A Dangerous Disconnect

Just how out of touch are our ‘lawmakers’, the ones who’ve been so casually toying with our lives lately? This out of touch:

Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) may have won the contest for the worst analogy of the entire debt ceiling debate.

The tea party favorite told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Wednesday that he wanted to lower the debt ceiling because when you’re broke, you have to cut back on certain luxuries.

“Well, Andrea, the thing is, when someone is overextended and broke, they don’t continue paying for expensive automobiles; they sell the expensive automobiles and buy a cheaper one,” Broun explained. “They don’t continue paying for country club dues, they drop out of the country club.”

He let the cat out of the bag with that one. In his world, cutting back is simply a matter of selling off an expensive car and no longer playing golf at a country club. He really can’t comprehend what it’s like down here for the rest of us. I imagine a majority of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle basically feel the same way.They instinctively project their own cushy financial circumstances onto the country at large and conclude that a few austerity measures won’t be so bad. Just start playing golf at a municipal course and send your kids to state college. Maybe sell the SUV and buy a Camry. What’s the problem?

“Take a haircut,” they shrug, as the country endures chronic high unemployment.

“Tighten the belt a little,” they say to growing numbers of people who rely on food stamps and welfare to merely survive.

“Sacrifice for the country’s future,” they piously intone to people who are starting to sense that they have no future at all.

They’re like the guy who pauses on his way to the gym to watch images of starving Somalians on TV for a sec, and then says, “Why don’t they just move already?”

It’s almost as if we’re being ruled by foreign colonial overlords in our own country. There are notable, even some noble, exceptions. You know who they are. But for every Bernie Sanders or Peter DeFazio, there are ten Mitch McConnells and Eric Cantors hiding behind the curtains with daggers in their hands. The good guys are just plain outnumbered.