Ladies and gentlemen...

I am an unhappy citizen of these United States. In an order to preserve my sanity, my decency as a human being, my patience, and to give voice to the fears I have for my country, I have dedicated a tiny section of webspace to write, as clearly and honestly as I can, why I feel that this great nation is passing on into a time of senility, weakness, and possibly a home-grown variety of fascism.

Right now, The Republican Party is holding up a process to pay our debts to ourselves (and friendly creditors), not because we cannot pay (unlike Greece, who is still financially recovering from its tenure as a dictatorship), but because they wish to slash vital services in an attempt to balance the budget and bring down the deficit. That's right: At a time when joblessness and homelessness threaten the average American, one-half of our government is courageously threatening to break our entire economy to fix a budget mess that only indirectly affects our current situation. The other half (the Democrats) pursue "bipartisanship" and "compromise" with the Republicans, who have spent the last 20+ years telling their base that the Democrats are "socialists" who are trying to destroy America. In sum, it is not a fertile field for compromise and negotiation. (If the Republicans were so damn upset about the budget, why didn't they do this at any of the last eight times that George W. Bush raised it? Why did they run up and max out the credit cards for wars in the Middle East and tax cuts during that time? Why do the Democrats insist on treating psychos like normal human beings?)

If we default, our credit rating rating will fall possibly to the level of Greece, possibly to the level of third-world countries you never hear about unless we have the military operating there. Remember, our debt is actually a much lower slice of our GDP than certain European countries who are currently doing better than we are. This is why our debt is actually considered the gold standard of international investment as far as safety goes. All the effort that went into maintaining that goes out the window if we default, because we are not defaulting due to inability to pay, but because we refuse to. That means the next time we borrow after we default, the interest on that loan will be insanely high and possibly come with other onerous conditions we will not like. But we will have to accept those conditions, or we will lose even further ground in the international economy.

And the international economy may not be able to support us at all, if we default. So much money comes into and goes out of the US, that if we default, all of our debt that was propping up other countries becomes worthless, and it's very likely to set up a string of collapses in economies around the world. Look at what Greece has done on the international scene, and magnify that. No, more. Even more. Picture China grinding to a halt, possibly India, possibly a huge chunk of Europe. Yeah, that's more of what would likely happen. Forget economic power, we'd also lose diplomatic power with a whole lot of allies, and when a whole lot of your allies become enemies, that's when war starts.

War. Building blasted, people dead in the streets, children missing eyes, arms, legs, parents, shelter, food, and mass chaos and military rule all around for both sides. Let's not even think of what happens if nukes start flying. Because wars happened for a whole lot less that economic default back in the Bad Old Days. In the Bad Old Days, Greece might well have been invaded by now, and would probably look a whole lot like the Gaza Strip or the West Bank during a bad week.

But we don't do that anymore, and not just because of the threat of global nuclear catastrophe. We don't do that because advances in technology and a sincere desire for peace and stability have brought us an international economy. One which we are in danger of sabotaging by not raising our debt ceiling. Yes, it can happen here. No, when all is said and done we might not ever recover.

And what has brought us to this sorry state? I believe that we, the United States of America, have spent so long admiring our power on the world stage, and its perks, that we have forgotten how much responsibility comes with it. In fact, in many cases I believe we have flouted that responsibility, and it has cost us considerable good will among nations who are (and should be) our trading partners and allies. We have benefited so much from this global economy, we need to give back.

Ironically, the best way to do so would be to help ourselves, which I'll get to in our next blog post.