Occam's Razor

I came across a picture of Kari Lake the other day. Lake ran for Governor of Arizona last year, lost and immediately claimed the election was rigged. The look on her face was priceless, but epitomized our modern Republican Party. I imagine Donald Trump looked the same way when someone told him he lost the 2020 presidential election as well.

It was a stunned bunny look, saying “How could this have happened to me? It must be a result of some sort of massive conspiracy because the people of Arizona could not possibly reject me. Her numerous court challenges have gone nowhere. Judge after judge have found there was no conspiracy but it doesn’t matter to her. It obviously happened and all these judges must be part of the conspiracy by not seeing it her way.

House Republicans trying to grasp the enormity of finding a political compromise to the debt ceiling will soon have the same expression too. It’s pretty clear that most won’t or can’t entertain the idea unless, of course, all their demands are met. Nice country we have here Democrats. Too bad you’re going to blow it up because you won’t let us retroactively get rid of all progressive legislation since the Great Depression. They seem hellbent to cause the country to default and to bring on financial Armageddon because that’ll make the liberals squeal. They might as well drop a sixteen ton weight on their feet. If they are stupid enough to do this, it will likely destroy the party and MAGA as well. Oh, and likely your job too.

They can’t hold in their minds the idea they could possibly be wrong. In short, after it happens they’ll look a lot like Kari Lake. It’s not clear that even a ton of smelling salts will wake them up. Perhaps enough seniors not getting their monthly payment will.

It would be, by many magnitudes, the biggest and stupidest unforced American political error of all time. These outcomes are the totally and wholly predictable outcome of living in your own surreal political bubble where you tune out all dissenting voices and opinions.

Some part of me doesn’t want Joe Biden to invoke the 24^th amendment or mint a trillion dollar coin. But I still suspect Joe will invoke the 24^th amendment. To discover why not finding political compromise is a bad idea, it may help to actually experience it and give Republicans and voters a reality check on how things actually work. Federal spending (which doesn’t have to be deficit spending) keeps our economy humming and creates millions of jobs. If it upset some that the poor get some of this money, imagine how much more they’ll be upset when the poor riot in the streets. They might want to read what happened in America’s inner cities in 1968.

I don’t know why these Americans can’t enable their common sense filter. Remove much of this money from the economy quickly and it guarantees a recession and likely a whole lot worse. It sets up a scenario for political unrest far beyond what the National Guard can control. These federal subsidies ensure a relative peace in this country. Overall, it’s very cheap insurance.

We can hope for an eleventh hour compromise but I just don’t see it happening.