Not a real diary, just a link to an interesting and possibly important article from New Scientist and their editorial about it.
The government of the most powerful country on earth has shut down and is dangerously close to defaulting on its debt. (snip) All this because a minority faction of one house of Congress will not approve a budget unless a healthcare measure that has already been passed into law is suspended.
(The author) has found what he believes to be historical cycles, two to three centuries long, of political instability and breakdown affecting states and empires from Rome to Russia. In a book he is finishing, he argues that similar cycles are evident in US history, and that they are playing out to this day.
The squabbling in Congress that precipitated the current shutdown is a symptom of societal forces at work, rather than the primary problem.
The editorial begins:
IF HISTORY really is, in the famous dictum, just one damned thing after another, the shutdown of the US government this week must rank as one of the damnedest things in recent memory. A minority faction is holding the most powerful government in the world to ransom.
newscientist.com is my favorite science site; I highly recommend it. Some of it is behind a pay wall but most is not.