Well folks, we’re there.  Let’s just let it happen.  Republicans are now the party of fascism and stupidity, and they’re showing it in spades with this latest assault on the US government.  Yes, they’ve been hostage takers for the last quarter century, holding a gun to the heads of the economy, everyone not white, veterans, active duty military, children, Dream kids, LGBT identified, and everyone else who happens to disagree with them.  Until TFG took over, though, we all knew that most of it was Kabuki play, threatening to wreck everyone’s lives to gain some kind of political gain which was almost always either destructive or pointless.  The unspoken feature of that hostage taking was they weren’t really serious.  They knew that adults in the room would win out, pull us off of the brink and extract some political ransom for doing so.

Watching the catastrophe of today makes the recent past look quaint.  Today’s Republicans, now controlled by a small group of political terrorists, have thrown out that historical tactic.  Led by idiots like Matt Gaetz, Paul Gaza, MTG, and Lauren Gropert, all those rules are out the window.  The Insurrectionist Wing of the GOP really do want to wreck the government to impose their will on 330 Americans whether they want it or not.  They’ve been elected to lead our constitutional democracy when their goal is to destroy it.  Kevin McCarthy, who’s proven to be a shithead in all things, really doesn’t want to destroy the government, but he sold his soul to the Insurrectionists just so he could fondle the Speaker’s gavel if just for a minute.  We’re less than 40 hours from a government shutdown, and the terrorists have also stated their goal to next defund the government by refusing to raise the debt limit their favorite hostage.

After years of worry and stress over this constant barrage of political and economic attacks, I say let’s let them do it.  Shut down the government; throw the economy into chaos; destroy hundreds of billions of dollars of Americans’ value.  Hell, while we’re at it, defund the US government and default on the debt.  The destruction, which is indescribable, will hopefully be enough to jolt US voters out of their collective coma to relegate these fascists to the dustbin of history, at least for another 5 or 6 decades.

Nothing else has worked or will work until these ignoramuses get what they want.  They won’t like it when they do, and it will hurt millions of people, but I have concluded that the only way we rid ourselves of these goons is to let them destroy themselves, then get them replaced with more normal people, and then our laws and regulations strengthened to make it harder to do this the next time they want to try it.  We’ll have to pick up the pieces, rebuild, and then move forward.

The solution to this relentless siege on our democracy will only happen by taking back local, state, and federal governments, arresting, charging, and jailing all insurrectionists and passing laws to keep other terrorists away from the levers of power when they crawl out from under their rock and try it again.

So, let’s do it.

The silly brinksmanship played in Washington these days has become as idiotic as it has harmful.  NO country on the planet runs itself like the US.  We don’t do budget reconciliation and planning. We do “continuing resolutions” so the government can limp along for another few days.  We regularly hold (the sick, poor children, immigrants, minorities, education) fill in the blank here _________ hostage for cynical political purposes.  It stupid.  It’s destructive. It costs billions in economic slowing.  It hurts everyday Americans.

But here’s the problem – Republicans use government shutdowns now as a political weapon, but it’s not really a shut down anymore.  In 2013, after Ted Cruz led the idiotic shutdown, President Obama shutdown the national park system and other services.  The shock to the system drove both sides to the table, even though it took 16 days to do so.  During this shutdown, though, Trump is trying to make it invisible to everyday Americans.  The parks, or at least most of them, are staying open.  Other essential services are being maintained.  The only people hurt in the short term are the poor, the sick, the old, and the voiceless.  After all, who cares about them, right?

Shutdown is now just another tool the Republicans cynically use to put pressure on the opposition. The public, though, because so many services are maintained (even though government employees don’t get paid), there’s no price that most Americans pay.  Because of that, many people, who have no idea how government actually works say “Shut the government down.  It doesn’t affect me anyway.”  I say, let’s make the government shutdown an actual shutdown.  Shut down the military.  Shut down the air traffic control system.  Shut down customs, border security, national parks, social security, medicare, education, everything.  The way  to stop this kind of nonsense is to make it real to every person.  The costs to the economy and everyday Americans would be so severe that politicians wouldn’t dare to use it as a political tool.

I’m pretty sick of the politics of self destruction we’ve seen develop the last 20 years.  It’s time to stop it.