A Long Walk Off of a Short Pier

Four years of mismanagement, stalling and political cowardice have brought us here. American government has hit rock-bottom. The three-branch system, even with a bi-cameral legislature, will awake on the morning of January 2^nd like a bottomed out meth addict: laying on a bed of used hypodermics, shaking off the cobwebs of a body-smashing, weeklong bender and praying that nobody contracted a deadly auto-immune disease.

But that’s the point. That’s the entirety of the point. This Fiscal Cliff was and is a poison pill.[1] It guaranteed that nobody on either side of the aisle would get what they wanted and it was designed to scare the entirety of American government into action. Republicans, fearing that tax rates would rise for the wealthy, would be forced to compromise with Democrats, equally afraid that welfare spending would be slashed from the federal budget.

Congratulations to the geniuses who came up with that idea.

Hopefully we can thank them someday, these “geniuses”, not for fixing the economic woes of the country, not for providing a solution (or even motivation to find a solution) to America’s perennial budget deficit, but for proving to me, and hopefully the rest of the country something that Standard & Poor’s knew over a year ago.

We, American citizens, the world, the global economy, all of humanity are held at the mercy of a broken political system which functions (or more often fails to function) based on the whims of two opposing and completely incompatible ideologies.[2]

The two parties can agree to one thing: the other side are useless, their ideas worthless and their values detrimental to this “Great Land of Ours.”

American politicians are just as likely to negotiate in good faith with a political opponent as they are to with terrorists. They don’t.

The two party political system is an endangered species across the globe, and it only thrives in the United States of America, where it should be put down mercifully and allowed to go extinct. Power has been concentrated firmly in the hands of two groups, who perform various acts of theatrical political grandstanding to prevent their opponent from instituting any meaningful legislation.

Stagnancy is the dominant theme of America’s two party narrative. Where ever the two sides overlap in policy, the agreement is in reality more of a stalemate with mutual benefits than anything else. Nobody in Congress, for example, has seriously considered cutting the salaries and benefits of Congressmen in order to help solve the country’s budget crisis. Sometimes a third party appears and is able to subdue the bickering between the two sides (generally shoveling money into pockets like conniving parents shove candy into the mouth of whining infants) and dupe the system for their own gain. How many billions of dollars have been given to United States oil companies in the past century?

But these last months of political inaction have been particularly revealing. The country literally has a legislative branch that is entirely incapable of legislating. Even if the leadership of the two sides wanted to get a deal together[3], it’s unlikely that anyone would be able to vote on it before some bozo assassinated it in some sub-committee or, if it reach the House or Senate floor, stood up to filibuster and prevent any actually voting from taking place.[4]

But that’s what Americans have. Expecting anything useful to come out of American politics is like expecting to get to work on time by driving a car with four flat tires. Something needs to change.

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[1] For the record, the dreaded Fiscal Cliff might not be all that dreadful. Revenue will be raised; government spending will be cut. Maybe revenue will not be raised in the right way, taxed from the right people. Maybe spending won’t be cut properly, and the useful programs might not be properly protected. But nobody blames the field surgeon for amputating a little bit too much healthy tissue, at least nobody dying from gangrene does. But, although the country might not be as gangrenous as before, lopping off one of America’s legs isn’t all that helpful in the long run.

[2] “The United States is no longer in the top echelon on its political settings” were the nicer words of S&P’s sovereign ratings committee chairman John Chambers.

[3] Plan B anyone? What about Preparation H?

[4] By the way, filibustering used to amount to a politician standing up and speaking in order to prevent a vote from taking place. Someone would speak for as long as possible, with voting occurring after the speech. Now, a filibuster is announced, the three-fifths majority required to bypass a filibuster fails to come together and everyone goes on vacation. Of course, some particularly daring politicians even filibuster themselves. All filibustering can accomplish is slowing the political process.