Standoff.

[Blogger's Note: The shutdown ended a day after I wrote this. I'm posting it anyway because we're likely to take this circus ride again sometime soon ... and because I'm too damn lazy to write another post.]

There's little light I can shed on the ridiculously long Trump government shutdown that hasn't already been tossed around on the corporate media over the past 30-odd days (and they have been very odd indeed). I've got a handful of things to say about it, and here they are.

1. This is an asymmetric battle. For the most part, the stuff being shut down is stuff the Republicans despise anyway and don't mind seeing derailed or dismantled. This is just another avenue to the same ends they've been working towards since they came to power. They have nothing but contempt for government workers. They want to slash food stamps. They hate regulations and are glad to let corporate America run wild without even the nominal constraints that government imposes upon them. They pretend to care about securing the nation against attack, but their policies do the exact opposite. They simply don't care if the country falls over backwards - arguably, that's their core mission as a party.
2. The Dems can't back down. Seriously, if Donald Trump (aka President Drunk Uncle Twitter Troll) gets anything out of this shutdown, he will use this tactic again and again. We know that's the case ... the man simply cannot be trusted to keep his word and he is incapable of telling the truth. We may as well have this out now ... because if we don't, it will just need to be dealt with later (and not much later).
3. Labor may need to stop this. I don't make a habit of telling working people what they should or should not do - they should do whatever works for them. But it occurs to me (and many others as well) that one way out of this impasse would be for the TSA and air traffic controllers to walk out. That would bring air travel and transport to a screeching halt, and my guess would be that the president would deflate like a punctured tire if that were to happen. Just saying - solidarity is an effective weapon.

High school standoff. Re this controversy about the standoff between Catholic anti-abortion protesters and Native Americans at the Lincoln Memorial this past weekend, I agree with Sam Seder that (1) young men can act like tremendous assholes when they gather in large numbers without proper supervision, and (2) where the hell were the supervising adults anyway, and how did they let this get so far out of hand? Despite all the hand wringing about misinterpreting the incident based on fragments of viral video, it's obvious that these kids are mocking the Native Americans. I know that smirk anywhere. But I don't blame them ... just their minders, who shouldn't be allowed to supervise children ever again.