If the Rude Pundit was a citizen of Greece right now, he'd be laughing in disbelief at the idiocy of the American debates over funding the government and the debt ceiling. "Wait, wait, wait," he'd say in a sultry Greek accent that gets all the ladies and men wet and hard with desire, "you mean that the USA doesn't have to go through our nightmare but might anyways?" And then, thinking about his own country's crisis which was precipitated in part by a downgrading of its credit rating related to its inability to pay its debt, he'd make some charming gesture of confusion and say, in Greek, "My god, what fucking dunces." Then he'd probably eat some olives, drink some ouzo, fuck a satyr, whatever the hell Greeks do.
You want to know how stupid it's gotten out there? We now have ads from an anti-Obamacare group with the name "Generation Opportunity" (which is hilarious, since the goal of the group is to cut off opportunities). It's targeting college kids, and it's funded by Koch brother-funded groups, so you know it's got street cred with the kids. It's got a couple of ads that show, quite literally, Uncle Sam about to sodomize a woman with a speculum and a man with his fingers to represent the government "interfering" with health care. No, really.
In one respect, the Rude Pundit totally respects the balls-to-the-wall approach here. He's advocated for liberals to do similar things to, you know, stop the wars. But only conservatives could get away with shitting on the image of Uncle Sam, the Greatest Generation's military pimp, by turning him into a horror movie rapist. Imagine if liberals from well-connected organizations had produced an ad in 2004 that showed Uncle Sam totally fucking the shit out of Americans while a terror alert was going on. Fox "news" would have exploded from cranking the outrage machine up to 11. Members of Congress of both parties would have condemned it and apologies would have been made to Wolf Blitzer. For, truly, this makes "Petraeus/Betray Us" look quaint.
(Note: You know that nutzoid conservatives now use that line on Petraeus over Benghazi and his fucking a writer?)
Grinning Uncle Sam Rape-Eyes is just one stupid, embarrassing aspect of this entire stupid, embarrassing debate, which comes down to these two propositions: 1. Either deny millions of people access to health care or the government gets shut down. 2. If #1 doesn't occur, either deny millions of people access to health care or the U.S. defaults on its debts, sending its credit rating into the shitter and the zombie apocalypse can finally begin.
We don't know what House Speaker John Boehner's endgame is on the budget or debt ceiling battles. Is he just buying time in order to come up with some way to hand job the Tea Party terrorists in his caucus? Or is he so craven about clinging to power that he'll give in to their demands if only they let him keep his precious gavel?
Aren't we all sick of it? The threats, the brinksmanship, the unending warnings about consequences? Maybe that's why a recent poll shows that a majority of Republicans know that a debt default will hurt the economy but want to do it anyways. They don't care. At some point, you gotta push the red button that says "Don't Push" just to find out what the fuck it does.
So, fine, let's go there. Let's shut down the government. But remember: it ain't just the poors who are affected. Let's let the farmers in Steve King's district see how they do. Let's let the USDA and other government offices that directly affect farmers in Iowa, including ones that cover things like loans and pest control, put up the "Closed" sign. Hey, Rep. Paul Gosar of a wildfire-fucked district in Arizona, let's see how your constituents like it when you help cause the Forest Service to shut down.Oh, and, hey, college students tempted by Generation...oh, fuck, who cares...your student loans and Pell Grants would probably have a hard time being processed for the spring semester.
When a shutdown or debt default happens, if Democrats aren't able to wreck the Republican Party over it, well, let's just say that Grinning Uncle Sam Rape-Eyes can appear anywhere.
(Another note: Let's not even contemplate what happens if President Obama compromises and delays implementation of the Affordable Care Act. That way lies irrelevancy, betrayal, and legacy destruction.)
Correction: An earlier version of this said that old people wouldn't get their Social Security checks during a shutdown. This was wrong. So it's gone now, replaced with pure and utter rightness.
