You know what would be fun? If we could find some cantankerous seniors to wax surly about the government shutdown. Preferably with contrasting viewpoints on the matter. When it comes to a government shutdown, who can yell GET OFF MY LAWN! the loudest? Oakland County Executive Brooks Patterson (he's fer the shutdown) or Maureen Taylor (she's agin it) of Michigan Warfare Rights Organization? Let's go to the tape...
Patterson: "What do I say to Washington? Go to hell, that's my three words. I really am fed up with them, tired of it. It's not the same country when I joined the army 40 years ago. I've just lost so much confidence in my federal government, I really have."
Similar to the Nimzowitsch-Larsen Attack opening move in chess, the "I just want my country back" play does little to capture the center but it's a good way to fire up the pawns while allowing greater flexibility with future moves. Appeals to false nostalgia, after all, are basically free.
Let's see how Talyor counters.
"I'm at the point now where I'm questioning whether nonviolence in the way to go. I'm almost there. I'm on the fence. I'm thinking, 'You know what? Maybe we should pick up a Bible and throw it at one of them. ... Maybe we should pick up the Koran and throw it at one of them. Maybe we better pick up some religious documents and throw it at these people.' But I don't even think it would work."
Proposing a course of action that is both radical and unlikely to work and presupposes that we are or should be a theocratic nation? There's a winning strategy if ever there was one.
It's good to know such reasonable, mature, and thoughtful people are looking out for the best interests of everyday Americans.
Let's give Alexis de Tocqueville the last word: "I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all."
