Time and Time Again

I listened to the saga of the debt ceiling crisis and wondered when our elected representatives would manage to remember that we the people are the ones they were/are supposed to be representing. Now I may be completely old fashioned but I consider it a display of extreme self interest when a group of people decide that they can play with the future of the electorate, indeed the future of the future electorate, as if they alone will bear the consequences.

It is all very well to have a soap box behind the office door. It might even be acceptable to have a megaphone on hand in case the people at the back of the room can not hear your pearls of wisdom. In fact I might even understand if you paid a sky writer to broadcast your opinions but to spend weeks of the tax payers hard earned money arguing over the most urgent matter at hand with a deliberate and callous disregard for the economic chaos that was building up (yet again!) was to show us the people that we count for ... oh what was that 'you are the people' come on, a Tea Potter grimaces, .... nothing because this is not an election year and apparently the voter has an amazing short memory!

As the final hour approached I began to wonder if I was watching a badly scripted episode of 'Dallas' circa 1982. Was JR going to die? Who was the stranger lurking in the shadows? Was there a puppet master about whom we knew nothing? Would the ranch have to be put up for sale? Who would buy the horses and what about Miss. Ellie? Come back in an hour or two, the news anchors advised us, and we'll explain everything or then again maybe nothing.

Forget about Dallas I have reconsidered and am going with an elaborate and dangerous version of Cluedo. It was the weeper in the library surrounded by copies of the words of the founding fathers held in the hands of the clamouring Potters who was finally revealed as the leader of the mob. The corpse of countless jobs and economic comeback was found lying in the corner under a cloak with Chinese lettering on it that when translated read: We will conquer the weak and the stupid by their own hands.

Oh well maybe in another thirty years the historians will evaluate the events of the past few weeks and claim that in the greater scheme of the collapse and demise of the economic health of the USA it was merely another step down the hill. I think a few billion people really don't, and won't care - rather like the folk on Capitol Hill.