Black Helicopters

Homer: "I'd give anything to get into the Stonecutters!"

Lisa: "What do they do there, Dad?" 

Homer: "What do they do? What don't they do? Oh, they do so many things, they never stop. Oh, the things they do there. My stars!" 

Lisa: "You don't know what they do there, do you?" 

Homer: "Not as such, no." 

Just moments after the House of Representatives finally, grudgingly, reluctantly, Paul Rudd in that one scene in Wet Hot American Summer-ingly passed a budget that would fund the government for a few more weeks and postpone financial catastrophe for a few more weeks after that, the House stenographer approached the microphone at the head of the House floor and began to yell at the assembled Congressmen.

From NPR:

“He will not be mocked," the stenographer, later identified as Dianne Reidy, yelled into the microphone at the chamber's rostrum. "The greatest deception here is that this is not one nation under God. It never was. It would not have been. The Constitution would not have been written by Freemasons. They go against God."

Okay, so, first off: You had basically every dipshit who just shut down our government for no reason and tried to blow up the world’s economy in one room, and you decide to throw your career away so you can yell at them about Freemasons!?

For three years these asshats have been holding up virtually every function of government, up to and including funding for disaster victims and legislation explicitly intended to prevent violence against women. I, along with at least 90% of America, would love an opportunity to scream at the House of Representatives, even for just a few seconds, and you decided to talk about fucking Freemasons and Jesus and shit!?

But I don’t know. Maybe she choked under pressure. Maybe she went up there with every intention of telling Louie Gohmert and Raul Labrador to lick her middle nut, but then she got overwhelmed by the moment and wound up saying what she did. I mean, at the very least she yelled at Congress, even if she didn’t yell the things I would’ve wanted her to yell. That gets a B-, at least.

If, on the other hand, she was just trying to sell the world on some deep seated conspiracy theory she’s held for years, last night was just about the worst possible time to do it, because if the past two weeks have done anything they’ve shown us that every conspiracy theory is bullshit.

Whatever nefarious group you say is secretly running the world – Freemasons, the Illuminati, Zionist Jews, Muslims, the United Nations, Majestic-12, aliens – has either been having a really bad couple of weeks or just doesn’t exist. The world’s largest economy came within hours of defaulting on trillions of dollars’ worth of debt, something so unprecedented that experts couldn’t even agree on which terrible thing would happen first. What kind of self respecting secret society of Satan-worshipping, world-controlling billionaires would let that happen on their watch?

Suppose you believe there’s a clandestine shadow government that controls every level of our society, run by a cabal of unfathomably wealthy elites. You’re convinced that they’ve spent decades and billions upon billions of dollars to forge Barack Obama’s US birth certificate and install him in the White House as their Manchurian Candidate. They even orchestrated false flag operations like 9/11, Sandy Hook, and the Boston Marathon Bombing to further their evil goals, executing them so perfectly that the vast majority of the populace and the international news media believe them to simply be tragedies perpetrated by terrorists and the mentally ill.

If you believe that, then you must now also believe that this dark, infinitely wealthy and powerful group was very nearly thwarted by a handful of morons who get their economic policy from WorldNetDaily and consider tri corner hats to be fashionable and effective forms of protest.

To borrow and modify a quote from The Joker, “This country deserves a better class of conspirator.”

I mean, I don’t consider myself a conspiracy theorist, but even so I’ve always been of the belief that “money talks” – Wall Street and big business have more influence over our political process than they let on. I never expected us to get too close to a default because default would be a disaster for rich people, unlike most other GOP policies, which are generally pretty benign so long as you aren’t poor, female, gay, a minority, young, unemployed, sick, in a union, or interested in voting.

Instead, last week a bunch of Wall Street executives had a private meeting with President Obama – the guy who they aggressively campaigned and fundraised against – and then got on the phone with the Congressmen they’d bankrolled who were running the shutdown and told them to knock it off.

But then the Congressmen said, “Just because you contributed to our campaigns doesn’t mean we have to listen to everything you tell us to do!” Admittedly that’s something I’ve always wanted politicians to say, but I was always hoping they’d do it over an issue like campaign finance reform or reducing military spending.

So the wealthiest people in the wealthiest country on Earth can’t control a minority of one political party in one house of Congress, some of whom they personally funded. Looks like I’m wrong – money doesn’t talk, I guess. Or maybe it just talks really quietly, or it talks at a specific pitch that can only be heard by sane people.

Knowing that there is no grand, evil conspiracy to control the world out there should probably be comforting, but instead I find myself scared. We can be pretty sure now that there isn’t a vast plot run by a devious few with unlimited funding to take over the world. We do, however, have irrefutable proof that there is a plot run by an ill-informed, reactionary few with unlimited funding to accomplish something – they’re just not entirely sure what that is yet.

What I wouldn’t give for the comforting sound of a black helicopter right about now. At least people with a plan have something to lose.

Truman Capps promises he’ll shut the fuck up about politics now that the shutdown is over.