A Meditation on the End of the Government Shutdown

A Meditation on the End of the Government Shutdown

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I visited home this past weekend. There’s very little to do in my hometown, and I spent the lion’s share of the time watching TV (I don’t have a TV at my apartment in Tucson, so it’s a rare treat to check out what’s on cable, let alone network shows). Two things were playing ad nauseum more or less every time I sat down to watch. Since the government shutdown ended the day before my plane landed in New Jersey, one of those two things was coverage of the fallout: Jon Boehner and countless other House Republicans were taking hyperbole to a level formerly unreached by any actual public official, proclaiming the Affordable Care Act a disaster, and the worst thing ever to happen to the United States (that’s a direct quote). The other thing on TV was this movie Project X, just released on Showtime and playing round the clock. Have you seen it? If not, let me fill you in quickly: it’s a faux-“found footage” film about some teenagers who throw what they think will be the Greatest Party of All Time, documented by one of their friends. And I couldn’t help but think, as I flipped back and forth between these two, how oddly similar the sensibility of the main characters was.

Let me explain, because I know what you’re thinking: Ted, Project X is nothing like the government shutdown: one is an immature philistine’s fantasy about getting to do whatever the hell you want once the adults have no power, and the other is Project X. And that’s kind of my point. Project X—other than being horrendously directed, written for the kind of people who think midgets are by definition funny, and probably the worst-acted film since The Room—is a ludicrous fantasy. The parents go away, three nerds who’ve never thrown a party before invite a bunch of teenagers over, and everything goes according to plan. The teenagers have shitloads of fun, of course, but it somehow manages to maintain a sense of order. Groups divide themselves into separate corners to perform specific acts of hedonism: a handful of girls is totally content to spend the entire night jumping on a trampoline topless (no one wants to join them, and they never want to get off); a piñata full of ecstasy is burst open and everyone calmly gets a hit from the ground without fighting (and of course no one ends up overdosing); our heroes jump from the roof of the house onto a bouncy castle and everyone politely stops and watches them do it (no one tries to fuck with them, or ignores them, and when the fat kid jumps and pops it, he’s fine). The government (police officers) tries to intervene at one point, but the kids gather in a unified “Cops Go Home!” chant and all they have to do is throw a single bottle of beer at a squad car and the cops leave for the next four hours (two cops investigate a noise complaint at the beginning of the night, are unable to do so because the kids for some reason have an encyclopedic knowledge of their fourth amendment rights, and then they don’t investigate again until pretty much the end of the film).

Even when things do go wrong, it doesn’t end up being that big a deal. Thomas, the host of the party and the biggest nerd in school (despite looking like he belongs on the cover of TeenBop, like his girlfriend who’s supposed to be a fellow nerd but is probably one of the most beautiful actresses I’ve ever seen), is told by his friends several times to just chill out. A midget gets locked in a stove, the dog gets locked in a drawer, someone drives dad’s car into the pool, but Thomas remains cool until someone tries to break a vase. “That’s an antique!” he shouts. “Dude,” says his friend Oliver, “just take some ecstasy. I know you’re not a drug guy, but it’ll help.” He does, and it does. Problem solved! The neighbor tries (and mostly succeeds) to set the entire block on fire with a blow torch, and Thomas’s house catches on fire, destroying it. His father’s response when he gets home the next day? Without a hint of irony, I swear the film makes whoever this actor is ask this with a straight face: “How was it?” “It was awesome,” Thomas says, looking at the ashes of his former house.

In other words, this film is made by and for people who are sick of stupid parents telling me what to stupid do all the time! And by and for people who are convinced that, if stupid parents just left them alone, they could not only take care of themselves but enhance the entire living experience to the point that Jimmy Kimmel would mention it in his monologue during the credits!

And what a perfect metaphor for the way the Republican Party responds to government oversight these days.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I know that the Tea Party, Libertarians, and the Republicans get lumped together an awful lot, but the one thing they all have in common (at least if publicly stated philosophy is anything to go by anymore), it’s that they want small government. They just want to be left alone to do as they please, and the government, according to them, should abide by that. And to be fair, I totally get that, in some cases, that’s true. It’s why I think gay marriage and abortion should be (and are, respectively) legal: they’re personal matters, and the government shouldn’t have anything to do with a citizen’s private life.

But break down the word and it’s pretty easy to see what the government is there for—to govern. In a truly free society, we need a governing body to make sure we don’t turn into Lord of the Flies. An entirely free citizenry (says Plato) can never truly function, because human beings as a species lack the discipline and intrinsic feeling of debt to civic duty that keeps a society running smoothly. Just as teenagers need parents around to put restrictions on what they’ll do (because, of course, the real-life version of Project X would have ended like Woodstock ’99, where everything was set on fire and there were a record number of sexual assaults), adults need the government to restrict their totally selfish indulgences.

Again, I hear you: but Ted, adults are adults. Of course teenagers need restrictions, because they aren’t mature enough yet to decide what’s best for them. Adults shouldn’t be watched like that. And to that I say fair, but the truth is that the average American adult today is just a teenager plus a decade or two. Adults in America read Harry Potter. They tweet. 32 million adults in America can’t read, and the ones who do rarely read the newspaper (23%, according to a Pew Research Center report).

So let’s agree, then, that a total abolishment of the government is not only ridiculous, but dangerous. But, of course, that’s not what the government shutdown was about. The Republicans weren’t trying to get rid of government altogether; they were trying to gain leverage so that a specific overreach by the government (the Affordable Care Act) would be altered. But is that fair? Should the citizenry be allowed to choose which legislation is too much, and which is necessary?

Of course. Because we aren’t teenagers, even if we sometimes act that way, we should be allowed a say in what laws are made to govern us. And that’s what the Affordable Care Act is: a piece of legislation passed by a congress we elected, signed by a president we elected, deemed constitutional by a Supreme Court made up of Justices nominated by presidents we’ve elected in the past.

But the Republicans now, as ever, seem like the teenagers in Project X: throwing a giant tantrum based solely on the fact that they didn’t get what they wanted, which was the ability to do whatever the fuck they wanted. There are certain things that need to be legislated, just like there are certain Apollonian restrictions you put on a teenager’s Dionysian brain. They can’t just buy a closetful of semi-automatic weapons. They can’t only play with the kids in their inner-circle and shut everyone else out (that’s why we have Affirmative Action). And they need to put some of their money toward sensible things, like health insurance, before they go out and buy a dirt bike.

“This wasn’t possibly the greatest party ever, this was the greatest party ever,” says a character at the end of Project X. Maybe, but who is going to pay to clean the whole thing up?

Ted McLoof

About Ted McLoof

Ted McLoof is a writer at Rookerville and teaches fiction at the University of Arizona. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Minnesota Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Gertrude, Monkeybicycle, Sonora Review, Hobart, DIAGRAM, The Associative Press, and elsewhere.He's recently been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net Award. He is very cool and very handsome and he'd like to buy you a drink.

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