In support of hte shutdown/default
For a long while, we've been losing ground to the Republicans in that millitary gets more money but actual people get less. Continuing this slide will eventually result in a messy revolution, which could easily cause massive death as the systems that keep food coming into cities and such are disrupted. Increasingly, it looks like millitary spending is just a way for the rich to use the non-rich as ATMs and to get campaign contributions to Republicans.
So, although the shutdown and possible default would cause a lot of damage, they provide us with a chance to seriously "shake things up" and force a retrospective on the direction the country is going in. I'm hoping this will not just be a slight shift in votes allowing the Democrats to take the House, but a massive rethinking of the nation's priorities. America used to be a country where new ideas were tried, inventions were made, and we developed new technologies. Going to the moon is a good example. Developing computers is a great example. Hell, Henry Ford started a revolution in manufacturing. To make these things possible, America invested in itself in terms of education, funding scientific research, building infrastructure. Companies don't do that - they exist to make profit, but improving the country (or world) is definitely not in their charters. No should we expect it to be.
All those things that enabled America to be truely great, as measured by new technologies developed here, are things that Republicans want to do away with. They want education to be available only to the affluent, opportunities to be available only to the affluent. The rest of the people can be cheap labor and be happy to get it or another source of cheap labor will be used. We have been sliding in that direction for decades, and people, in general, have been unaware of it, like the frog/boiling water scenario. The showdown/default might be just the thing to shake people up so they take a good, hard look at where the country is going and where each political party wants to take us. It would be a lot better to do this now than to band-aid the situation again and let the slide continue.
so in the immortal words of G.W., "Bring it on!"
= new reply since forum marked as read
However, it's getting worse, slowly, and it needs to be dealt with in a more complete way than a band-aid. Look at the things Republicans have been pushing through: cutting food stamps is quite recent, and that is causing kids to starve. But it's a small (5%?) cut, so it's not so bad, but it will be followed by more cuts, and more kids will starve.
The only way I see to stop this is to work through this crisis or one like it without band-aids. Yes, it will be painful but a lot less painful than being like the frog that eventually finds itself boiling to death. It's too easy to get a quick fix and forget about it, until it comes back later, and worse. In previous debt ceiling/shutdown "negotiations," Obama didn't really deal with the problem of Republicans going crazy but compromised (meaning "gave in"
, and guess what? They're back, with more demands.
It kind of reminds me of the house that the fire department let burn down because the owner didn't pay into the funding (the dept. was in a different county, so he wasn't paying taxes for it but could buy in to fire protection). Many people argued that, in essence, it sucked that his house burned down and the fire dept. shouldn't have let that happen. But if they had put it out, the problem would never get fixed - the guy wouldn't pay his "taxes" and the situation would just get worse in the long term.
This is evolutionary. Stopping this shutdown with another band-aid will short-circuit the evolutionary process and allow things to get worse.