United States' perennial government shutdown extravaganza — and Thomas Jefferson's 1787 observation

© 2025 Peter Free

 

13 March 2025

 

 

A dose of dark humor

 

Regarding yet another anticipated US government shutdown, ZeroHedge posted the following on X:

 

 

Dems will protest Musk firing half the government by shutting down all of government.

 

 

And Kyle@DamnGoodCoins commented that:

 

 

Ironically, it's a great way to prove Musk's point that the government is useless and bloated.

 

 

Of course, Kyle is not fully correct

 

A whole bunch of Americans depend on a reasonably efficient government to deliver pay, pensions and benefits that they have earned.

 

Often, after doing decades of societally necessary work.

 

 

My take is more sour than Kyle's

 

These Congressional grifters (on both political sides) are constantly meddling with and pilfering other people's earned well-being.

 

The point to the political parties' usually pretended disputes is to keep the Grift Machine richly supplied with taxpayers' money. Which they divert into their own pockets.

 

In response to this Establishment scheme, a genuinely Free People would figuratively drag Congress's parasitizing grifters out. And metaphorically hang them on the imaginary equivalent of a pelt-stringing fence.

 

Which is what might happen, if these Fat Cat connivers keep playing their plunder-oriented games.

 

 

The moral? — American revolution, peaceful or not . . .

 

. . . will (or will not) occur in direct proportion to We the People's courage.

 

Imagine what would happen, if We the Sheep turned ourselves into the societally principled wolves. Wolves that the nation's founders were counting upon to maintain the Republic's desirably trim health:

 

 

Adios parasites

 

and

 

rebirth of the American phoenix?

 

 

This is what Thomas Jefferson meant by:

 

 

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

 

Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Stephens Smith, November 13, 1787, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd (1955) (volume 12, at page 356) [see Founders Online at https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-12-02-0348]

 

 

The result of psychologically applying Jefferson's course-correcting perspective?

 

 

Sheep with teeth and a Liberty-protecting glare in their eyes.

 

 

Admittedly, such a transformation in preyed-upon character is not likely in our mentally and spiritually depleted Western times.

 

But still, just barely possible.