The actual demands I think are essentially irrelevant. If Republicans give up anything to the Democrats, the spell of the last 10 months is broken and Republicans can no longer unilaterally control the direction of government. If Democrats don't get any concessions, they're essentially irrelevant for the next 14 months and that only changes if they win either the House or Senate in 2026. Given that, it's not obvious how this ends.
> If Republicans give up anything to the Democrats, the spell of the last 10 months is broken and Republicans can no longer unilaterally control the direction of government.
How is that in any way shape or form “existential”? Existential means “if they fail they cease to exist or matter”, not “if they fail they don’t get to whatever the fuck they want”.
They've made a pretty unprecedented bet on unilateral party-line action and the legislative branch significantly deferring to the executive. I'm sure they're concerned about what the party looks like trying to transition back to a more normal way of doing business, especially given what their voters are now primed to expect. I agree this should not be existential, but I also don't understand congressional Republicans putting themselves in this situation in the first place, so clearly I'm not looking at the situation the same way they are.
(Note this works identically well regardless of which side of the aisle you read it as being about.)
In reality, the public is pretty close to split down the middle, and both parties are getting blamed, and the real message that people are taking away from this is that Congress is dysfunctional. It's a game of chicken where both parties think that the other side will blink, and so they just end up crashing.
It’s not unique to the US however, I think maybe we are all approaching the end of the line for current political/civil systems without further work that no one seems interested in taking.
The tail isn’t wagging the dog anymore, the tail(s) are the dog at this point.
The shutdown is a temporary budget squabble in a stable democracy; a banal political stunt that has happened every few years for the past few decades.
Rome’s dysfunction meant civil wars, assassinations, generals seizing poWer, private armies, and uprising (in a fundamentally different society where, incidentally, over 25% of the population was slaves.)
There has been over 2000 years of history since Rome… when a the only analogy a person can come up with is some half-baked allusion to the Roman Empire/Republic it’s a good bet said person lacks a sense of history, knowledge of current events, and common sense.
Sorry to be harsh.
I expect if you don’t think this is going to get bad you’re not paying attention.
Feel free to panic and tear your hair out… that’s what both sides do. Boring. The post, however, make some pretentious analogy to the Roman Republic. The analogy was silly. That’s all. It’s just an annoying variant of Godwins law: Rome or Hitler… the only two analogies available to those ignorant of history.
I made an observation that the present day is rhyming with history. You’re now raising Godwin’s law.
Good job.
You’ve got an executive branch stacking all open positions in judicial and legislative branches with their political appointees. And the executive is interpreting the law to gather as much power as possible to the head of state.
It’s not hard to see the parallels but you keep on trucking dude.
The judicial branch is composed of Judges who are confirmed by the Senate… not the executive branch.
And there are no ‘Legislative branch’ appointees.
I assume you mean the executive branch is making appointments to the executive branch? Who would you prefer to make such appointments? The Postal Serice?
At this point, I’d even prefer the Girl Scouts.
I’d classify things like FDA/FAA as legislative parts of the governments but maybe that’s wrong.
Also I don’t see other governments shutting down regularly with a cheer squad saying yeah this is nothing to worry about, our democracy is 100% A OK.
I still find it (morbidly) hilarious that congress considers doing their job the "nuclear option". If they weren't hiding behind the filibuster and started legislating maybe their approval rating wouldn't be such trash.