The Debt Crisis: Washington’s Kabuki Dance and “NO!” Play

The debt crisis is likened to a Washington Kabuki dance.

Oh yah?

Let’s just see if it is anything like.

In the first video below we have a kabuki presentation of the debt crisis.

President Obama appears, with aides, Daley and Carney (you have to have names with -ey for these roles in Kabuki, by the way). At 1:00 a woman shouts something… perhaps Michelle Bachmann?  Can’t tell.   At 1:30 Pres. Obama finally unveils his plan!  There is applause.  The aides are ready to to spin.  POTUS dances.

But wait!  There’s more.  Not all goes well!  At 2:28 POTUS shows he is is forced to shed some of the heavier parts of his plan.  Journalists of the MSM swoop in to remove the evidence from view… in kabuki, the guys in black are invisible.  Then Sen. Reid and Speaker Boehner, both in gold to symbolize our crushing debt they helped POTUS run up, rush in and symbolically cave in to the White House, with appropriate gestures. Thus, the American public are doomed, to use a more polite term.

The three, POTUS, The Senate and The House, negotiate on a perilously narrow runway.  There is some flipping and occasional posturing.  Then they jump around when they realize there are cameras.  Eventually they run away out of view.

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Just about it.  Kabuki theater.

In related news, this is sort of how I hear Fox News covering this conflict.  The following is a “NO!” play, also involving a lot of hot air.

Listen to the whole thing for the full effect… or at least to 1:20… you can do it.

Yes, I know it’s Noh and not No.

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Or… wait… is that a replay of the Casey Anthony trial coverage?  Anyway, that’s how I hear the coverage.  Some great howling and a guy spinning around going pretty much no where.

Hard to listen to but strangely fascinating, noh?  After a while it makes some sense.  And it gives the lie to those who think that the national debt is no big whoop.

And, I would rather have that music for Mass than what most suburban parishes have.  But noh liturgical dance, unless it’s like that.

The real flaw in my analogy of this Noh play and FNC coverage is that none of them had blonde hair.

The Japanese took a hit to their credit rating some years back.  They’ve been there.

at 1:30

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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8 Comments

  1. UncleBlobb says:

    Some humor for the Baroque salon side of things, noh?

  2. Sandra_in_Severn says:

    While living (stationed) in Japan, I was able with the assistance of some Japanese friends, attend some performances of Kabuki and Noh theater. Too very different forms of performance art. One, is formalized, “courtly” and very symbolic with religious over tones (a morality play). The other was “popular” theater, with grandiose costuming, and overly dramatic “acting” (opera as in the 1700s).

    It is interesting Fr Z that you chose a clip from the movie “Revenge of a Kabuki Actor” (short, actor sees the person responsible for the death of his parents in audience), something like “ah, the play’s the thing to catch the conscience of a king.” And the Noh drama of the “Lion at the stone bridge.” a.k.a. “The Stone Bridge” (remorse and some “pay-back” about government officials).

    I “see” the reflections, but neither type of performance comes close to the tragic tale we are experiencing. (Except being loud and incomprehensible to most of us) Maybe in 20 or more years, someone can make some sense of of all this.

  3. The only answer to the idiocy in Washington is prayer, prayer and more prayer. Our Mother of Sorrows can and will bring peace if we only ask her to.

    God help us.

  4. Stephen D says:

    The idea that the US would ever elect a president who was so closely associated with Marxists in his political formation would have been considered laughable in when I was young (the sixties). Having read something about his early associations, I was astonished that he ever made it to the Senate. You have a Marxist president who mocks Christianity as impractical yet the majority of the US Catholic bishops helped put him there and continue to support him. “Russia will spread her errors throughout the world” said Our Lady of Fatima – it truly has. God help us all!

  5. KAS says:

    Prayer and a serious investigation of all candidates seeking ones who are virtuous and pro-life. Vote pro-life because if the persons are dead by abortion then the rest of the so-called “social” stuff is pretty much moot.

    Vote pro-life and pray hard that they do well making other decisions too.

  6. tealady24 says:

    I agree 100% with Stephen D.!! This is a wake-up call America!

    We have it too good in this country, that’s the problem. Not until the Internet, and cell phones go blank will there be rioting in the streets.

    Just look at the Notre Dame debacle; how that devil in the WH must having been howling when it was all over, thinking, how stupid Catholics are, look at me, I even have them in my administration, and look at what they are!

    I suspect those high, tight skirts are what land you the job on FNC; that and the pretty blonde face.

  7. AvantiBev says:

    Being “pro-life” is not enough if all it means is that you are against abortion. One of the drivers of governmental growth into our private lives was our acquiescence to the Sexual Revolution and its entire basket of evil fruits poisoning the family and attempting the destruction of the Church. The nuns taught us in my 1967-68 Civics classes that ideally our nation should be a 3 legged stool. Family, Church and State each had their proper roles to play in the steadiness of that stool. When one embraces the idea that fathers are not necessary because a government check will “support” the children; that shacking up, starter-marriages, on-demand no-fault divorce are all a-okay, either by active assent or silent consent (eg: priests and bishops failing to preach Jesus’ words with the Samaritan woman); that AIDS and STDs can be contained by condoms but not by self-control and chastity; then one is guaranteeing the lengthening of the State leg and the shortening of the Family leg. When the Family is weakened, and the Church weakens itself with litugical silliness and unworthy candidates for the priesthood seeking sensual pleasures, then citizens will begin to more and more see themselves as wards of the State’s “mothering”. The spiral of less and less personal responsibility and initiative will bring down any democratic republic into a state of serfdom.

    Thus you have a ruled people rather than self-governing citizens demanding that Congress “get on with it” and raise the debt ceiling ONE MORE TIME so that the party on this Titanic can continue without messy self-examination and a turning from behaviors which have cost us both our money and our freedom.

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