Letter to the editor: Shutdown as scare tactic

The evening news has been reporting, again, a possible federal government shutdown.

By my own rude/crude math, our fair republic has been rescued from government shutdown more than once in the last short stack of years. It’s getting to be a regular thing, something possibly used as a bargaining chip in opaque world affairs.

A looming threat of government shutdown may be scaring people, while perhaps unjustly forcing action. This could be a tool in the process of manufacturing consent, a process described by Noam Chomsky. In this model, everyone must comply with whatever mandates circumvent government shutdown.

There was talk a few years back of transitioning power from the federal government to state governments. This could be taken as an initiative to reduce the scale of the federal government. Statism may be one way, among others, to circumvent government shutdown at the federal level.

Bruce Reisner

Perry South