Dwain Northey (Gen X)

What a glorious time to be alive in America—the land where compassion goes to die on the steps of the Capitol. Once again, the government is closed for business, and Speaker Mike Johnson and his merry band of GOP absolutists are proudly standing in front of the locked doors, polishing their halos of “fiscal responsibility” while sharpening their knives of cruelty. Because, you see, cruelty isn’t a side effect anymore—it is the policy. It’s the message. It’s the whole aesthetic.

Let’s be honest: the Republican Party hasn’t exactly been shy about its priorities. Feed hungry kids? Nah. Fund nutrition for struggling families? Maybe later. But shut down the government to make a point about how mean they can be to the people who need help the most? Now that’s the stuff of true conservative valor! They’re not negotiating, they’re staging performance art. The cruelty is the canvas, the suffering is the brushstroke, and Mike Johnson is out here painting his masterpiece titled, “Fiscal Sanctimony in Red, White, and Starve.”

Their “offer” to reopen the government is a thing of beauty. They’ll release SNAP benefits—money that’s legally owed to families who are already living on fumes—if Democrats will just take them at their word that they’ll talk about maybe, possibly, at some unspecified future date, doing something vaguely related to extending ACA benefits. You know, that same Affordable Care Act they’ve been trying to kill since before it even took its first breath. The one that originated from their own think tank, the Heritage Foundation, back when the GOP still pretended to have ideas instead of just grievances. The plan that Obama took, scrubbed off the conservative branding, and actually made functional—an unforgivable sin in Republican theology.

So here we are, watching the same movie for the hundredth time: the GOP holds the country hostage, demands that the Democrats “negotiate,” and then defines “negotiate” as “agree to defund everything that keeps poor people from dying.” And if Democrats dare say no? Well, Mike Johnson and friends will gladly let children go hungry, let families miss rent, and let basic services grind to a halt—all while assuring the American people that this is for their own good. It’s like being mugged by someone who tells you they’re teaching you a valuable lesson about fiscal discipline.

But it’s not about money. It never has been. It’s about cruelty as proof of conviction. In this new moral order, empathy is weakness, compromise is sin, and governance is just another form of extortion. Every press conference is a sermon about “personal responsibility,” as if a 6-year-old trying to eat dinner on $2 a day should really just bootstrap harder. Meanwhile, Mike Johnson sits in his office, Bible open, chin lifted to heaven, apparently confident that God’s plan includes starving the poor to save the rich from mild inconvenience.

So yes, the government remains closed—not because it has to be, but because they want it to be. Because the pain is the point, the suffering is the strategy, and the cruelty is the calling card.

And when the lights finally flicker back on in Washington, don’t expect an apology. Expect a victory lap. After all, in today’s GOP, there’s no greater proof of “strength” than watching the weakest among us fall—and calling it freedom.