Shocked that the Supercommittee failed?

As of this time, it looks like the fabled Super Committee has failed to reach an agreement.  In other news, the Ohio State Buckeyes football team lost to Penn State last Saturday.  What do these two things have in common?  While they didn’t have to turn out the way they did, nobody is shocked that they did.  A broken country can only whine so long about its representative government being broken. A country where narcissism and hedonism are the greatest commandments, and the only real religious conflict is between Mammon worship on one side and the veneration of Moloch on the other, you shouldn’t expect much.  In a nation where the ‘Left’ and the ‘Right’ are looking more and more alike, what should we think?  Since most folks have a morality that is akin to ‘screw unto others, as long as you don’t screw unto me’, followed by ‘I’ll scratch his immoral back if he’ll scratch mine later’, we actually think our representative government will be what?  Noble?  Virtuous?  Pure?  Honest?  Humble?  Heck, even effective?

In an Internet age where we criticise first, last, and as a general rule; in an age after which we have spent fifty years trashing our culture, our heritage, our nation’s past, our religious roots, our societal foundations, we expect our leaders to put country first?  Really?  Are we that stupid, that naive, that arrogant, or a is it a combination thereof?

Nope.  Our government is everything we’ve earned.  Our impotent and incompetent leader is nowhere to be seen, hiding out as far away from the mess as possible.  Of course, fair minded and realistic observers can tell he hasn’t clue one how to lead, and much of our mess is firmly in his hands, the hands of a completely inept commander in chief.  Not that all of the problems are his.  They weren’t all Bush’s.  Or Clinton’s.  Or the Republicans.  Or the Democrats.  It’s a testimony to our monumental stupidity that we believe such partisan rubbish.  Or a testimony to our willingness to advance obvious lies as long as we get what we want.

In any event, this is barely news.  Americans have laughed at their congress for being incompetent for ages.  The problem is, compared to the rest of the nation, if we are honest, our government is one of the best things left we have to offer.  And that should make us do more than occupy Wall Street.  It should make us stand up and yell ‘the time has come to say, Enough!’