`Snu? -OR- "That's the way it is..."

Prescience?
$819 Billion Dollars. With a twist.

James Madison said in 1788, "I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."

His message was deemed poppycock. Who in their right mind would believe that shit?

$819 Billion is neither silent nor gradual. At the same time, it is not sudden or violent. On the heels of $750 Billion a $69 billion increase is par for the course.
Standard budget processing in Congress.

In 1979 David Brinkley opined on the state of the nation thusly, upon his exit as Nightly News Anchor:

"What's wrong with our institutions?

Politics has become a profession in this country, and I think that is bad news. This is the only country where a young man of 25 will say to himself, 'I am going to be a politician, and I am going to be totally dependent on politics for a living.' A member of Congress will get elected from Kansas or wherever, come here and try his damnedest to stay until he retires. He buys a house, puts his kids into school and becomes a Washingtonian. He goes home only when he has to be reelected. I think it is unhealthy.

Doesn't that create a class of experienced, professional public servants?

No. It creates a special class of people out of touch with the rest of us. They become a separate entity, not part of the mainstream of this country. They don't really have to earn a living the way the rest of us do. We see the results of that all around us.

What are the results?

For one thing, they spend enormous amounts of money to reelect themselves. They love to set up programs and hand out money to buy themselves votes. This gives us a cumbersome, grossly oversized, overly expensive government which cannot wait to interfere in your private life and mine."

From a People magazine interview from 1979? I could go off on a tangent about tabloid journalism here, but it should be enough to note that People magazine of 1979 covered this while the MSM ginned up our malaise.

Now the house reproblicans would have us believe it is our interests they have united to protect. $100 Trillion late and still a dollar short?

When we were taken by voodoo economics in 1981 the takings began. That's when value was devalued. That's when we veered off into the twilight zone. Over time we became velocitized to the new surreality. If there is to be any giddy-up in our return to sanity, we either have to backtrack, which is problematic or blaze a inter-stellar by-pass back to normalcy.

It's only money. A shitting boatload of money for sure, but still only symbolic.
So where does that leave anyone who isn't rich? Who isn't money savvy or particularly interested in material wealth? Just as we were in 1788 and 1979. Looking on in mild bemusement. Sure that the world is round and resists flattening.

We have hope that rational people will prevent rampant instability. We enjoy watching self-important pissants play proxy games. We partake of the rich and overabundant pomposity of pageants. And we prepare to make it through another hour, day, week, year, decade being of questionable consequence in the larger realm.