Elephant Dung and the Final Defeat of Liberalism

The Republican Party and the Democratic Party are engaged in quite the game of brinksmanship of late. Amid warnings from leadership on both sides that a default of the US Government is imminent in a little over a week unless the debt ceiling is raised, no one on either side seems willing to get a deal done, despite the fact that all the compromise deals that have been offered by both sides, and rogue elements within their parties, are similar to the point of being indistinguishable to anyone who sees little difference between two and three trillion dollars. (That’s where we’ve come to in our debt and deficit debates, where our leaders are quibbling over numbers so vast that they enter into the abstract. It’s not the number ‘trillion’ that catches the eye in this mess, it’s the numbers ‘two’ and ‘three,’ and even ‘3.2.’) Continue reading “Elephant Dung and the Final Defeat of Liberalism”