This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: I’ve had it with zombies and Republicans. Every newscast begins with the latest demands of House Republicans that must be met before the government is allowed to function and the nation can pay its debts.
The brief reprieve of a commercial break invariably features zombies — zombie movies, zombie television series, zombies hawking cell phones… Perhaps it’s just their juxtaposition but the two genres are beginning to remind me of each other.
Like Republicans, zombies have no viable plan for the future. They are, after all, dead. When all your tomorrows are yesterdays, it’s difficult to sell yourself as a visionary. And if you’re trying to make sense of the Republican agenda, it might be helpful if someone would first eat your brain.
Like zombies, Republicans can initially elicit a certain morbid fascination but soon grow tiresome. A little of their gruesome charm goes a long way. Sarah Palin is an excellent example of this phenomenon.
It’s tempting to limit this comparison to the “extremists” in the GOP but as long as the sensible Republicans allow the lunatics to run the asylum, they’re equally culpable. In fact, they’re probably more so because they ought to know better.
This state of affairs is regrettable because a two-party system relies on the party out of power to restrain the majority within reasonable boundaries. The all-or-nothing-at-all approach is like asking a consumer to choose between brakes and an engine when purchasing a car. The engine allows you to go places; the brakes keep you from driving off a cliff. Presently, we have a government with a sputtering engine and locked brakes.
The latest impasse began as an effort to defund Obamacare. That effort was dead on arrival and soon devolved into a zombie riot intent on breaking things for the hell of it. The ideological instigator of the disorder was none other than the junior U.S. senator from Texas, Ted Cruz.
Cruz is the latter-day reincarnation of “Tail-Gunner Joe” McCarthy in Republican circles. The content of the demagogy has changed now that commie witch hunts have fallen from fashion, but its intent is the same. In fact, the two men even look alike. They’re not separated-at-birth twins, but compare photos and you’ll see a definite scion’s resemblance.
They represent the dark, venal strain of ruthless ambition in the American character. Like Richard Nixon and Captain Queeg, they’re also almost comically paranoid because they presume everybody else to be as unprincipled as they are.
At any rate, Zombie-Ted shares the Tail-Gunner’s rabid thirst for the spotlight. On the eve of the government shutdown, he staged a 21-hour oration on the Senate floor to alert the nation to the perils of affordable health care.
During the course of his rambling dissertation, he read Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham to his daughter over the phone. His choice of bedtime stories was ironic because the purpose of that tale is to teach children the virtues of trying new things and the intent of his fake filibuster was to convince people not to do so.
There is a surfeit of unanswered questions about the viability of Obamacare. But those are not relevant here because health care is no longer the central issue in negotiations to resolve the present situation. It is now apparent that Republicans decided to shut down the government because they could — simple zombie madness.
The one guy who could who could end the shutdown and avert the debt-ceiling crisis is House Speaker John Boehner. Caught between a rock and a hard place, he looks like a man who could use a drink. He’s an old-time pol who now fears his own caucus more than he does the other side of the aisle.
Democrats claim they can garner enough votes from moderate Republicans to pass the necessary legislation to restore government and avoid fiscal collapse without preconditions. Republicans insist they cannot. The obvious way to settle that dispute is to hold a vote and see who wins.
That sensible solution was rejected by Boehner, however, because he fears alienating the right-wing of his party and thus losing his speakership. Two conclusions may be drawn from Boehner’s refusal to call a vote: 1) He values his tenuous grasp on his office over the welfare of the country and, 2) the Democrats are probably right about the vote count because the party that doesn’t want a vote is usually the one that figures to lose it.
Legend has it that when wise King Solomon was confronted by two women claiming to be the mother of the same child, he offered to cut the infant in half. He then ruled against the woman who accepted the deal, reasoning that the real mother would never consent to the slaughter of her baby just to win an argument. Unfortunately, that logic doesn’t work when you’re dealing with zombies.