PSA: NPR writes sarcastic article!

Check out this article on which people will benefit, and how, if the government shuts down due to idiocy.

It's a very short, thin list -- so thin, in fact, that I can only conclude it's a sarcastic statement on the state of American politics today as well as an indirect indictment of the journalist's credo to "tell both sides of a story." There isn't another side to this story, and trying to tell it just makes that more glaringly obvious.

I can understand the desire to be "out of debt" (although that desire seems to have gotten us into at least as much economic trouble in the past as the supposed spend-thriftiness mostly Democrats have been accused of). I can even relate to the hard-headedness that will cause people to say "at all costs!" when they speak of the deficit. But that doesn't stop me from saying that those people are stupid...specifically, stupid the way a very young child is stupid when they say "no, Mommy! You're bad!"

First, they don't seem to know what they're talking about (those who do manage to have real and civil conversations about this are exempt, here), and yet they feel they must know better thanks to "common sense" than the experts. (Who would want to drink a beer with an economist?) Same crowd that believes in creationism and refuses to acknowledge global warming (because...??? Because coal is so super awesome that using wind or solar power would be an insult to God? I still don't understand what dog they have in this fight).

Second, they -- and in this case, I suppose I mean Republicans, or whoever would dig in their heels and "insist" the government do such-and-such "or it gets shut down!"; more likely Tea Partiers -- are acting paternal, which is annoying to begin with, but doing so in exactly the way a toddler would do it: by holding others hostage with a temper tantrum. Toddlers assert their independence by acting like their parents on the one hand, scolding and waving fingers, but also by being big babies, which means throwing their bodies on the ground and screaming until we either give them what they want or take them away.

So no, I don't believe there's a bright side to the idea the government may shut down, because I believe the shutdown would be motivated by idiots.

And don't be fooled by the NPR's only serious-seeming claim to benefit from the shutdown, the International Spy Museum.

I've been. It's pretty boring and can't compete with Smithsonian.