It’s not in Americans’ nature to dwell in pessimism, or so the adages tell us. That’s really too bad, if true. For these are times that require all the dolor and foreboding at your disposal.

This isn’t to say some aren’t feeling in the pink as the nation careens and flounders in a storm of stupidity and fanatic induced chaos. It’s fairly well recognized by the rest of us now that this group, the same group causing the misery, is beyond the pale. So their present moonstruck ebullience is quite expected.

It’s not how the fuss ends so much, as the fun of making the fuss itself that produces euphoria in the crowd fighting tooth and nail against modernity. There is something about the juvenile temperament of the Republican right that kicks the pheromones up when they are threatening the world economy and millions’ security. Spite is right.

But the fight is real, and the war to quell the neo-Confederacy altogether in progress. The exotic, regressive reactionaries presently operationally in control of the Republican Party have been battling for decades now to hold America back, to deter or delay the transformation the majority of its people seek, joining the rest of the modern, post-industrial first-world as an advanced welfare state. This transformation likewise entails a body politic that reflects America’s changing views and its demographic change: it’s broad social, cultural and economic (OMG!) diversity.

The fear is real too. The wild rhetoric about loss of freedom, Obama the Tyrannical, Communist, Fascist, Not Very Nice Muslim evinces their genuine paranoia and horror at the dystopian modern world and American future beyond the informational and ideological and cultural biosphere they are hermetically sealed inside. Every day they delay this transformation, obstruct it, complicate it, or gum it up is a good day. Whether the elite press or even many Democrats understand the right views this as a fight to the death, and largely has since the Clinton era, conducting itself thusly, is another matter.

As for the current shit storm, any deal is an unnecessary deal, since no actual crisis exists. Obama has said he won’t negotiate, but as far as I can tell something strikingly resembling negotiations seems to be taking place all up and down Pennsylvania Ave. Some say several minutes prior to Armageddon, Boehner of Orange will defy his drooling mob of Morlocks and allow a condition-free bill re-opening the government and raising the debt ceiling to be voted upon in his House of Representatives. Others claim Republicans have so emphatically ravished the pooch by now they will be reduced to forking concessions over to Democrats in the form of easing of the sequester cuts, in order to elude severe brand damage for threatening the world with a cosmically destructive economic clusterfuck. I confess to lacking the serotonin levels to accept these rosy expectations as credible. I very much hope I’m wrong.

Any deal reached is likely to be relatively short term, which means the Johnny Reb caucus is sure to adopt the ploy over and over and over again. They have seized upon this crisis generation mode as extortionist gold, and as sure as god made little green capers, they will not relinquish it . This is life for the foreseeable future.

Sequester already has us living by the terms of what is the almost galactically loathed Ryan budget Plan in all but name. There is little reason to expect we will not continue to plod along under the conservative economic regime we have operated with for many a year: Austerity, declining spending (and declining deficits), minimal taxes on the wealthiest, income and opportunity disparity, with nary a stimulus or a jobs or an infrastructure program in sight. Little real progress of any kind in these United States.

Potential for nearer term alleviation of misery rests with a successful campaign to turn the House Republican majority out into the streets in the congressional elections next year. There is always hope, though little actual expectation Senate Democrats could kill the filibuster, one less enforcement mechanism for minority rule.

It’s undeniable the Republican Party is broadly detested, and approaching the status of nearly universal laughingstock. But in the meantime it doesn’t particularly matter, since Republicans may continue to successfully assert their detrimental policies as a minority in the country, and in government.

For now, and for the foreseeable future the fools on the hill run the show.