Joan and I were watching a news program the other day after she got home from work.
As you can imagine, the program dealt with things like laws that make it more difficult to vote, a collection of far right legislators that were attempting to control and manipulate Congress with evangelical zeal, some of those same elected leaders strategizing how to use raising the debt ceiling as a hostage to get things that they want and politicians repeating patently false narratives - some may say ‘lies’ - to fuel the acolytes that support them.
It all gets to be a little bit much sometimes, doesn’t it?
The really scary part of this scenario is the show we were watching was a scripted drama, which chronicled actual events that had or were actually taking place.
In 2012.
“The Newsroom,” was a short-lived (2 and a half season) drama from the creative mind of Aaron Sorkin, who also helmed “The West Wing” and - according to my kids - his crowning series “Sports Night.”
“The Newsroom” has the rapid-fire dialog that I identify as being a Sorkin product, and while it deals with the personalities and more of a staff of an evening news show, it drapes the show over the happenings of the day.
I had it on when Joan came home and we watched - she watched, I listened - to the episode that was on and when it was over she noted that it is now 2023 and many of the exact same things are still being discussed on the national stage.
The players change, however the process really doesn’t.
Tea Party members - remember them? - are replaced by national voices that talk about space lasers and continue to scare the public with stories about non-existant voting fraud as they attempt to make it harder and harder to cast a ballot.
In 2012, Mitch McConnel said that raising the debt ceiling was “a hostage worth ransoming,” as conservatives used raising the debt ceiling as a means to force concessions on other things.
A quick reminder, raising the debt ceiling doesn’t pave the way to greater spending; it allows the government to borrow enough money to cover the expenses already incurred.
It doesn’t seem to make any difference who resides in the White House, or who has been elected to represent whichever district in the United States.
When you look at what was taking place 10 years ago and lay that transparency over what is happening today, it really seems that, at least at the federal level, government is stuck in the mud.
