Giving in to Bullies

On 10/03/13, Andy Borowitz wrote a small satire in the New Yorker, “Boehner:  Obama Stubbornly Refusing to End Crisis I Created”.

 

The entire satire is funny, but the following lines attributed to John Boehner read, …”The President is stubbornly refusing to end the crisis I created. … “Government is about teamwork.  I’ve done my part by putting together an entirely optional crisis that has shut down the government and will throw thousands out of work.  Now it’s up to the President to do his part by ending it.”  I’m not sure which is funnier.  The satire or the fact that right under the title is the notice:  The article below is satire.

Sometimes satire can get a point across so much better than just plain explanations.  It is so difficult for me to understand why the Tea Partiers in Congress, who I understand were drinking something a tad stronger than tea the other day, can’t comprehend that the American people are so stupid they can’t understand that in order to change a law they must get both the House of Representatives and the Senate to vote to change it.  The change must be written out specifically so everyone will know what (assuming they can read) they are voting on.  Even if both Houses voted to change the law it is extremely doubtful the President would sign this particular law.  The Representatives have tried some 40 times to repeal the law, and they can’t get that vote to pass.  Why in the name of all that’s holy do they think they can force a change in Obamacare, which is the same thing as the Affordable Care Act, when it’s the President’s favorite law?   

My 8/5/11 blog, A Carefully Scripted Psychodrama, discussed how the Koch Brothers and their minions had caused the debt ceiling crisis, and that the media at that time asserted that President Obama had “blinked” in order to prevent a world-wide economic collapse, but that the issue was now water under the bridge.  It is my opinion that President Obama learned a very hard lesson during that time, and that was that if you give in to bullies, they won’t stop.  It only eggs them on.  I believe the Tea Partiers think he will “blink” again.  What they haven’t counted on is the outrage the majority of the American people are feeling over these trumped up crises.   

This whole fiasco reminds me of when I ran for office the third time around.  The left-leaning activists in this county were furious that I had beaten their chosen candidate in the primary.  From that point forward until my first full year in office they demanded I apologize to her.  My response was to tell me what I needed to apologize for, I would consider it, and if I felt she deserved an apology, I would do so.  Their reasoning was that since I had won, it had caused a rift in the environmental community, and it was my responsibility to heal it by apologizing.  For what?  Winning?  

It is the same thing, only on a much grander scale.  Don’t give in, Mr. President.  Our democracy will be overrun by a bunch of bullies.