The Sky Is Falling (Or: How Washington Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Shutdown)
Once Upon a Time...
Once upon a time, in a barnyard called Washington, D.C.—which stands for "Decidedly Chaotic"—there lived a Speaker of the House named Mickey Johnson. One fine October day, while Mickey was strutting about the Capitol, an acorn of an idea fell upon his head.
"The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" cried Mickey Johnson. "The Democrats are making the sky fall! I must tell everyone that only they can put it back up!"
But here's where our tale takes a curious turn, dear readers. Instead of running to tell the King, Mickey Johnson did something quite extraordinary—he sent all the other barnyard animals home for a nice long vacation. "No need to panic," he declared, "We'll simply wait here doing nothing until the sky decides to stop falling on its own!"
The Barnyard Responds
Along came Marjorie Taylor Goose, honking loudly as geese are wont to do. "Mickey Johnson! Mickey Johnson! Why are we all standing around while the sky falls?"
"It's the Democrats' fault," explained Mickey Johnson, now holding daily press conferences in an empty henhouse. "If we just keep telling everyone it's their fault, surely the sky will stop falling!"
Meanwhile, in another part of the barnyard, Alexandria Ocasio-Chicken and Bernie Sanders Swan were organizing all the progressive poultry. "The sky isn't just falling," they declared, "it's falling because the farmers refuse to fix the rickety old barn roof that covers our health insurance!"
"Precisely!" honked Chuck Schumer Duck, who had previously been quite content to paddle about in his pond. "We shall not move one feather until someone fixes that roof!"
Enter the Turkey
Now, into this chaos waddled Donald Turkey, the largest and loudest bird in the barnyard, who had once ruled the entire farm.
"GET RID OF THE FENCE!" he gobbled at maximum volume. "IF WE TEAR DOWN THE FENCE, THE SKY WILL STOP FALLING!"
This confused everyone terribly, as Mickey Johnson had just spent three weeks insisting that only the Democrats could remove the fence, and here was Donald Turkey saying they could have done it themselves all along.
"But wait," said Mickey Johnson, now perspiring despite the November chill, "that's not the plan—"
"I'M DESPERATE!" interrupted Donald Turkey. "DESPERATE TO STOP THE SKY FROM FALLING!"
Then, in the very next breath, he added, "Although this is a wonderful opportunity to close down the chicken coops I never liked anyway. They're not coming back!"
The Consequences
While all this squawking and gobbling was going on, forty-two million tiny field mice were discovering their grain supplies had been cut off. Seven hundred thousand worker ants had been sent home without any sugar cubes.
And Adelita Antelope, who had just been elected to represent the Arizona section of the farm, was left standing at the gate, unable to enter because Mickey Johnson insisted the paperwork wasn't quite right, or the timing wasn't proper, or something about files belonging to someone named Epstein.
As the days turned to weeks, and the weeks to a month, the barnyard became increasingly dysfunctional. The airports—I mean, the bird migration paths—became congested. The food supplies dwindled. The economy—er, the egg production—began to decline.
Foxy Loxy, in this case played by a billionaire named Timothy Mellon, appeared with a large check. "Here's some money for the guard dogs," he said, gaining much admiration while the rest of the animals suffered.
Back in the henhouse, Alexandria Ocasio-Chicken was gaining quite a following. Even the moderate pigeons were reportedly ready to "write checks" for her potential run for Head Duck.
Chuck Schumer Duck paddled nervously in circles, wondering if perhaps he should have thought this through more carefully.
And still the sky continued falling.
The Moral
The moral of this story, dear readers, is somewhat different from the original. In the classic tale, Chicken Little was wrong about the sky falling. In our fractured version, the sky actually IS falling—in the form of government services, food assistance, and federal paychecks.
But instead of running to tell the King, our barnyard animals have decided to argue about whose fault it is while standing directly beneath the falling debris.
Some say the moral is: "Don't cry 'shutdown' unless you're prepared for a very long nap."
Others insist it's: "When the sky is falling, perhaps sending everyone home isn't the wisest strategy."
But Donald Turkey maintains the real moral is: "THE SKY FALLING IS FAKE NEWS! ALSO, IT'S REAL BUT IT'S THE DEMOCRATS' FAULT! ALSO, I CAN FIX IT BY REMOVING THE FENCE! ALSO, I LIKE THAT IT'S FALLING!"
And so, as our tale concludes on Day 35, the barnyard remains in chaos, the sky continues to fall in small but significant chunks, and somewhere in the distance, Edward Everett Horton's ghost can be heard sighing, "And they all lived stubbornly ever after... or at least until somebody blinked."
The End
(Or is it? Tune in next week when Mickey Johnson discovers that keeping Congress in recess for a month might not have been the brilliant tactical move he thought it was!)