October 8, 2013

I still don't think this will end before October 17.

Call me pessimistic, but I doubt the people who did this (Tea Partiers, the Kochs, the GOP) can get themselves together enough to stop this. Yes, their popularity will plunge, but that only means that they'll try to hold on more dearly to the one "bargaining chip" or advantage they have. That is, the fact that they can make or break the world economy. To anybody who's desperate, that's going to seem like a lot of power, and once they give it up, they'll have nothing. They'll have no prospects for staying in office, and the conservative ideology will be as out of fashion as the Hitler mustache.

They're going to try to get something out of this, anything to make it less than the total defeat it has to be. And, yes, I believe they'll take the world economy down trying to do it. It's not like even the Koch Brothers can afford to lose this.

I'm afraid this is going to be the 21st century's version of World War I, where everybody's trapped in their own bad decisions.