Is anyone surprised at gridlock of congressional ‘super committee’?

By David McElroy · November 22, 2011

The congressional “super committee” is a super failure. The only question I have is why anyone ever thought it had a chance of success.

This super committee was set up as a result of the congressional budget deal in August. Formally, it’s called the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, but everybody just calls it the super committee. Its job was to do what Congress was supposed to have done during the fight a few months ago — figure out how to reduce the federal budget deficit that’s threatening to grow bigger and bigger and bigger.

Democrats on the committee want tax increases and few spending cuts. Republicans want no tax increases and slightly more serious spending cuts. The two sides have positions that are locked in concrete. They aren’t budging. Monday, the members announced that they’re giving up, because no deal is possible.

If you read various stories about why the negotiations failed, you almost have to come to the conclusion that the two sides might as well be on different planets insofar as how they view the world. Democrats view high-income taxpayers as cows to be milked. Republicans want to keep milking those cows, but just not as hard. The narrative that’s probably going to prevail in the media is the one that says Republican insistence on extending the Bush-era tax cuts is to blame for the failure. I think the truth is simpler and less exciting to TV news.

This country isn’t united in what it wants. It’s not even close. Maybe it never has been. But the fissures are getting deeper. The unity that exists in history books and government classes and romantic imaginations is gone. We have less and less in common. There’s nothing united about today’s United States.

The things that I believe are moral about how society is organized aren’t negotiable. I can’t say, “Hey, this is theft to take this money, but I’ll agree to let you steal that guy’s money, but only this amount.” Even for those for whom taxation isn’t a moral issue have certain things that are non-negotiable to them. For some people, it’s the belief in enforcing social morality through coercion. For others, it’s the belief in providing basis services for everyone that’s not negotiable. There are more and more of these things that are non-negotiable to more and more people. It can’t ultimately lead to anything except a breakup of the country.

We don’t all want the same things, and that’s fine. My theoretical utopia isn’t the same as yours. Some people want individual freedom and others just honestly don’t want to be free. It’s time for us to face those facts and then face up to the fact that we have to have an adult conversation about how we’re going to go our own separate ways.

The idea of a breakup of the United States still seems like sacrilege to many people. They’ve been indoctrinated in the modern civic religion so well that it’s unthinkable. At some point, it’s going to happen. We can either be adults about it and agree on a peaceful divorce while we still can — or it can become a bitter and violent disaster after an economic collapse.

We still have a choice now about how to handle the breakup, but we’re edging closer and closer to having no choice about the matter. Social and economic collapse are coming.

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We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

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