• Welcome
    • Curriculum Vitae
    • About Me
  • Publications
    • Work in Progress
  • Blog
  • Provocations

WHO WINS IN A SHUTDOWN?

1/21/2018

0 Comments

 

 
 
        Who wins when the government shuts down? You might think the right answer is “Nobody.”  Lots of people get hurt or inconvenienced. It’s a terrible way to do budgeting. It’s just stupid.
        Politicians think they know better. They will win by blaming the other party.  But, of course, they get blamed themselves.  Take a step back and you can see the long term effects on the citizenry – disillusionment with politics, cynicism, alienation from civic life, the conclusion that democracy does not work.
        From that vantage point the winner is clear:
        Vladimir I. Putin.
        His plan for the 2016 US elections, I believe, was the same as in other elections Russia has tried to influence. It was not to defeat Hillary, or get Trump elected. That would be fine with Putin. . But he plays the long game, and sees the real threat to his regime, not a specific politician, but a challenge to autocratic rule.  His e goal is to  destabilize democratic liberalism.
        He is succeeding brilliantly, with the help of unwitting collaborators. The shutdown serves him up a victory on a silver platter.
        This is collusion by inadvertence, a kind of shortsightedness induced by focusing too intensely on the Blame Game. Once afflicted in this way political parties and their followers adopt a common agenda and send a common message – democratic governance does not work.  There are plenty of people, in this country and abroad, who are vulnerable to just such a message. In disgust and disillusionment they are likely to abandon civic engagement.  For them the shutdown is an   invitation to cynicism.
        Behind it all, I suspect, is a failure of political imagination, the inability to envision what a vibrant democracy can achieve and what it takes to achieve it. Without such a vision politicians play right into the hands of every dictator who knows he can never be secure in his power when democratic governance succeeds.
 
 
 
 
January 2018
 
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    June 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013

    RSS Feed

    Picture