17% of the government is going to getting a late paycheck, in a political drama channeling rage against seized-up tax and seize Obummercare, and longstanding business and investor uneasiness about what may come of unstoppable over-stocking at the D.C. Inflato-Mart.

One might call this democracy in action, or the modern American republic, but at the risk of repeating myself, it’s just another episode of Mob Wives. On the one hand, it’s an ugly, slutty, angry story without an ethic to share. On the other hand, there’s a real story here of continued survival and growth of the DC bandit gang writ large, in a time of real threat to its continued existence.

Brian Wilson asks “Where is the outrage!?” I agree! But there has been outrage. Most of it, spectacularly, has been on the government side, and it’s an entertaining joy to behold. The government is more outraged than we are, and its fear that we won’t notice the temporary 17% reduction in non-essential services (smile) is really freaking them out.

OK, I confess. Last night the hubby and I watched The Hunger Games, again. In the context of friendly and unfriendly fascism already inside the gates, I have to admit it got me thinking about what a citizen-serf is to do, short of shooting arrows deep into the heart of our fellow citizen-serfs, in some choreographed and controlled public spectacle to maintain the status quo.

I recall vaguely the so-called government shutdown during the Clinton years. Neocon Gingrich, even then obsessed with becoming the first American philosopher king facing off against Billary, imagining a global velvet-fisted police state with wealth for all, especially for those wearing the gloves and centrally administering the Glorious Humanitarian Peace.

In the 1990s, the Internet was toddleresque and the economy was pre-internet. Today, however, despite government heavy-handedness and arrogance, technology allows everyone to see, know and utilize ideas and assets almost instantly, and at ever-reduced transaction costs. We citizen-serfs know how easy and cheap it is to have and maintain a website, to connect with and serve out family, community, customers and friends. We have simultaneously witnessed an ever-expanding and obese government, and we as a society, really are beginning to find it all a bit annoying. We can’t understand CDC zombie fighting manuals or why they used our tax dollars to produce them, and we don’t comprehend why the NSA is eavesdropping on all of us, all the time, spending trillions to do so. We care about food and health, and yet the nanny state response to our healthy choices has been wholly misguided, and misses the point. Instead of liberty and information and a healthy marketplace, we see the FDA and USDA aggressively interfere with us, dictating to the microscopic level what we grow, buy, store, process, consume and market. With so many sources of information to check out facts, we are shocked – shocked – at the constant and incessant, compulsive and predictable, outright lying done by the men and women in government, and those in their employ.

So why am I so elated by this fake shutdown, so far? Truly, it has surpassed my expectations, as a simple observer of the decline of the American state. I can explain it best by referencing a new TV show that has debuted on the Oxygen channel. It’s called “My Big Fat Ron Paul: A Life of Ideas Karen Kwiatkowski Best Price: $2.74 Buy New $4.23 (as of 12:10 EST - Details) Revenge.” Now, we could analyze this show, but as I haven’t watched a single episode, I’m not qualified to participate in that. However, I know the show’s premise tracks with the Fedgov’s reaction to their non-essential paychecks being delayed by legislators with the temerity to ask for infinitesimal reduction in future spending.

Somebody called Nanny fat, and by God, she was. Feelings were hurt, so it’s time for governmental revenge. The elaborate schemes for revenging the “insult” are required. Lots of planning and energy will go into getting even, and Nanny hopes to feel a lot better afterwards.

In the past few weeks, Nanny has exacted her revenge – on the very citizen-serfs she despises, and has hated for so long. Want to drive on a road or visit a structure you already paid for many times over, on land you own and which was confiscated from other serfs decades ago, to spend your money in a privately owned business on that road? Can’t do it. Shouldn’t have called Nanny a fat pig.

Fat Nanny has shut down websites that contain historical information that we already paid for, and services we are still paying for, to the extent of even faking blockages to “trick” citizen serfs into a feeling of panic. The list is long and growing.

The central state has over reacted – certainly the arrogance and ignorance of the central state as it “prices” its services and values its “resources” are the heart of the problem. It’s old news, but we are seeing it in a fresh way today, with the king publicly dictating to his minions that “to make the people suffer”, all for calling Nanny an obese disgusting and useless porker.

In this government over-reaction, we glimpse the panic of the central state. We should be laughing out loud at Nanny’s games, at her venality, and for all of her national mood readings and lone wolf terrorist tracking software, her extreme stupidity. I can’t suppress my own chuckles, and I’m seeing a lovely light wink intermittently from behind the statist cloud.

What is concerning in the ongoing contrived drama, and what must inform us as the advocates and practitioners of liberty, is the speed and aggressiveness of the unnecessary state reaction to what is really nothing – nothing – at all. Obamacare can’t sign anyone up, and Economic Calculation i... von Mises, Ludwig Best Price: null Buy New $0.99 (as of 12:05 EST - Details) isn’t going to be able to do so in any significant way until 2014 anyway. Technical problems plus serf resistance. Between now and then, much can happen to expose and derail this corporate crony-pleasing federal tax on the poor and producing classes. The debt ceiling and the 17% getting delayed paychecks is not a budget (and there will be no more budgets, ever!); the locomotive of the overloaded parasitical state continues to accelerate lemming-like over the cliff. So why the PTSD-style over-reaction, to what can only be described as little more than verbal insult to the state, and one that threatens the bandit gang not at all, in the grand scheme of things?

The nanny state has made a huge tactical error in its response to the fake shutdown, and has revealed to hundreds of millions of Americans a fundamental vulnerability. If we stop believing, valuing, and obeying the state, it crumbles. If we believe only what is true about it, value only what is essential in it, and obey only its constitutional mandates, it also crumbles. The stupidity and gracelessness of its ongoing threat response also reveals a far higher than (I, anyway) presumed level of intellectual decay among bureaucrats, and deep internal strife.

Talking and laughing about the uselessness, wastefulness, wrongness, and fatness of government threatens Fedgov. It flutters and shimmies the house of cards that is Washington, its surrounding counties and supporting institutions everywhere. It enrages the king and his courtiers and his sponsors. When we begin to understand that we don’t really need a big fat nanny state, and begin to mentally and spiritually wake up to the mathematical fact that more government means less freedom and prosperity, less joy, less happiness – we accomplish much more than is immediately visible.

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