So the Government Shut Down and the Coming Debt Default Were Planned In January

Interesting.

At least according to Chait in New York Magazine, this series of crises was plotted out by Republican strategists shortly after the 2012 election in which they failed to remove the President and replace him with their own simulacrum of Imperial Majesty. 

This might help to explain why the Syria Thing didn't get off the ground; the Rs couldn't pull a stunt like shutting down the government or defaulting on the debt if the Nation was embroiled in yet another war in the Middle East. At least you would think they couldn't, but stranger things have happened...

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy...

"The Williamsburg Accord," eh?

Well, why not. Makes a kind of warped and perfect sense, and what it tells us is that literally nothing of politics in this country is as it seems because nothing is moored to reality. It's all a show, a game show in a sense, in which Our Rulers posture and roar for entertainment purposes, but which is operating according to a plot and a plan laid out well in advance, according to a "script" if you will, that we -- the onlookers, the audience, the Rabble -- have no effect on at all.

Of course, the Show has an effect on us as it is meant to. This is a government of taking, and we're finding out more and more every day what is being taken, by whom, and how. But we are -- of course -- powerless to do anything about it. That's the whole point. The people we are allowed to choose from at election time all share the same theories of government. They will instinctively follow the same script.

For what it is worth, the "Williamsburg Accord" along with all the other plots and plans we've been subject to lo these many years come out of Republican strategy shops; there is no functional equivalent among the Democrats, and the idea of a Democratic Strategist is an oxymoron anyway. The party functions -- when it functions -- as a foil to the Rs who are in actual control of the government at all times. Even when -- or especially when -- they are crazy-seeming like now.

If Chait knew about the plot and the plan that the Rs came up with in January, then everybody who matters knew, too, yet it is the convention in politics and the media to play dumb while playing along with the script. As if everything that happens is somehow spontaneous, driven solely by the Public Interest. Or something.

To be clear, the Dems knew this was the Plan, too. So did the media. It has not been a secret among those who matter. It has been well publicized for their benefit. But the public, the Rabble, has been left out of the knowledge equation as always. They only see the results of the latest gambit, not how we got here, and they rarely if ever realize that the whole government/propaganda structure is in on the game.

Once again there will be the appearance of a protracted struggle over "principle" or what have you, and once again, because the protagonists are in on it together, they will get what they want -- and what's been planned -- bugger the rest of us.

Sigh.

No, it was not ever thus. But this is how governance has devolved in this country. As some wags have pointed out, the end game is nigh, and it will probably result in the irrelevance of Congress and the institutionalization of a straight-out Imperial (Fascist) Dictatorship. Lucky us.