The Sky Is Falling! Run For Your Life!!

I'm old enough to remember the Sixties. Whether I do or not, is a horse of another color ---- oooo looky, green! pink! orange swirls! But I digress.

This morning I jumped out of bed like a kid on Christmas, running to the kitchen to see if the government had shut down while I slept. IT DID!

Now what? The tree outside the kitchen window is raucous with birdsongs. The sky is lightening up into a smoky blue. No sirens. No heavy trucks rumbling by. I haven't seen a single black helicopter. Might as well go back to bed.

If the sky is about to fall, you couldn't tell by me. But look on facebook, look on news sites, look on twitter, and it sure does seem as though civilization, as we know it, is about to collapse. It's breathless! It's exciting! It's NEWS!

I'm not belittling the effect it will have on individual people, lots of them. Years ago, when I was a lowly GS-3 in the Department of Labor, Congress had a spate of budget arguments that resulted in short term CRs. On again, off again, with rumors constantly flying. I was a single mother living in a basement apartment with a table, a chair, a mattress on the floor and no refrigerator. I wasn't making much to begin with. So yes, I know how painful it can be for your run-of-the-mill government worker to lose out on paychecks.

The thing is, who remembers that? Only the people involved. An entire generation has grown up and taken positions of power, who have no recollection of the budget wars of the 70s and early 80s. Even the more recent, highly publicized Clinton-era shutdown times are fuzzy in memory. Somehow, as urgent and important as they were at the time, we got through them, the "leaders" involved somehow solved their differences, and the country lurched on to the next crisis.

Will that happen again? Probably. I'm sure, for every failed state there is a time to look back and see the moment it happened --- the single, final straw that took down the whole bloomin' ship. But we're not likely to recognize it at the time. So this will get resolved somehow, and we'll all turn back to jobs and kids and getting sick and getting born and dying and living, just like people always do. Will it be the same? Mostly. There will probably even be people who don't realize our government has just come through a crisis so deep that it had to shut down for awhile. But there will also be change.

Here's what changes: teenagers and young adults who believed in something, will get cynical and turn away. People who thought that reason would always prevail, will be disillusioned and drop out of politics altogether. Some will be radicalized, energized by the fight, the drama, the life-or-death competition, and they will jump in with all barrels blazing. Some people will use the divisions that are so stark right now as a reason to leave the country, to fight with their families and friends, to dig into the problems in their own communities, to strengthen their own faith or bludgeon others with religion, to deepen their commitment to
their own pursuits of love, art, literature, camping, roller derby, four-wheeling or football.

As a matter of fact, what with all of this happening right around time for the World Series and during football season, there's a sizeable chunk of the population who probably aren't tuned into it at all!

As for me, I consider myself a historian and a world citizen. I try to take the long view. I look back, tease out common threads, try to extrapolate the future from what has come before. I take a further step back and realize that everything passes, even the 'exceptional' USA. Babylon's not a world power now. The Cold War is already 60 years old. Remember how long ago the Mayans were a power in governance and knowledge? Remember how the sun never set on the English Empire? It's been like that as long as there have been people (Ahem, -- men) trying to subdue others and grab power.

I'm an optimist. In my own life, I have learned that even the most dispiriting circumstances hold lessons I need to learn. I think we can learn as a society, as a country. I think we CAN. Whether we will or not is a horse of another color ----- oooooo pretty, painted purple horsey.