I tagged along with Del and her Coffee Party contingent to Rockford, Illinois to witness a "debate" between A Tea Party author (age about 17) and a Coffee Party apostate (kicked out for being contentious) on the topic of the now infamous Ryan Budget.
The apostate had formed his own party (or web site) in the wake of his banishment. He held forth against little David (no resemblance to his actual name - it could as well have been tiny Tim, but that title is already claimed by Pawlenty) under his own banner as a Son of Liberty. When I put 'debate' in sanitary quotes, I do so not to denigrate this particular event, but to denigrate all such events that now pass for formal public discourse. The two sides are on parallel, equally hopeless sides, and merely issue their scripted talking points like hamsters on a wheel. One side says 'cut, shrink, and default/shut down.' (Yea!, they all cheer in their doddering, ignorant splendor.) The other side says 'jobs to China, tax the rich, preserve the 60 year old social safety net.' (We clap as loudly as we can, but behind us, the tea baggers defy instructions to be silent and catcall words like "Republic" in response to the word 'democracy,' and 'boo!' to the word "Obama." Mention of 'Obamacare,' that pernicious engine that asks everyone to find insurance (eventually) and prevents insurers from casting off those who now need care after years of payments, results in hisses and spits. I find all of this boring. I won't begin to perk up until some future Tea Party group joins forces at last with their bitter enemies (the rest of us disenfranchised folks) in standing outside the gated communities of the truly in command, armed to the teeth, in the twilight of the altered environment that supports far fewer humans. Given the reasonable alternative of a Tea Party jimmied and ruined government that brings about utter economic and social collapse much sooner than that, I am not sure that I really will have all that long to wait for my ennui to dissipate.
Let's consider, in a reprise, the hisses and spitting. To go to Rockford, I had to leave my warring cats behind on their own for a day. Remember, (or, as Obama likes to say, 'let's be clear'), these two animals have their own separate territories. They share nothing. They have their own beds, with paths to food, water, and entertainment. Each of these cats has its own private hooded cat box as wide apart in the house as space permits. We have three floors. They are in no way crimped for space. I call these elimination palaces the 'turd world.' Peeing matters. "No cat," I can almost hear some feline orator at some anthropomorphic podium declare, "should have to share a shitter." (Hiss, hiss, they all cry!)
The clashes come over that territory that is shared both by these two spoiled animals and we humans. These areas include the kitchen, where treats might be available, or the living room, where human contact might be available. The main, middle floor of this house is no-cat's land. They are learning to co-exist. Co-existence is an arguably human concept. Cats don't like to share. They hate change. They do not cooperate with each other or form 'more perfect unions' (or 'purrfect unions'). Leave them alone for a day and they've had their little routines disrupted. They become even more hostile to each other, because the need to dominate in terms of human attention has increased. We humans have created this natural perversion by bringing them indoors, but we have not created the tension. Territorial battles are inherent in the cat psychic structure. Cats are, in an analogy, like Tea Party conservatives. They are not going to willingly give up anything. They want everything that they had before and they want to keep it indefinitely. They don't care about other cats like them. They don't want change. They want to go back to an earlier time, when they could shit outside, kill birds and, yes, be run over by cars, tortured by larger predators, torture smaller creatures, torture each other, and, of course, die in the yard or the street alone. Any humanistic impulse is foreign to them because, well, they're CATS!
So, having returned from Rockford, gotten some sleep, had our breakfast and settled down to watch Tim Geithner (the other tiny Tim), as he explained what will happen if the United States Government defaults on its legal obligation to pay its financial obligations (the Tea Party's great hope, and their most significant contribution for having, by virtue of apathy and ignorance, gained the privilege of a voice in the government), and listened to a pair of politicians rattle their way again around their hamster wheel, we were treated to a series of cat fights. We saw one cat walk another across the carpet by batting with forepaws while the other cat flipped over and clawed out in rebuttal as Pawlenty spoke with pride about his record as a Governor, having (indirectly) shut down his State's government. Hisses to all the Tims and spits to the conservative cats. We humans are working towards a non-interference policy. We would like to have more peaceful coexistence. We've already set up the two State solution. I have the idea that I might deter the cat fight if I can catch the onrushing aggressor with a solid spray of water. Aggression equals negative consequences. In the equation of my analogy, however, we humans do not represent the U.S. role as world mediator-in-chief (though there is that element), so much as we represent the environment. We control the temperature and the lay of the land. We control whether there will be a cat turned out of Eden or remanded to a shelter. We, as the environment, control the level of stress. When we knock off for a day to take a drive, or two days to camp out, we alter the weather for the cats. If we are taken out by fortune, these cats will suffer an environmental catastrophe of some sort.
I believe to the core of my being that those looking at climate science are correct in their disturbing findings. Science, insofar as possible, relies on the testing of hypotheses. It is, in that sense, conservative. It does not, deliberately, make things up. There is creative dispute within the community of scientists, but knowledge advances in increments on the solid ground of provable phenomena and data. Therefore, as science shows, we are already putting our heads in the jaws of calamity. There was Geithner, citing the economic impact of the recent catastrophic weather. There was the conservative politician heaping ridicule on the concept that the 'weather' (acts of God to these folks) could affect the economy.
We humans are much like these two cats. We are hissing and spitting even as we risk losing the roof over our heads. Worse than that, both these cats and we humans are in the same predicament together. You'd think humans have the edge: we can form altruistic notions and work together. As the stress level goes up, our history shows, we have behaved exactly as warring cats. Perhaps what's going on is this: we sense that all is not well in our environment. Even the deriders seek money bailing out their weather ravaged States. Perhaps the stress is getting to us all and we cannot, therefore, see fit to come together. Even if we could stop bickering now, and become humans and not warring cats, the damage to our homes (both in the sense of the environment and the housing crisis - both 'manmade crises') is not completely reversible without pain. Pain is a disincentive. At some point, there we'll be, plainly aware that we're off the cliff. Pain also ramps up the stress. I am a lifelong doom sayer. It keeps a fire in my heart. I'm writing like there's no tomorrow. At least I'm not a hamster on a wheel. Like my conservative cats, I don't expect the bliss of boredom to last an entire Biblical day.