Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator who reclaimed the former seat of Ted Kennedy for the Democratic Party last year, opened her remarks to the Senate on Sept. 30 by saying, "Madame President, I come to the floor today in a state of disbelief..." She then continued to list various consequences – which we now all know have come to pass – resulting from the impending government shutdown.
The brand of incredulity Warren uses to frame her argument is a classic rhetorical device, useful in its effects and simple in its execution. Disbelief (or at least a claim of disbelief) distances one's actions from those of one's opponent, creating a disputatious environment where there was none or – as is obviously the case here – intensifying the charged dynamics of rhetorical combat. Importantly, this claim of disbelief also rejects culpability, serving as an attempt to deny any accountability for or familiarity with the situation being addressed.
I am not singling out Warren because I disagree with her politics – in fact, quite the opposite – but because I find her incredulity hackneyed, unchallenging and quite boring. Ultimately, how genuinely shocked by this turn of events can any of us claim to be? In the ideologically rigid climate that has defined American politics for at least the last decade and a half, impasse and indecision have become this country's legislative procedures. There is no reason that anyone familiar with the fierce, blindly partisan Congressional politics of both the Bush and Obama administrations should be surprised at all by what happened this past Monday night (nor by the name calling and mudslinging that have ensued in the following days). This shutdown, no matter how long it lasts, is just another punctuation mark in an ever expanding, increasingly tedious narrative of American political brinkmanship.
It remains easy and obvious for politicians of both parties, as well as for the public they aspire to represent, to affect a stance of disbelief. At this point, however, the rhetoric of incredulity and the discourse of disintegration and separateness it represents are exasperatingly obsolete.
As we judiciously (though somewhat self-righteously) bemoan the essential government services eviscerated by this legislative indecision, should we not also consider the fact that the system we live in – the system we have accepted and, in our complicity, helped to construct – was primed for these problems already? This is not to say that the government shutdown is anything short of a catastrophe, but we should also consider that the larger catastrophe is the systematic injustice we have allowed to infiltrate our civic institutions, on both state and federal levels. It's not as if the political priorities that are now being revealed in this state of partial shutdown – that drones continue to fly and deportation continues to occur as WIC and Head Start cease to offer their services – are anything new. These plans existed before midnight on Sept. 30, and as we (justifiably) attack House Republicans for their supreme capacities for deliberate inattention to injustice in this country, we cannot neglect to remember that we, the proverbial people, though perhaps through passive ignorance and distraction, have allowed for these legislators to govern our country in this fashion. Our own inattention to injustice, to poverty, to inequality, is no excuse for us to now form a self-righteous, incredulous public that has distanced itself from the decision made in our nation's capital Monday night.
In a country that is governed by privilege, political and economical but also psychological, it is possible for legislators to continue being paid even as the government technically runs out of funds, even as millions of their constituents continue living without income or sustained employment. (Though not, it should be noted, without health care.) This privilege is not accidental but is rather the product of a carefully constructed and maintained system. The current shutdown may constitute a failure of that system, but given the events of the past week, it seems that this was a system built to fail precisely in this way. Certain privileged groups (including those individuals directly responsible for the shutdown) are impervious to the detrimental effects of that failure. Yes, Yosemite and the Smithsonian are closed and the Panda Cam is shut off, but in many ways, this is a continuation of an uninterrupted story of privilege, inequality and injustice in America.
This is a catastrophe that occurred not in one fell legislative swoop at the stroke of midnight, but by increments of inattention and incredulity over the course of decades. No surprises here.
Logan Lockner is a College senior from Jonesborough, Tenn.
Cartoon by Katrina Worsham
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