Law Professor Rosa Brooks Wrote a Pretend Letter from the Future that Lays Out the Possible Consequences of Tea Party Thinking — Her Forecast Is both Believable and Depressing — and the Chinese May Be Preparing to Act Accordingly

17 October 2013

One of my adjunct professors once said that an essential guiding principle for real world law practice was to recognize that “people are stupid”

The just past October 2013 Republican-inspired government shutdown — and its companion threat to bring American credit down, via refusal to raise the debt ceiling — makes my professor’s comment credible.

Today, we learned that this largely unesteemed group of legislators has managed to reschedule both nation-weakening squabbles for just a few weeks. Presumably so that the 144 Republicans — who actually voted to send the United States into default — can again torture us with another bout of mindlessly dispensed real world damage:

Last night, the House of Representatives passed the bill that temporarily re-opened the government and avoided (or at least postponed) a voluntary national default.

And 285 members of the House did, in fact, vote to pass the bill . . . .

But 144 members of the house did not vote to pass this bill.

On the contrary ... they voted to reject it.

[A]s Dan Alpert of Westwood Capital observed this morning, 144 people elected to represent this country in Washington voted to keep the government closed and send the United States into default.

All of these 144 people are Republicans.

Times like these make one wonder (tongue in cheek) whether eugenics is really such a bad idea.

China appears to be getting ready to react to our brainlessness

China’s credit rating bureau, Dagong, downgraded the American government’s creditworthiness from A to A minus:

"For a long time the U.S. government maintains its solvency by repaying its old debts through raising new debts, which constantly aggravates the vulnerability of the federal government’s solvency.

“Hence the government is still approaching the verge of default crisis, a situation that cannot be substantially alleviated in the foreseeable future."

Biz China Weekly, perhaps anticipating the down-grading, a few days earlier had published a column wondering whether it is time to de-Americanize the world:

As U.S. politicians of both political parties are still shuffling back and forth between the White House and the Capitol Hill without striking a viable deal to bring normality to the body politic they brag about, it is perhaps a good time for the befuddled world to start considering building a de-Americanized world.

[T]he U.S. government has gone to all lengths to appear before the world as the one that claims the moral high ground, yet covertly doing things that are as audacious as torturing prisoners of war, slaying civilians in drone attacks, and spying on world leaders.

Under what is known as the Pax-Americana, we fail to see a world where the United States is helping to defuse violence and conflicts, reduce poor and displaced population, and bring about real, lasting peace.

Most recently, the cyclical stagnation in Washington for a viable bipartisan solution over a federal budget and an approval for raising debt ceiling has again left many nations' tremendous dollar assets in jeopardy and the international community highly agonized.

Such alarming days when the destinies of others are in the hands of a hypocritical nation have to be terminated, and a new world order should be put in place, according to which all nations, big or small, poor or rich, can have their key interests respected and protected on an equal footing.

“But, hey, them furrin guys don’t know nuthin”

No American pays attention to Dagong because none of us have heard of it. And who the heck is Liu Chang?

We, being the world’s obviously most superior beings, are the only folks who count.

Right?

Law professor (former Department of Defense counsel) Rosa Brooks was motivated to write an extended hypothetical

Hypotheticals are mind experiments in which we try to forecast the results of whatever we are contemplating doing or not doing. Anticipating consequences is an intelligent person’s way of successfully operating in the Real World.

Congress, especially Republican Congress, does not know much about acting intelligently. Which is Professor Brooks’ point:

It was nice while it lasted. Having a government, I mean.

You grandkids don't remember the government, of course: We got rid of it long before you were born. I don't remember why, exactly. Some people got angry because they thought the government was going to force them to get health insurance, which they didn't want because -- well, I'm not sure why they didn't want it.

Now that the government's gone, and along with it the subsidies that enabled pharmaceutical companies to do research on new medications, and the rules that ensured drugs were actually safe, and the scholarship and loan funds that sent students through medical school-well, now almost no one has health care. Who can afford it?

The few who still have money go to Canada for their health care, though of course it's getting harder and harder to get to Canada. With no government around to fund highway maintenance, the roads got worse and worse, and with no money for policing, the bandits got out of control.

By 2030, long-distance travel wasn't really safe anymore for ordinary people, unless you traveled in heavily armed convoys.

Professor Brooks goes on to develop her imagined picture of the Tea Party-torpedoed America:

Canada builds a wall to keep desperate Americans out.

China eventually has to come over and secure America’s nuclear weapons from terrorists — because America’s military has crumbled away, as a result of our economically and educationally failing society.

Her dark vision of our national future is a believable extension of the Tea Party-inspired anti-government logic.

The moral? — Looking, before leaping, is almost always a good idea

But that requires at least some semblance of consequence-oriented brain activity.

Right now, many of the people who run America qualify for Republican Representative Devin Nunes’ exasperated description of them as “lemmings with suicide vests.”

PeteFree.com

Law Professor Rosa Brooks Wrote a Pretend Letter from the Future that Lays Out the Possible Consequences of Tea Party Thinking — Her Forecast Is both Believable and Depressing — and the Chinese May Be Preparing to Act Accordingly