So, Congress is totally dysfunctional. It shows, especially, at moments when members of Congress have to pull together and do something hard. Stress tends to lead to increased emotional reactivity, which leads to either fusion (circle the wagons! protect the father figure! don't share the family secret!) or cut-off (no surrender! no retreat! damn the torpedoes! no compromise!).
Understood in this systemic way, it's pretty obvious how things played out over the past few weeks with the debt ceiling debate. Like kissing your Aunt Bertha, John Boehner and Barack Obama and Eric Cantor and Nancy Pelosi had to sit around the table and work things out. And of course, Obama could point to shared values and shared responsibilities but the bottom line is that members of Congress tend to pander to the extremists and ideologues who are passionate enough about political power that they want to donate money and time and stake reputations on electing someone.
Boehner and Cantor can talk about the "will of the American people" who want deficit reduction and spending cuts, but they tend to ignore that basically 50% of Americans were so disgusted with both parties (or just don't give a shit anymore) that they didn't bother to vote, and that despite hundreds of millions of dollars in relentless nonstop attack ads, the real reason that Republicans got elected in droves is because too many voters stopped seeing the real differences between Democrats and Republicans.
So, in family therapy circles, there is something called "The Miracle Question". It's a great therapy tactic to get families in pain to focus on solutions instead of remaining mired in problems. The question goes something like this:
Imagine that a magic fairy came into your home while you were sleeping tonight and waved a magic wand, and all your problems were solved. What would you do when you woke up the next morning?
Liberals in general, and Kossacks in particular, are notoriously and automatically dissatisfied. You can't spend a lifetime working for change and not have an insane combination of optimism (in the better future) and cynicism (about what's wrong). It's one reason why people tend to say, "I want to go back into the Matrix. I want to remember nothing."
Ignorance is bliss.
But if you're here, and you're reading this, it's because you 1) care about politics enough to read Daily Kos blogs, 2) care enough about what's broken that you want to fix it, and 3) think maybe there's a solution.
So, the red pill or the blue pill?
The reality is that Congress is led by extremist Republicans who were inserted by wealthy corporate interests (many of them with no interest whatsoever in "American exceptionalism" except as a way to fool patriotic Americans into voting against their own national interests) to take down Barack Obama and his movement for change that swept into power in 2008. The reality is that, on Election Night 2008, President Obama said clearly that he was going to need our continued involvement and help, and that his election didn't bring the change but only the opportunity for change to happen. And it's also very true, and very real, that President Obama was elected as a sort of post-partisan healer who was committed from the beginning to bridging some of the old divides. Obama even hired people like Geithner and Summers and Bernanke and Lahood and Gates as a way to show that he's willing to work across the aisle.
Obama's willing. Republicans know this. So they know that they can distract from their epic economic failure by doing nothing, refusing to compromise, and blaming Obama for the lack of bipartisanship in Washington.
Everyone sees this, right? We all know this is the game we're playing.
So, we have to do something called "embracing the inevitable". We must accept the deepest, darkest reality of our current situation (9%+ unemployment, slow economic growth, intractable divisions in Congress, House GOP running the show, Senate GOP filibustering everything, Obama willing to compromise, Citizens United, corporate personhood, etc.) while never losing track of that commitment to the better life ahead.
That's hope.
That's what Barack Obama talked about more eloquently than anyone in my lifetime.
Hope is about living in the creative tension between our present reality and our desired future outcome. It's about letting go of the "shoulds" or "coulds" of abstract possibility and doing the real, hard, concrete work of dealing with what is actually in front of us.
We won't win by being more angry. We'll win by being more beautiful.
(And it's possible to be both. Just ask Angry Black Lady.)
So, take a minute and give a Slow Clap for Congress. Tell Congress thank you for averting immediate economic catastrophe while failing utterly to create a long-term sustainable path for economic growth and fiscal discipline.
Embrace the inevitable. Until 2012, Congress will be run by Republicans in the House, and the Senate will be ground to a halt by Republicans who will filibuster everything and block nominees to critical government agencies and do everything they can to make this as ugly as possible.
If you want ugly, Vote Republican. Or just stay home.
Or...
You could find the beauty that's in you and in each of us. The beauty of being a Republican is that everything is so black and white. You're either with us or you're with the terrorists. The beauty of being Republican is that you think life is precious and sacred and worth being protected, at least until the baby's born. (After that? Meh.) The beauty of being Republican is that you don't rely on government to solve problems that can only be solved by the people who elect people to government.
So, embrace the inevitable, that 40% of your fellow Americans are honestly interested in trying to protect tax cuts for millionaires. Embrace the inevitable, that 50% of Americans want to repeal a healthcare law that they don't understand and haven't read. Eric Cantor will keep sneering. John Boehner will keep crying. Ron Paul will keep tilting at windmills, and Mitt Romney will keep flip-flopping.
And Barack Obama will keep trying to embrace these people because he knows that we can't be the United States of America without embracing them.
If you want Obama to do better, then elect a better Congress. And just because they have D's behind their names doesn't mean they're better. (Ain't that right, David Wu?)
PS - There is no magic fairy. It's up to us.