Where's that government shutdown? (In which I troll everyone about the relationship between the hard-right and queer theory)

 When you hear no barking dog, there are many possible explanations.  The most obvious explanation is that there are no dogs in the vicinity, but of course, you mostly do not notice the sound or lack thereof, unless you obsess over references to books you have not read.  Truthfully, I do not even remember if I have read this one, but if I did, it would have been so long ago that I only know the reference anyway.  Such is life.  Anyway, a thing didn't happen this week.  Or rather, a thing did happen, stopping another thing from happening.  Congress-- both chambers, no less-- passed stopgap spending measures, preventing a government shutdown.  Obviously, nobody reads my ramblings, but those of us with integrity go back and check our work.  Mike Johnson, you may recall, was not the first Speaker for the 118th Congress.  Kevin McCarthy provided us with a theater of the absurd as he and the House Republicans went through vote after vote, before McCarthy finally got the most useless gavel in the history of legislatures.  In order to secure the gavel, he cut a deal by which he accepted a rule change.  A motion to vacate could be introduced by even a single Member of Congress.  A motion to vacate, recall, is the formal motion used to remove a speaker.  When that happened, I said that McCarthy was doomed.  When McCarthy had to go through his first budget negotiation, I said that a shutdown was inevitable.  Why?  Because it was shutdown or compromise, or continuing resolution, and even a continuing resolution would lead to a motion to vacate, and McCarthy would not sacrifice his speakership just for a CR, so there would be a shutdown, followed by a compromise, and eventually, he'd just lose the gavel in a motion to vacate.

Um...

Well, in the terminology of Philip Tetlock from Expert Political Judgment, I suppose I could say that I was almost right or mostly right, or something like that, because McCarthy went for a CR, Matt Gaetz introduced a motion to vacate, McCarthy lost his gavel, and then we went through more absurdist theater before the House GOP gave the worthless gavel to Mike Johnson, better known as "never heard of him, but at least he isn't Jim Jordan."

But remember that the House never actually passed regular appropriations.  McCarthy just passed a CR, which was what cost him that gavel, and so Mike Johnson was stuck with the same problem.  Shutdown, compromise, or CR, with the threat that a CR would lead to a motion to vacate.

Well, you may have missed it, amid the even more overwhelming news, but this week, the House and Senate quietly passed a CR, avoiding a shutdown, and nobody introduced a motion to vacate.  Johnson still has the gavel.

Um... huh?

Let's take a moment.  The government not shutting down is not supposed to be news, and indeed, we are not treating it as such, but really, only because there is so much other news, from wars to the US ineffectually shooting missiles at the Houthis without a plan because oh, no, we might kill those precious, precious, sacred people called "terrorists," and we can't do that, can we?  No, no, we can't do that.  The new top of the DEI/critical theory intersectionalist hierarchy-- terrorists.

Then there are the multiple trials of the most dishonest, crooked politician in American history, Donald Trump, who raped and defamed E. Jean Carroll, and continues to defame her while on trial for defamation damages, while being crowned the Republican nominee again because the GOP loves lying rapists.  I could keep going, but point being, there is a lot of news, amid which a story not happening gets buried like the news that Bill Clinton may have been on Jeffrey Epstein's molestation island of unspeakable evil.

On the other hand, the government did not shut down, which normally wouldn't be news.  Except that government shutdowns got normalized when the GOP went its own special brand of crazy.  This week, they didn't do it.  Weird.  Or, weird by the modern standards in which weirdness has become the default.

It's like queer theory.  Go with me on this, because it'll piss off the queer theorists and the conservatives, which means it'll be totally awesome.  Queer theory works like this.  Normalcy is privilege, socially defined, and morally loaded.  Queer theory is as much an activist movement as an academic body of work, in which the goal is to queer all boundaries and destroy all concepts of normalcy so as to take away the property of normalcy from those privileged to possess it.  They are particularly focused on sexual/gender "norms," with quotes around the word, norms, for reasons about which I won't elaborate because I have other things to say, but that's the gist.

The Republicans, and in particular, the most conservative are political queers!  See?  Watch, I'm trolling everyone.  They queered the whole political system by obliterating the norms of governance and acting like... well, like you saw.  They threw out all of the norms-- watch me use the language of queer theory-- turned the system to chaos, made what had appeared "normal" into an aberration (functionality), and now, when we observe something even vaguely resembling functionality, it is an aberration.

Queer theory in action!

So am I just engaging in a bunch of pseudo-academic trolling to cover up for the fact that I had predicted a government shutdown, which never happened?  Well, obviously.  I mean, I was wrong, and being wrong sucks, so yes, I have to look back and acknowledge my wrongness because unlike the rest of academia, pundits, and other useless people, this useless person makes course corrections, but also, in case you had not noticed, there are crazy people in the world.  Too many, and more problematically, they occupy positions of power.

I have no power, except the power of humor, but since my jokes suck, I have no power.  Instead, here's some music.  Dr. John, "How Come My Dog Don't Bark (When You Come 'Round)," from Goin' Back To New Orleans.