No Grown-ups in DC

I have not posted in a while. This is partly due to the fact that I have been writing an essay that was due this week. (Yes, students, teachers are given assignments too.) There were more than a few times in recent weeks when a subject had my fingers itching, but I was so nearly burned out after the election cycle that I forced myself to stay on the bench. I submitted my rough draft yesterday (on time) and I can hold out no longer.

One wants to ask whether there is even one grown-up left in Washington D.C. The most obvious example of our elected officials acting like small children is the so-called fiscal cliff situation. I am not an economist and I don't play one on TV (parody Robert Young,) but it is plain to any thinking adult that no entity, not governmental nor commercial nor domestic, can continue to spend more than it takes in and remain functional. The word "fiscal" softens the real impact of the "cliff" we are approaching.

Fiscal means having to do with money. Money is what makes the world go 'round. A cliff is a sudden drop-off where ostensibly one loses one's footing, perhaps falling out of control into some depth of disaster. The "fiscal cliff" is, therefore, a looming economic disaster. Listening to the Republicans and Democrats take shots at each other you would think the only disaster they have in view is the reduction of their political power.

If a true disaster were pending and the pols would admit it, they would look like they did on September 12, 2001. The mutuality and cooperation on that day seem like something out of a fairy tale in light of the shenanigans in D.C. today. I try to imagine what it would have been like if both parties had seen the airliners coming at the buildings on 9/11. Would the elephants have bellowed at the donkeys that their policies had reduced the covert operations of our government to such a paucity that we could not foresee the attack? Would the donkeys bray at the elephants that the attack would not be pending if Bush had not invaded Iraq? Would they continue slinging slurs until the planes smashed into their targets?

Although the question seems ridiculous, we are witnessing exactly the same scenario if the economic situation is as dire as they propose. In fact, the analogy can be extended: we had seen a precursor to 9/11 a few years prior when attempts were made to topple the towers in 1991 and 1993. Attacks on embassies and the USS Cole should have continued to sound the alarm. The market crash of October of 2008 is the parallel to the 1991 bombing. The housing crisis and subsequent multiple bail-outs are also directly analogous. Yet the children in Washington continue to act as if there are not fiscal planes heading for our financial towers.

The present posturing of the political classes makes one wonder which side of their mouths to listen to. If their shared warning concerning the frightful consequences of going over the cliff are true, then their behavior vis a vis the necessary compromise with their adversaries is worse than childish: it is mutually diabolical. On the other hand, if one party is correctly assessing the situation and the other party is to blame for blocking sincere efforts to find a solution, then the party guilty of blocking is alone contemptible if not traitorous. I suspect the truth may lie somewhere in the middle.

More and more one hears commentators suggesting that the best solution to our current crisis is to do nothing and let the cliff do its work. A businessman who is good friend of mine suggested after Obama was elected in 2008 that the only way people would realize their mistake would be for his policies to drive our nation to its knees. We may be there now: on our knees with a fiscal gun to the back or our head and no way to keep the hit man from pulling the trigger.

The image of being on our knees is doubly appropriate. Financially and politically we have been forced to our knees and an execution seems immanent. But being on our knees also suggests a posture of spiritual and emotional destitution, a place from which there is no recourse but to turn to God in prayer. That too smacks of September 12, 2001. It is sad but true that only destitution seems capable of driving us arrogant, up by the bootstraps Americans to a place of need. Choose your analogy: "Jesus Take the Wheel" as Carrie Underwood sang a few years back, or, "Into thy hands I commend my spirit," as Jesus said at his execution. Either implies that childlike faith Jesus commended. If only our representatives would start acting childlike instead of childish.