The United States is drunk. It is high on hallucinogens. It is sniffing glue until its hair stands on end. It is behaving like a man who, faced with filing for bankruptcy, instead heads straight out to Las Vegas. And it’s getting worse, rather than better. Ten years ago, our two political parties were at least willing to acknowledge that we had a spending problem. Now, they talk as if it’s 1998. But it’s not 1998; it’s 2021, and it’s time, I’m afraid, for some pain. There can be no more tax cuts that are supposed to magically pay for themselves. There can be no more spending binges that are justified with vague talk about what’s “fair.” There can be nothing but sobriety, and sobriety tends to require an intervention.

So, I’ll ask again: Where is that intervention? Where are the levelheaded types who can see more than a week into the future? Where are the parents looking out for their children? Where are the people who, unlike our government, remain capable of elementary arithmetic? Do they have something better to do? To read the accounts of the current infighting among congressional Democrats is to suspect that many within the party know deep down that the plan they are being asked to support is preposterous in the extreme. Where are the people helping them to see sense? Have they all just given up, too?