America's Exceptional Failure

I think we can all agree this has gone just about far enough, can't we?

The country that prides itself on American exceptionalism (at least in the context of attack ads) is indeed exceptional in the colossal and acutely embarrassing failure of its democratic institutions. And exceptionalism, by the way, is barely even a real word, and it shouldn't be. It's stupid, xenophobic, counterproductive, largely incorrect, and vain.

The country that prides itself on American exceptionalism is scoring ever lower on virtually every quality-of-life indicator, from health care to education to job security to sexual performance. The only ones who refuse to see that, the flag-lapel flaunting hypocrisy-drenched bloated chinless chicken-hawkers of "exceptionalism", are paralyzed into a reality-deprived psychosis by their own unconsidered arrogance.

Who's to blame? The supercommittee's highly-anticipated miserable failure is an excellent little microcosmic example of an ideological disease that has metastasized throughout the entire exceptionally dysfunctional American democratic system.

To take one symptom of the illness: Can we agree that any member of Congress who ever signs a pledge, of any kind whatsoever, that pledges that Congressperson to effectively hand over congressional power to whatever ideology- or greed-driven nut-case wrote the pledge in the first place, should have his or her congressional seat taken away and be replaced by someone who understands that government is, at worst, a necessary evil, but one which must actually accomplish things for the people who created it?

Take Grover Norquist's imbecilic "Taxpayer Protection Pledge", onto which, to quote Wikipedia, "as of late 2011, 238 of 242 House Republicans and 41 out of 47 Senate Republicans had signed".

In the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, candidates and incumbents solemnly bind themselves to oppose any and all tax increases. While ATR has the role of promoting and monitoring the Pledge, the Taxpayer Protection Pledge is actually made to a candidate's constituents, who are entitled to know where candidates stand before sending them to the capitol. Since the Pledge is a prerequisite for many voters, it is considered binding as long as an individual holds the office for which he or she signed the Pledge.

This pledge effectively hamstrings any Republican in any deficit reduction effort, since it doesn't allow them to vote for any tax increases. Ever. Under any circumstances. Even if you're a super member of a "super" committee, and the tax increase in question is merely a rolling back of a whopping tax cut for the wealthy that was grossly irresponsible in the first place. Even if we're at war, which we are. Even if the USA is threatened by a giant comet, which we aren't. Or are we?

Let's suppose we are. The year is, shall we say, 2011. Scientists at the (taxpayer funded!) National Radio Astronomy Observatory discover that a huge comet – Comet Grover – is on a direct impact trajectory with Earth. They calculate that it will smack directly into Mount Rushmore on November 8th, 2016, unless knocked off course by a bunch of taxpayer-funded nuclear-tipped super-rockets.

The super-rockets will cost $1 billion each. 5,000 of them are needed to get the job done. That's $5 trillion. There's plenty of time to build them, but alas, to do so would require increasing government revenue (unless the private sector steps in!), for example by bumping up the tax bracket on those who earn a million dollars a year or more by a couple of points, which would have a precisely calculated net negative impact on their lifestyle of 0 (zero).

Alas, the Pledge is Sacred. The comet impacts on schedule, vaporizing four timeless sculptures and creating a crater 3000 miles across that obliterates most of the United States but thankfully stops inches from the US Capitol Building, where Congress is in session deliberating whether or not to reaffirm, yet again, that In God We Trust is an official motto.

Another exceptional performance by our elected representatives.