The Shutdown Drags on Because Trump Is a Ghoul

Yesterday, Democratic leaders headed to the White House to meet with Donald Trump about the shutdown, and it did not go well. Trump has border-walled himself into a corner, staking everything on his goddamn monument to nativist white supremacy at the southern border, and so the federal government shutdown drags on, regardless of the consequences.

And those consequences are significant: The shutdown has risked leaving people without food stamps or subsidized housing, jeopardized environmental safety, imperiled air travel, worsened immigration backlogs, means our domestic food supply is no longer being inspected, and threatens the livelihood of nearly a million federal workers — which is not even a comprehensive list.

Meanwhile, member of the Coast Guard received an unfathomably condescending set of suggestions for how to make ends meet during the shutdown:

The tip sheet, titled "Managing your finances during a furlough," applies to the Coast Guard's 8,500-person civilian workforce. About 6,400 of them are on indefinite furlough, while 2,100 are working without pay after being identified as essential workers, said Lt. Cmdr. Scott McBride, a service spokesman. They were last paid for the two-week period ended Dec. 22.

...To get by without pay, consider holding a garage sale, babysitting, dog-walking, or serving as a "mystery shopper." ..."Bankruptcy is a last option," the document said.

And of course even the agents serving at the border aren't getting paid. In fact, several border protection agents have joined a lawsuit suing the Trump administration "over unpaid work due to the government shutdown."

As a reminder, Trump has threatened to allow the shutdown to continue for years, having convinced himself that federal workers are universally supportive of this bullshit and will "make an adjustment" to accommodate his massive ego sustaining a fight over an ineffective security proposal for a manufactured crisis.

Speaker Pelosi caustically noted that he might imagine they can just ask their fathers for money. Which is a perfect way of correctly observing that Donald Trump has no personal experience with the suffering he's now causing.

And of course he isn't even trying to empathize with anyone's pain, nor should anyone ever expect that he would, because malice is the agenda. Our pain is for his pleasure.

He is holding the entire nation hostage to his obscene whim. That's what authoritarians do. Their own people are always their favorite target.