it was only thanks to 2010 gerrymandering that they even managed to hold the house. for a few months it looked like they might begin listening to their dwindling moderate bloc - who had been warning for years that until the party changes course on its most backward and divisive policy planks (immigration, gay marriage, welfare, and possibly abortion) they would never again make substantial electoral gains - but then the loudmouths on the far right shouted them down amidst threats of being challenged from the right during reelection primaries (in which usually only serious partisans vote).

these are the throes of a party fighting for its life in a civil war. the old guard, representing the center-right, want to adjust the platform so it appears more centrist, in hopes of winning back seats in congress in 2014 and possibly even the white house in 2016. but the upstart tea party, the Monster to the wealthy people's Frankenstein, will not abide compromise. this is where the new radical wing of the GOP differs from the old guard: it regards any and all political opposition as completely illegitimate, even (or, in fact, especially) when that opposition comes from within the GOP. before 2010, either political party would happily do whatever nefarious thing it could in order to gain the upper hand over the other party, but neither party ever denied or questioned the legitimacy of the other. sure Rs are jerks, Ds would say, but they were elected just like me so i have to do my job and work with them (and vice versa). that's how they were able to compromise - nobody got everything, but everybody got something - and for better or worse, the govt managed to trudge on.

but these new screwballs believe balls to bones that their opposition is illegitimate - not simply wrong, but invalid. our president is kenyan. democrats engineer voter fraud. obamacare is unconstitutional. etc etc etc, every single mindia talking point, bla bla bla. when your opponent is illegitimate, you don't have to compromise. so no, this is not "both parties' fault", this is the fringe element of one party hijacking the entire democratic process in the name of ideological extremism. like any hijackers, they need a weapon, and the only weapon they had left was their partial control over the budget. the first time they took the budget hostage, they were all take and no give, which resulted in the sequester. this time, they've taken the entire government hostage and handed over a completely ridiculous list of demands - delay/defund obamacare, approve Keystone XL, and hamstring both the EPA and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. put another way, they are basically trying to retroactively award themselves winners of the 2012 election, much like harrison likes to retroactively christen himself winner of arguments he couldn't win against a donkey. worse, they're now promising to take the national economy hostage (and, by extension, the global economy).

yet as many people like to forget, this is Mission Accomplished for them. these are the people who think government is the problem, so why should anyone be surprised when they do their best to destroy it? what impetus do they have to reopen the government when they like it better shut down? this is the party of Privatize Everything! their genius plan is to blame the shutdown on the senate and the president for being "unwilling to negotiate". that is both explicitly untrue and incredibly cynical. first, there were 19 different times that senate democrats attempted to go to conference with house republicans, yet all 19 of them were filibustered by republican senators (mostly cruz and king). second, PPACA is already a law. past tense.

like i said, the debt ceiling fight is around the corner. remember earlier when i made the Frankenstein's Monster reference? well, true to that story, the Monster is proving more diabolical than the good doctor imagined. with a debt default just around the corner, many of the uber-rich who funded the fiscal terrorists are getting nervous. they still hate PPACA and want to see it destroyed, but what they've created has taken on a mind of its own and now the markets are starting to quake a bit.

*fiscal terrorism. terrorism might be a strong word, but let's do a little thought experiment. if al-qaeda came in and used legislative hijinks to first attack the gov't budget, then interrupt its functions, and finally hold the national economy (and, by extension, the global economy) hostage, until such point that leadership caves and guts laws passed according to procedure and upheld by our highest court - would you call them anything else?

**stunning loss. remember on election night when karl rove flipped his fuckin lid and demanded that FNC's election center retract its call of OH for obama? along with the illegitimacy of its opposition, the fringe right believes all media (outside of FNC and talk radio, of course) has a liberal slant - so it has rejected any analysis whatsoever that calls its convictions into question, that suggests the public isn't behind it, or suggests societal ills can be blamed on anything but the socialists in the senate and the white house. that's why their 2012 defeat was so stunning - they saw polls that said they were 5-10 points behind and simply waved them off as biased! rove flipped his shit because he was 100% convinced that only the polls he read were legitimate. of course, that hasn't changed; they're currently happily ignoring polls that say americans are largely blaming them for the shutdown or that say even the reps believed to be "safe" (thanks to gerrymandering) are currently trailing generic democratic challengers.

***PPACA is socialist. uhh, no it's fucking not. if you think a program which by definition involves private health care insurance has anything to do with socialism, you clearly do not understand socialism. at all. punch your own nutsack.


anyway, back to menelvir's excellent questions. man, i don't know what's going to happen. part of me wants the sensible wing of the GOP to talk the tea party down from the ledge, reopen the govt, and raise a debt ceiling without any more motherfucking drama. another part of me wants the sensible wing of the GOP to just straight up kick the motherfuckers out for being too goddamn crazy. the tiny little anarchist in me wants them to crash the system and bring it all down in flames so we can start building something more equitable in its place.

more than anything, i don't want this to be the way we do things. if this shit is gonna be the new normal, i think i'd rather see it burn to the ground. i think that's coming down the line sooner or later anyway - our entire economy and existence is built on $20/barrel oil, and oil now costs 5-6 times that. our govt hemorrhages money every quarter in order to keep oilmen in business, digging up fossil fuels that cost more and more cash and resources to get out of the earth, and their wealth and resultant economic and political power largely hinders/prevents possible renewable replacements from gaining much ground. at some point - $150/barrel? $160? - the whole house of cards will collapse, everyone's wealth will evaporate, and we will have to rebuild our drive-half-an-hour-to-dinner society into a much smaller and locally-based iteration. local energy, local food, local manufacturing, local markets, local everything. it's coming soon, and we are going broke trying to hold back the tide.

i think in the long run we'll be better off. i also kinda think the USA is too big for itself and should split up into 5-6 nation-states based on geography (new england, the south, the great lakes region, the plains, southwest, and northwest [hawaii can be independent and canada can have alaska]).

oh my god, this post.. oh. bless your face.

[brinstar]

What I don't understand about the ACA and these insane rich people opposing it, is why don't they champion it and say, "We did it first. This is a rebranded Romney plan!"

Win/win.

this is easily the smartest thing you've said in months, so credit where credit is due. more of this please.

Edit for the butthurt Canadian who has no business discussing politics of a foreign nation: The objective reasoning part was for your buttbuddy cornfed redneck. I haven't tried to bring in gun control to this. It has no bearing here. Your boyfriend mentioned another thread he got trounced on, and I responded to it. Calm your tits and wait for a Canadian politics post to chime in on.

...and less of this. guess we're back to default harrison? nice while it lasted i guess

end your tantrum, it is time to grow up.

[brinstar]

sry double post

I don't know. Maybe I'm just a contrarian. Maybe I just don't like choosing sides. Since my adult years, I've always believed in the necessity of balance -- not necessarily fairness -- but balance. The yin-yang has been a favorite symbol for almost as long. I've never liked extreme views -- of any stripe.

As far as falling to pieces, I guess I just don't get that worked up over it -- I view it rather like the realities of death or time.

I think your definition of libertarian is different from mine -- my impression is that libertarians want strong government, but only in a limited way -- e.g. strong military to protect the homeland, strong justice system to protect citizenry, but limited or zero laws regarding personal choices/freedoms (e.g. gun ownership, drug use, prostitution, sexual preferences/choices). Anarchy is no government at all -- a Hobbesian 'state of nature' (omnium contra omnes).

as a green* i have a lot of admiration for a healthy chunk of what i consider the legitimate libertarian platform (which is what you have described). their stances on personal freedom and even some aspects of limited government make a whole lot of sense to me. what i don't like is its fondness for market deregulation and the erosion of labor laws (i believe that without proper oversight the free market will quite literally enslave the working class). i also believe very strongly that the so-called Libertarian Wing of the GOP is rather far-removed from real libertarianism - it likes to masquerade as real libertarianism via its abhorrence of market regulation and labor laws, yet espouses none of its personal freedom planks whatsoever. case in point: they might be against a smaller and weaker central government, but they're rabidly anti-choice and pro-christianity, and loudly rail against gay marriage, cannabis legalization, immigration reform, and campaign finance reform. that's not real libertarianism at all, it's more like hyperconservatism.

former NM gov. Gary Johnson is a great example of a real libertarian, but his exclusion from all but the first GOP primary debate in late 2011 should serve as proof that there's no room for real libertarian ideology in the GOP (which is why he quit the GOP and ran for POTUS as the actual Libertarian candidate)


*i vote green in every election, but consider myself a democratic socialist like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). i believe the term for someone like me is a "watermelon" - green on the outside, red on the inside lord knows why i live in NE lol

[brinstar]

well all that bullshit is behind us for another three or four months, when i'm sure those cunts will throw another tantrum. aside from a couple billion for a dam project in KY, they got NOTHING out of the deal and basically dicked the american public around and made us look like idiots to the rest of the globe for literally no reason

hopefully the dems learned something this time - terrorists are ultimately cowards

mmmm delicious