Since the days of George W., I have grown more and more accustomed to the idea of breaking the country up into smaller pieces. Our representation on a federal level has become such a joke that it only makes sense to fire everyone.

People in other countries are astounded by our lack of protest over the shutdown, but the reason for our apparent apathy is simple and understandable: protest will have no impact on the people behind this shutdown – they are just too friggin’ daffy to get it. These people can’t be made to understand that their job is not to just take care of themselves because they lack empathy – they lack the ability to understand the needs of others. This is a sociopathic characteristic.

Yes, I just called a bunch of congressmen and women sociopaths. Anyone who cares to argue with my assessment should first examine these quotes from some of our representatives. These comments are just from the past week:

When asked if he was keeping his own paycheck while 800,000 public servants go without due to the shutdown, Rep. Lee Terry (R–Neb.) said, “Dang straight.” In fact, he thinks representatives who reject their paychecks in solidarity with those forced to go without are doing so to go along with a “gimmick.”

To quote Rep. Terry:

Whatever gets them good press… That’s all that it’s going to be. God bless them. But you know what? I’ve got a nice house and a kid in college, and I’ll tell you we cannot handle it. Giving our paycheck away when you still worked and earned it? That’s just not going to fly.

Good for you, Terry. You shouldn’t have to give up your “nice house.” You’ve worked hard for your paycheck. Except you’re not. You’re not doing anything, because you’ve shut down the government. That’s what shutting down the government means – you’ve refused to go to work. But you still deserve to get paid while no one else does. Terry, that’s a revealing lack of empathy. That’s how sociopaths think.

Rep. Renee Ellmers (R–NC) recently said, “I need my paycheck. That’s the bottom line,” resulting in a media firestorm that frightened her into requesting that her paycheck be withheld until after the shutdown. The article that quote came from goes on to say that she claims she didn’t know Congress would be paid during the shutdown, which is weird, because if that were true then her previous statement made no sense.

The same people who caused the shutdown are flipping out because kids can’t go visit the White House or visit WWII memorials because those are national landmarks and the people who keep national landmarks running have been furloughed specifically because the government has been shut down.

None of this seems to make sense. That’s because it doesn’t. Somehow, we’ve let the positions that are supposed to represent our interests be taken over by people who have no concept of cause and effect. They don’t believe they should suffer the consequences of their own actions. Again – that’s how sociopaths think.

Going back to my original idea – fire EVERYONE – I have no idea how it would work, how we would transition from a nation with a strong central government to a series of smaller regions governed by their own individual bodies. Still, I grow fonder of this idea. I don’t think people of older generations realize how little respect people my age have for a system that has disappointed us again and again and again and again. We’ve lost interest in maintaining the status quo, which others seem to be dead set on purely for the sake of convenience.

On a related note, this is why we elected (and re-elected) Obama, because we got the impression he had at least a vague understanding of how most of us live. Now we realize the problem can’t be solved by one man or one administration, probably not even by multiple administrations. A vast overhaul is necessary at this point. Let’s start by not paying the people who not only won’t work, but who in refusing to work have cost over a million people their own jobs and/or government assistance, such as all the children who are fed on welfare/food stamps. I’ll bet my next paycheck that at least one of those WWII vets receives government assistance in the form of food, housing, healthcare, etc (not to mention all the currently active military personnel who aren’t getting paid, but I’m already too angry to go into that).

In the New United Federation of America, can we make Washington, D.C. its own country and place an embargo on them? Then we can all go back to our business, pausing for popcorn breaks while we watch D.C. implode.