Radical Republicans Have No Idea

To the members of the US House of Representatives who voted for the shutdown:

You have no idea the harm you have done, the long-term damage you have wreaked upon your nation.

You were the bullies on the playground, so filled with testosterone that you convinced yourselves you could take over the school and overpower the principal. You spoke only to yourselves to the exclusion of all others and came to believe your own bullshit. How stupid you proved yourselves to be.

Not so, you say? Well, consider this. United States allies from the majority of the world nations are talking – to each other. “Look out,” they’re saying. The nation is imploding, collapsing under its own weight, under the burden of its own hubris and ignorance.

“There are no leaders there – not any more. The ones that might have been, like John McCain, can only apologize for their peers. There are only self serving egotists, feeding at the public trough – at the expense of their own people. It was like this in Rome. It was like this in every collapsing hegemony.

“While we quietly invest in our own people, in infrastructure, strive to improve our education systems and to create opportunities for our children, their infrastructures are collapsing around them. They have taken so much money out of their system for the benefit of the few that they now have to privatize what remains. They openly and gleefully wage wars on their women, infants and children. They would wage a more active war against the elderly if there were fewer and they didn’t need the votes.

“Look how they spend their money – on war materiel. They spend more on their military than all of us combined – and for what? Where can they use it. We are all friends here, by and large. They blind sided Libya but Syria is mush wiser, and they have friends. Iran is softening, making efforts to join the community again. How many missiles do we really need for North Korea?

“As we watch from a distance, they continue to build more fighter jets they’ll never need, more tanks that will never see a battlefield, all to enrich the war machinery. They ignore the fact that the last junior officer to engage an enemy in battle is now an aging general nearing retirement, preparing for new career as a lobbyist. They fail to acknowledge that they now graduate more drone operators than fighter pilots.

“They don’t understand that the last great war for them was won in 1945 and that every one since has come at too great a cost to be called victory. They fail to acknowledge that while they once fought for a cause, they now only wage war as predators.

“After conducting silent wars of economic aggression against Central and South America, and after supporting Asian and Middle Eastern despots, what’s left?

“What’s left but to militarize their internal police forces and national guards to defend themselves against their own. What’s left but to spy on everyone, friends and foe alike, their own citizens as well.

“Careful, my friends. We must ask ourselves, is it time to look elsewhere for leadership? Is it time for an alternative currency to replace the dollar? We must craft a plan to divest ourselves of the trillions we have invested in their treasuries for ‘full faith and credit’ carries less significance for us than it once did. We must prepare to withstand the tsunami as the giant collapses into the sea.

“The leaders among the 545 are too few to overcome the avarice and greed of the fascist elite, the billionaire overlords, the few mega corporations that control everything: the food supplies, the energy resources, healthcare, the media, and the military. Most of them are part of the system, including five of the judiciary. Let us look to each other, for their end is near. It is part of the cycle of life.”

You may deny this, Republicans like Cantor and Ryan, Gohmert and Cruz. Fair enough. History will prove it out. You did not cause the decline. The cracks have been appearing for years. What you did, however was to fracture the nation, to show the world what our institutions have become, to expose us to the light. Ill winds are blowing stronger because of you.