I cannot account for my early morning compulsion to post this, but since when have compulsions demanded an accounting? So I'm dropping this note forthwith — a note about a subject that will soon hit the airwaves and presses with all the sensationalist drama of a presidential impeachment trial:
The debt ceiling calamity of 2021.
Because we haven't enough calamities.
Such is the sentiment — I started to type "thinking" — of the Trump Party, which once again is about to stick a loaded gun in the face of the American economy. The party's chief mugger is Mitch McConnell, who tweeted yesterday that raising the debt limit is Senate Democrats' "sole responsibility." They'll receive no assistance from Mitch & Friends.
To this he is committed, even though the Dems bailed him and his president out in 2019 by suspending the debt ceiling through this summer — thus averting an economic calamity on a Republican president and Republican Senate's watch. (Mitch is unlike Vito Corleone in only one respect: He never returns favors.)
The stupidity and partisan cruelty of refusing to raise the debt ceiling have been discussed and analyzed by the press every which way for years, which is to say, ever since Strangelovian GOP pols learned to stop worrying and love the terrorist bomb. No need, then, to rehash all the stupidity and cruelty here.
But wait, now I recall what compelled me to drop this note at this particular time. Earlier this morning I was reading a piece that referenced McConnellite hypocrisy; namely, that era in which he stiff-armed Democrat Obama's Supreme Court pick because the presidential election was but a year away, then rammed through a Republican president's appointment when a presidential election was only 45 days away.
Hypocrisy of that gargantuan magnitude can never be topped. It shall live not so much in infamy as in jaw-dropping, absolutely fucking astonishment. Goddamn! it's almost admirable.
At any rate, while the short story about McConnell's Supreme Court hypocrisy is keenly relevant to his hypocrisy about the upcoming debt-ceiling crisis, it's even keener in the broadest possible political terms, which have been astutely framed by Hawaii's Sen. Brian Schatz:
"I don’t think anyone believes [McConnell] will say, 'They nailed me for being hypocritical — I give up.' But it is possible, in fact it’s imperative, that we demonstrate that the modern Republican Party is just too dangerous for the American economy and for American democracy."
Jan. 6 was "exhibit A," he added. "This is exhibit B."
My profoundest wish is that the Democratic Party possessed the skill, the artfulness and above all the ballsy determination to demonstrate to the American electorate that the Republican Party is, as Schatz says, too dangerous for both the economy and our democracy. Any competent handicapper, however, would reduce the odds of Democrats ever striking the second target with thermonuclear determination because of its sorryass record on squarely hitting the first target.
Empirically proven is that the economy since FDR has performed better under Democratic administrations assisted by Democratic Congresses than have their Republican counterparts. And yet the party has failed to impress this straightforward fact upon the public. By and large, it persists in believing that the GOP is the party of strong, or stronger, economies.
Why? Because the Republican Party knows how to propagandize with a stentorian bullishness that could make Josef Goebbels blush. No longer does the party even really need to convince voters of the fabled untruth of its macroeconomic wizardry. With a Democratic assist, the electorate's delusion is baked in.
One can see the same sort of delusion-inclined thinking already taking place when it comes to Republicans' theft of American democracy. In any engaged, committed democracy, incalculable hordes of honorable voters would be on the streets of Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, demanding that Republican pols cease and desist from their antidemocratic schemes — which are every bit as brazen as their scheme to crater the American economy over the stupid, cruel issue of the debt limit.
Those voters would be on the streets because America's one responsible political party put them there, propelling them to unprecedented anger and action through unremitting, fire-breathing determination to unmercifully arrest Republican thievery.
Do you see such mobs of the righteous?
You may see a mob Saturday, from the other side, wholly untethered from righteousness. And it will be the Republican Party that placed them there.
Of course this particular mobocratic mobilization could fizzle out. Who knows? But this much we do know: The Republican party, the Trump Party, is dragging America from exhibit A — Jan. 6 — to exhibit B — the debt ceiling calamity. And it's all of a set piece: "The modern Republican Party is just too dangerous for the American economy and for American democracy" — with emphasis on the latter.
Meanwhile, what are Democrats doing? How are they countering this existential democratic crisis? By haggling over the no-brainer of whether Medicare should negotiate drug prices.
The proper rhetorical response to this is: Unfuckingbelievable.
You tell me. Should I be so disheartened, so furious and frustrated? Should I forego my profoundest wish — that the Democratic Party muster the needed polemical artfulness and equally the colossal will to rally the honorable citizenry against Republicans' brazen designs to rob us of prosperity and our American heritage? I'm on the fence here.