Some men just want to watch the world burn

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Dave Johnson at crooksandliars.com makes an important point, Misunderestimating Who They Are: They Like To Destroy Things:

There is a miscalculation at the core of Democratic strategies for ending the shutdown and avoiding default. Democrats keep saying, "They wouldn’t really do that." But this calculation doesn't "get it" about who and what the country is dealing with.

Here is the miscalculation: If you listen to right-wing radio, watch FOX News and read their online media and take it seriously (because they do) then you would know that many on the right don’t want to live in a country that has Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare, the minimum wage, Food Stamps, immigration, public schools, infant nutrition programs and the rest of the things government does to make our lives better. And they don't want anyone else to live in a country that has those things, either.

They are willing to destroy the village to keep the village from having those things. If you don't "get that" before entering into negotiations, you're at risk of making a terrible mistake -- like the sequester.

This reminds me of the anecdote that Alfred tells Bruce Wayne in the Dark Knight movie, and concludes:

Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.

Video below the fold.

Comments

[Brian Clymer]

Great post. Love the Batman clip. How true. How scary.

[Bruce Freiberg]

But in reality, aren't we all just "watching the world burn" as we continue headlong into spending money we don't have? The US national debt is 36 times larger than it was just 40 years ago. We are literally destroying the future of America, but most Americans, including their Congressmen from both sides of the aisle, don't seem to care. The US government is now responsible for about a third of all the government debt in the world, and the amount of our debt held by foreigners is about 5 times larger than it was just a decade ago. Our financial situation is not even close to sustainable. We are heading for an inevitable collapse. We have accumulated, and continue to accumulate at an expanding rate, the largest debt in the history of the world. If this is not changed soon, America has no future.