If you play the DC power game, all that matters is the game

By David McElroy · July 13, 2011

When you’re a part of the political power structure, you lose perspective about what matters. Before you know it, the thing that’s most important is yourself, your group and your place in the power structure. Republican U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell provides the latest example of that.

For sane people who can do math, it looks probable that the federal government is heading inevitably toward defaulting on its debts one day. It’s just not possible to keep borrowing at this rate and still pay the money back at levels of taxation that people will put up with. For years, there’s been a need for a president and a Congress to face that reality and quit borrowing money and spending more, but it’s not political reality to expect that. And it hasn’t happened.

So now the two mainstream parties are locked in the latest deathmatch over control, each hoping that the other party will blink first. Republicans are demanding modest budget cuts before they’ll agree to let the government go on borrowing. Democrats are trying to avoid the cuts and offering insane plans of their own. Neither side offers any plan that deals with long-term reality.

In the midst of all this, Mitch McConnell said something today that tells us what he’s really thinking. He’s not looking at the reality of future default — whether the debt ceiling is raised or not — but at the effect it would have on his party if a borrowing agreement isn’t reached. He’s worried about the effect a government shutdown would have on the Republican “brand”:

“(Democrats) want to blame the economy on us and the reason default is no better an idea today than when Newt Gingrich tried it in 1995 is that it destroys your brand. It would give the president an opportunity to blame Republicans for a bad economy. Look, he owns the economy. He’s been in office almost three years now, and we refuse to let him entice us into co-ownership of a bad economy.”

Get that? The real issue isn’t that the Demopublicans and Republicrats have been leading us to financial ruin — and still are — but rather that if his party doesn’t agree to raise the debt ceiling, the other party might blame them for something. I’ve heard more maturity from angry kids on playgrounds.

I’m certainly not saying this to support the Democrats’ position. They’re just as childish and foolish. All of the people in the system are like participants of a giant power game — and all that matters anymore is winning the game. The fact that the state is going broke — and getting “broker” every day — is just a secondary issue to be exploited in a marketing game to get power for one side or another.

Seen in this light, the state is nothing but an elaborate game for elites who are competing with one another for power.

Toward the end of the 1983 movie, “War Games,” the computer has finally figured out that the “war games” it’s been playing aren’t winnable, so it says something that’s applicable to all of us who see what McConnell and the other players are really doing:

“A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?”

I have no interest in playing their game or letting the state play games with my life and future. The only winning move is to find a way out of the game. It’s time to opt out of the state.

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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