Government Shutdown: Day 10

Last Thursday, as I was watching the Colbert Report, Colbert opened his show up with a joke about the government shutdown, which has now reached day ten. In doing so, he got out a “government shutdown punch card”, where he punched it and “won a CDC Ebola monkey” for reaching ten days, implying that he’s been a long-time “customer” of the government shutdown and should be rewarded for his loyalty. While this may seem silly, Colbert was just using the joke to introduce the topic. He went on to report “breaking news”, referring to the shutdown as “the Obama-Boehner shutdown, debt-ceiling, tag team death match”,  one line of which stuck with me:

“There has evidently been some progress, in that they have found new things to completely disagree about.”

Of course this immediately made me think of rhetoric and the “correct way of arguing”, considering the past couple of days, if not weeks and months, have made it abundantly obvious that our government, the people we entrust to make huge decisions for the good of the country, hasn’t even been utilizing the correct forms of rhetoric.

Rather than intelligently debating and reaching a solution, even if it is hard for both sides to swallow, the Republicans and Democrats are readily bickering like squabbling siblings. One proposes a bill and rather than calmly protest it, the other one decides to just completely shutdown, effective immediately. While maybe there was a valid, or a least reasonable explanation for this initially, it’s pretty much turned into the equivalent of a moody teenager locking themselves into their room after being told “no”. Okay, we get it GOP, you’ve made your point and can probably unlock the door now…

Meanwhile, the American public is pretty much left to its own devices. Sure we still have law and order, but no large decisions have been made for the country since the shutdown began, leaving us all in this perpetual state of crappy government. To make it worse, the public is much like the younger brothers and sisters not involved in the fight: some take sides and argue vehemently, furthering and instigating the problem even more, while others decide to stay Switzerland and try to hide it out, again, not really alleviating anything.

While I understand most people’s frustration with our government right now, at the same time, we, as a population, are either encouraging the behavior, common place shouting at one another, or cowering in a corner hoping “Mommy” and “Daddy” stop fighting soon. Someone needs to do something soon. At this point, it doesn’t even really matter who it is or what is done, just that SOMETHING occurs and changes.