My younger daughter was in Edinburgh earlier this week and visited the grave of Adam Smith. That's a little weird, right? For a 20-year-old?

Anyway, I learned more from this experience than just that my daughter is a little weird, which, to be honest, I already knew. I also learned that Adam Smith is still dead -- which wouldn't be noteworthy except that here in the United States we seem to be on the verge of having a national referendum on the future of capitalism.

The Republican's presumptive nominee, Mitt Romney, last night offered a victory speech following the New Hampshire primary in which he essentially made the differences in his views on capitalism and those of the president the dividing-line issue in the upcoming presidential campaign. Romney asserted that President Obama seeks "to put free enterprise on trial."

On Sunday, President Obama's chief campaign guru, David Axelrod, said that Mitt Romney was a "corporate raider, not a job creator." In so doing, he helped sketch out the different approaches to this central issue. Romney will try to position himself as a "turnaround artist" who understands what makes American business great and can restore vitality. Obama will try to position the former Bain Capital boss as representative of the greedy, indulgent 1 percent who blew up the economy in 2008 and will do so again if unchecked by wise government.

The intensity of this debate has been heightened recently by the attacks of some of Romney's Republican competitors like Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry who, reeking of sour grapes, are going after Romney as being a representative of "bad" capitalism, the rapacious kind practiced by private-equity bandits, or "vultures" as Perry characterized them. There are manifold ironies and hypocrisies here, given that both are members of the U.S. political party most closely associated with big business views and that, for example, Gingrich's anti-Romney onslaught is being funded by a fat cat named Sheldon Adelson who made his millions in the gaming business. So Gingrich is attacking Romney for playing in the Wall Street casino with dollars made from actual casinos and attacking Romney for hurting workers by seeking profits that were too big (that actually often went to fund the pensions of average Americans), with dollars that came from praying on those poor suckers whose understanding of arithmetic was so lousy that they actually thought they could profit from gambling.

Debating the future of American capitalism is a good idea. The past several years have clearly shown the system is broken. Inequality is skyrocketing. Social mobility is plummeting. Median incomes have been hammered. Too-big-to-fail financial institutions have gotten a free ride while Main Street Americans continue to drown in underwater mortgages. Whether or not we should have bailed those banks out or whether we should have helped the auto industry or how much regulation is the right amount or whether we should have an active industrial policy to support key U.S. industries are all legitimate questions to debate. The fact is that while we once were the example for capitalists the world over to follow, there are now a variety of brands of capitalism emerging that use different formulas and are gaining legitimacy due to their own successes and/or the obvious defects in the "leave it to the markets" approach of Anglo-U.S. capitalism. There is the more state-centric "capitalism with Chinese characteristics" being practiced in the world's fastest-growing major economy. There is the "democratic development capitalism" of Brazil or India. There is the "small-state entrepreneurial capitalism" of countries like Singapore, the UAE, Israel, or Chile. And there is Eurocapitalism which, despite the problems in Europe that are so frequently (far too frequently) cited by Romney, has produced some of the nations (mostly in Northern Europe) that have the best balance between fiscal responsibility, growth, and quality-of-life measures anywhere in the world.

We've gone from celebrating the end of history in which America's free market theology triumphed over godless communism to realizing that our victory dance was premature and that we've entered a new world of competing capitalisms. Further, given our problems, others are gaining sway as the world votes for alternative models with the policies they adopt. It's also worth noting that all the other alternatives gaining traction worldwide have a much bigger role for government in their public-private sector mix than does the U.S. model -- Republican attacks on "big government" aside.

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Why should Pakistan's smart, hard-working ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani have to resign for doing his job? After all, if as has been asserted, he was involved in getting a back-channel note passed from Pakistan's president to Admiral Mike Mullen when Mullen was chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, isn't that what ambassadors do for their bosses? Yes, it's embarrassing if the note offered to reshuffle the leaders of Pakistan's military and intelligence services in exchange for U.S. assistance in quashing a potential coup. And yes, it's even more embarrassing that Mullen's staff asserts he more or less totally ignored the note.

But let's be honest, isn't the real problem here that a message that was supposed to be on the down-low was found out? (And doesn't that suggest the real mistake was channeling the note through a Pakistani-American businessman who couldn't keep his mouth shut?)

On a deeper level, doesn't the entire incident simply further confirm the fact long-acknowledged by Pakistan hands (and anyone else who's paying attention) that this country seems to be emulating the Chinese model in Hong Kong: one country, two systems? Given the depth, history and tensions associated with the divides between that country's civilian political establishment and its military-intelligence establishment, isn't the truth about Pakistan that is one of the world's true schizo-states?

It is the fact that the civilian government has never been able to assert effective authority over the military or the ISI that has led to the repeated instances of the government promising one thing while its security apparatus was doing another. It is why the country is viewed by the charitable in Washington as a "frenemy." (The less charitable simply view it as an enemy we have to work with, the diplomatic equivalent of a hostile witness in a court case.) In fact, it is why I have also heard more than one Pakistani diplomat use the same term to refer to their own country's relationship with the United States in the past year or so. Admittedly, the Pakistani diplomatic corps tends to represent the civilian government and are so regularly frustrated in their duties by the military and the intelligence services that they are often even more openly hostile to them than are the Americans who by now are simply resigned to their lying and coddling of extremists.

In fact this entire incident underscores why it is misleading and dangerous to think of Pakistan as a unitary country. Not only are its institutions divided, but so too are its people. For every cluster of extremists or those who view their region and much of the world with paranoia-fed hostility, there are masses who seek peace, stability and prosperity and would happily be done with the costly distractions of fighting and divisiveness -- whether internally or, for example, with neighbors like India.

The challenge for the United States and the rest of the world is to manage to work with constructive, sympathetic elements in Pakistan while somehow containing the threat posed by the others, notably those in the ISI and the military who somehow feel it is in the country's interest to support militant groups and to grow the country's nuclear capabilities. Unfortunately, the outlook for managing that challenge does not look good. The civilian government, even if it can hang on for a while longer, is weak and electoral challenges from groups supported by and sympathetic to the military look likely to grow stronger. The nuclear weapons program only looks to grow more dangerous ... and thus we will become even more dependent on the dubious elements of the Pakistan establishment to look out for our most pressing security interests. The country faces profound economic risks that could easily inflame unrest, undercut civilian authority and lead to a push back for the stronger hand of military leadership. And the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan will undoubtedly trigger and effort by the Pakistani security elites to support their allies among the Taliban in the struggle for control that will undoubtedly come as the power void in that country next door to Pakistan grows.

As a consequence, our complex and tense relationship with Pakistan is only likely to grow more tense as the complex and tense relationships within the country do as well. Perhaps the greater problem is that the more likely "cure" for schizo-statehood will be a return to military rule. While some will argue this offers desirable stability, it is worth remembering just how that has worked out in the past. It has resulted in a country that unsettled the region and the world with its rogue nuclear program and its support for terrorist and extremist groups. While the illusion was momentary institutional stability in Islamabad, the result was not only undemocratic, it was deeply destabilizing and profoundly dangerous. And that is why anyone with an interest in Pakistan or the region should resist the allure of a return to such faux "stability." Because as schizoid as the situation we face is here, we need to remember that some of the divisions mean that there are forces in the country fighting for democracy, for genuine progress, for an end to conflict and for the kind of civilian control of the security apparatus that is essential to any healthy state.

There are events that are so great that they define an era. Sometimes, the events are associated with transformational trends -- like the Industrial Revolution or the Information Age. Sometimes they are linked to great individuals -- as in the Napoleonic or Victorian periods. And sometimes they are linked to a pivotal action or occurrence that captured the spirit of the adjacent years -- Woodstock or Watergate, for example.

The most recent such epoch ended yesterday.

Forever we will look back on this moment in time and we will define it in terms of the event that above all others embodied and communicated our own zeitgeist. I speak of course, of the marriage of Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries, which tragically and unexpectedly ended yesterday.

Why, dear God, did you deprive us of this and leave us with Hamid Karzai? Why did you take away this manifestation of what is purest and best about humanity and leave us with the festering problems of the Arab-Palestinian divide?

Of course, we can only for so long rail against providence like King Lear on the heath. Ultimately, life is about learning to come to terms with loss and about appreciating what is elevating and ennobling as best we can even if it must -- heart-breakingly -- be in retrospect.

And we did have our time with them, with our two shining examples. The 72 days of marriage don't seem like much, but take them and the months since Kim and Kris first looked beneath each other's strangely furry eyebrows into each other's eyes and saw that something special that cynics might call sponsorship dollars but we know in our hearts must have been true love and you have an entire year -- not just of good ratings, but of transformational changes in the world.

In the Era of Kim and Kris...

...Osama bin Laden was spotted and killed.

...Anwar al Awlaki met a similar fate.

...The Arab Spring kindled and freedom swept through the Middle East bringing down autocrats in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya.

...The Tea Party rose.

...Michele Bachmann rose and fell.

...Rick Perry rose and fell.

...Herman Cain rose and is falling.

...Mitt Romney remained the whitest white man in America.

...The Eurozone teetered on the brink.

...Wall Street was occupied ... as were 900 other cities.

...Steve Jobs died and the St. Louis Cardinals proved that reincarnation is possible.

Think of it, in that short time, ancient civilizations in Europe and the Middle East were shaken to their foundations. Capitalism went deeper into crisis and revolution brewed around the world. The earth shifted on its very axis.

And in that time, this simple beautiful act, this daring leap into love, elevated and distracted us and allowed us to cling to hope. Because if these two virtual strangers with no education and almost no talent other than ambition itself could will themselves into a marriage that made them millions -- even if it did last no longer than the Tweets by which they announced each of their carefully calculated mood-swings and spats -- then maybe riches were not just for Wall Street geniuses who went to Harvard, maybe TV shows were not just for the beautiful or the gifted, maybe marriage was not just for those who found real love. Maybe sub-average, sub-interesting, sub-useful people could fake their way through this mess just like the big time financial fraudsters and get loads of good gifts, press coverage, and big fat checks for their efforts.

No, this marriage may not have lasted long but that doesn't mean we won't always have its memory to remind us of precisely what kind of world we lived in back then in, well, you know ... last week.

Little could seem so remote from one another than the 9-9-9 tax reform plan of Herman Cain and the chants of the "other 99 percent" as they occupy Wall Street. One is the politically motivated brain-child of a millionaire businessman while the other is a product of the barely contained anger of young people frustrated by the corruption and inequity inherent in the global politics and business today. Yet these two movements are actually linked together in more ways than you might think, nine to be exact:

1.) Both are products of the politics of alienation. Vast majorities on the right and left feel that the system is no long the means by which we fix our problems -- it is the problem. They feel that politicians and Wall Street and big business are self-dealing and leaving the vast majority of Americans

2.) Both are fueled by a belief that the American dream is broken. The self-dealing has essentially gutted the promise of a better future for all those willing to work for it. The essentials of that dream -- a home, the value one can build in that home, rising wages, a better tomorrow for our kids -- they're all gone or compromised for most Americans. For those who didn't go to college there was once an opportunity to join the middle class and have a life of dignity -- also gone. The idea of retiring seems also destined to soon become an exhibit in the Smithsonian as few Americans indeed will be able to afford it.

3.) Both turn on a common theme -- driven by an intense indignation at inequity. It's not just that they system is broken, as Nick Kristof writes compellingly in yesterday's New York Times, it is that it has been gamed. A tiny few benefit and the rest of us of the country -- the 99 percent, the residents of Main Street -- are falling hopelessly, helplessly behind.

4.) Both a reactions against "the establishment" -- although different halves of the establishment. The Tea Partiers think government is the problem. The Occupy Wall Street crowd think it's the financial community or big corporations. The reality is that it is the collaboration between the two for decades (centuries actually) to change the rules of the system to give monied interests the upper hand, a free ride, bailouts when they need it (even when average home owners get nothing), etc.

5.) Both have "good hooks" -- they are easily digested, communicated, understood. The reason that 59 point plans and 1000 page pieces of legislation get no traction is that they are difficult to communicate, understand, debate effectively. Condemn Cain or the protestors all you want, they are connecting because they are dealing at a visceral level with a problem that actually lives in people's guts.

6.) Neither is truly radical. One is the defense of the status quo dressed up in the garb of "change" (where have we seen that before?). The other is unfocused anger. Radical would require an effort to really, truly and deeply challenge and change the system -- to get money out of politics through federally financed elections, to limit the size of banks, to demand transparency and tighter regulation of derivative products, to effectively challenge corporate compensation systems, to toss out the current tax code and start over with something simpler...and, sorry Herman, fairer. We are at a time that demands real, constructive radicalism, a willingness to question everything, to embrace "dangerous' ideas, to ask why we have markets, why we have the system of government we have, what our collective goals are, what our core political philosophies are and to be willing to remake and rebuild those institutions and systems and processes that don't conform to our vision and our ideals

7.) Both are preludes to real change -- but neither in its current form is the ultimate vehicle for that change. Because there is no "ask" for the Occupy Wall Street people, because 9-9-9 doesn't add up and would be deeply unfair to poor and middle income Americans, the movements are more noteworthy for what fuels them than where they are going. The frustration will either lead to a real constructive change agenda...or it won't, problems will deepen...and the real call for change will come more emphatically later.

8.) Each is being misinterpreted by the other. The Occupy Wall Streeters are not, as accused by the right, "anti-American." At their core what they are doing is as fundamentally American as can be. The Tea Partiers may not be my cup of...well, they may be hard for me to swallow...but they do have a legitimate beef that the government needs to operate in their interests and within its budget. That's not to say one side will agree with the other...it's to say that both should listen carefully for what is the same in their arguments. (So too should politicians on both sides who are too quick to view all this as politics as usual...and to play it as such.)

9.) Both should be welcomed by everyone -- they are a sign of long-overdue activism. Now the job is to translate that activism into meaningful change...which I think may require a very different set of political leaders and parties than we have today.

This should have been a good week for John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. Few events have better illustrated their well-known assertions about the coordinated power of an Israel lobby in the United States than the effective pressure exerted on President Barack Obama that resulted in his opposition to Palestine's statehood bid in the United Nations.

Unfortunately, as in almost all matters that have to do with the Middle East, all the players -- even academic commentators chattering away at the margins -- end up being undermined by their prejudices, affiliations, old habits and darker impulses.

It happens all the time. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas undercut what should have been his most notable hour with comments to supporters that revealed his deep opposition to granting Israel the same rights and recognition he seeks for his own people. Prime Minister Netanyahu scored a diplomatic victory but at a moment that called for magnanimity he offered condescension and then a promise of new settlements.

Meanwhile, on the periphery of this enduring issue, there are those like Mearsheimer and Walt who perhaps with good, sound academic intentions seek to parse the politics of U.S. foreign policy but who regularly undercut their authority with their methods, tenor and alliances. Their book, "The Israel Lobby" is now a landmark, though arguably less one of scholarship than of opportunism. They seized a moment and capitalized on the existence of an audience that they must have known did not share their self-proclaimed objective, unbiased academic interest in the issue. I have written elsewhere about my views on the book and need not go into again here.

Now, during this week when some of the core ideas of their book were at least brought to life by events, they find themselves fending off a new wave of attacks that are linked to the less savory underbelly of their intellectual enterprise. The genesis of the problem has to do with a comment Mearsheimer provided for the cover a jacket of a book called "The Wandering Who? A Study of Jewish Identity Politics."

The problem with the blurb was not its contents, but rather with the book and the author Mearsheimer was endorsing. It turns out that author, Gilad Atzmon, is according to Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic, "a Hitler Apologist and a Holocaust Revisionist." Goldberg makes the assertions based on both the contents of the book that Atzmon wrote and that Mearsheimer alleges he read and on other writings by Atzmon. He has detailed these assertions in a series of his posts which themselves quote from other web commentators who substantiate his position including Walter Russell Mead, Jon Chait, Adam Holland, and a site called Harry's Place.

You can easily go to the links and see for yourself the facts.  It's not a pretty picture. Atzmon has suggested that the Jews were collectively responsible for everything from the death of Jesus to the Holocaust and that today they again need to be saved from themselves by gentiles. He refers to Jews as a "sinister ideological collective." He offers up fictional Jews like Fagin and Shylock as part of an "endless hellish continuum" of Jewish abuse of other members of society. He blames recent financial crises on the Jews. In short, he is nothing more than an old school bigot.

And not only does Mearsheimer endorse his book, link himself to this author and thus give credence to all the critiques of "The Israel Lobby" that suggest that while some of its facts may be right, its authors' biases debase the enterprise and call into question its objectivity or value as anything more than a piece of propaganda. Like most propaganda there's truth in there somewhere-there is after all a pro-Israel lobby-but also like most propaganda it is twisted (other lobbies are downplayed, the influence of this lobby is overplayed, the Jewishness of the lobbying is misrepresented, etc.).  

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As this week's commemorations of the attacks that took place on Sept. 11, 2001 continue, it is appropriate that the country pause to remember those who were lost and injured in the attacks and our response to them as well as those who distinguished themselves seeking to protect America and the values we hold dear.

The wounds of that day and the scars they have left on our society are such that they are certain to be felt by most of us who were alive that day for the rest of our lives.

That said, it does not diminish -- indeed, it enhances -- those moments of remembrance if we take the time to acknowledge and consider those who have been the innocent victims of America's grotesque, unjustifiable overreaction to those attacks. 

The numbers vary, but it is certain that well over 100,000 and perhaps as many as a million innocent Iraqis, Afghans, and Pakistanis have been killed as a result of America's efforts to seek revenge for our losses. That means, even the lowest estimates of collateral damage associated with our invasion of Iraq alone from groups like the Associated Press, the Iraq Family Health Survey, or the Iraq Body Count Project, suggest that between 30 and 50 times as many Iraqis died as a result of our invasion as died in 9/11 attacks -- which, of course, had no relationship whatsoever to the country in which they lived. Higher estimates, like those of the Lancet or the Opinion Research Business Survey, suggest totals 200 to 300 times higher. In Afghanistan too, civilians paid for our military intervention with their lives in multiples of our 9/11 losses.

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There is a myth that Mitt Romney is somehow a weak candidate, can't get his tone right, will fold under pressure from the rabid right and the posturing of cardboard panderers like Rick Perry. But watch his progress, his steady, measured campaign, his ability to raise money, and note that while the press spins up the buzz-worthy stories of the day, he soldiers on in a way that has essentially guaranteed that the Republican presidential contest will be "Mitt Romney vs. someone else."

That may have the far right licking its chops, but trust me, in the White House Romney's measured march forward is a source of unease. What they fear -- even taking fully into account Romney's sometimes robotic (but improving) delivery and his coolness (one wag I know framed the contest between him and Barack Obama as "the refrigerator versus the icebox") -- is his solid professionalism.

You could see that professionalism at work in Romney's address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention. And since we spent a little time yesterday breaking down the remarks of Governor Perry, it is only fair that we perform the same public service with regard to the speech of Mitt Romney. The White House should be doing the same thing. Because Romney's speech was both a template for his campaign and a clear sign of what a formidable opponent he may be. He gets it. And pair him with a candidate who plugs him in to the right and a key state -- Marco Rubio, perhaps -- and this man could make 2012 much more difficult for Obama than all the hyperventilating Perry promoters might suggest.

Here are the words of Romney and what they really mean:

• "You know better than most that the world is still infected with purveyors of hate and oppression. Some are jihadists, some are communists, and some are simply tyrants who clothe themselves in any convenient political manifesto. And so once again, American heroes are called upon to defend liberty."

OK, so this is just scare tactics and pandering. It's contemptible and simple-minded, and the evocation of the communist threat is downright quaint. But the bad news for all of you out there in foreign-policy land is that scare tactics and pandering work.

• "Twenty-five million Americans are out of work, or have stopped looking, or have only part-time jobs but want full-time work. Home values have dropped more than they did during the Depression. National debt is almost as large as our entire economy, and we owe a huge chunk of it to China. Incredibly, unfunded government promises now total about $530,000 per American household. This cannot possibly stand as the legacy we will leave the next generation."

The worse news for all of you out there in foreign-policy land is that foreign policy is going to have precious little to do with next year's election, barring some unforeseen development (which is certainly possible). That makes this second excerpt the money paragraph of the speech -- literally and figuratively. That the great national security issue of our time is the great economic security issue of our time is the central issue of this election. The economy is busted. He who seems most likely to be able to fix it wins. Romney describes the problem effectively here, and that half-million-dollar albatross he notes is hanging around every American household's metaphorical neck is a persuasively heavy number that's getting heavier all the time.

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Just as the on-the-ground story of the Arab Spring will begin and end with economic rather than security issues so too will the story of American and European involvement in the region. 

The high price of food and basic commodities, the lack of jobs for aspirant workers, and the corruption of the cronygarchies that have run countries like Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria are the drivers behind the revolutions that have dominated the headlines this year. Addressing those concerns, creating opportunities and generating hope for the previously disenfranchised or economically frustrated will be the job that determines whether or not the new governments in rebellion-rocked countries will succeed. In short, these are uprisings that will be won and lost by economists and business people rather than generals.

At the same time, while the seemingly impending victory of rebel forces in Tripoli has quite predictably triggered a new spate of discussions concerning President Obama's "leading from behind" strategy, it is important to note that strategy is shaped less by the president's worldview or that of his national security advisors than it is by the practical constraints imposed by America's fragile and spluttering economy. Some of it, to be sure, is due to the political and military as well as the economic burdens associated with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan-Pakistan. But the bigger issue, the reason "leading from behind" may be seen as a not terribly positive euphemism for a long-term shift away from the hyper-power unilateralism of the Bush years, is that we simply can't afford to be that country any more.

Not only is America broke but leaders in both parties have finally come to recognize that the gravest threats to U.S. national security are domestic and are associated with our inability to get our economy moving, get our people to work and get our finances in order.  Throughout history generals have learned that armies actually travel not on their stomachs but on their wallets. A cash-strapped U.S. is one that will necessarily have to lead in a different way that depends more on effective collaboration and burden sharing with other like-minded powers than did the triumphalist, exceptionalist, plutopower of the "end of history" years.

That's why, despite the television networks focus these past few days on shots of foreign correspondents standing in front of the smoldering hulks of blown up vehicles in Libya, the real story-behind-the-story of importance is the economy. What will Ben Bernanke say in Jackson Hole? How will the markets react? And perhaps more significantly, will Barack Obama or Mitt Romney offer any meaningful ideas about how to get the economy on its feet and Americans back to work in the jobs speeches both have announced for the beginning of September? 

Obama's speech will find be a chance for him to offer the principled, visionary, big ideas that have been absent amid the recent bickering in Washington. What about infrastructure? What about the stimulus we need? What about attracting investment, accelerating regulatory approvals for new projects, creating incentives for businesses to spend their cash hordes here in the U.S. while employing U.S. workers?

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It's a comedy. It's a tragedy. No one is sure who deserves top billing. There's a massive debate over what would constitute a happy ending. The frenzy over the edition of Cirque du So Lame headlining in Washington has turned everyone into a theater critic. Jackie Calmes, writing in the New York Times, sent the White House into a tizzy, for example, with her assertion that President Obama has in fact become a supernumerary in the current drama. 

Personally, I think the whole thing was scripted not by Boehner nor Reid nor Norquist nor even by the elusive Master Teabagger writing from his secret retreat somewhere near Black Helicopter, Montana, but by Eugene Ionesco, writing in Paris in the late 1950s. Back then, the play was called "Rhinoceros" and with it Ionesco helped introduce the public at large to the theater of the absurd in much the same way the denizens of the swamplands of the Potomac are doing for America and the world today. 

In the original version of the play, a town is gradually destroyed as each of its citizens, save one independent minded fellow with a healthy appreciation for wine and conversation, is transformed into a rhinoceros. Ionesco captured the thrust of what he was getting at in an interview for Le Monde in January of 1960 when he said:

I have been very much struck by what one might call the current of opinion, by its rapid evolution, its power of contagion, which is that of a real epidemic. People allow themselves suddenly to be invaded by a new religion, a doctrine, a fanaticism. ...  At such moments we witness a veritable mental mutation. I don't know if you have noticed it, but when people no longer share your opinions, when you can no longer make yourself understood by them, one has the impression of being confronted with monsters-rhinos, for example. They have that mixture of candour and ferocity. They would kill you with the best of consciences."

That was all half a century ago and in France both of which would in other moments make it all seem wildly alien to most Americans. But despite Ionesco's own observation that "you can only predict things after they have happened" he would see much that is painfully familiar in Washington today. Lines from "Rhinoceros" ring as true in 2011 as they did 51 years ago (when the play was seen as an allegory about the rise of extremist movements like Nazism). 

"There are many sides to reality," he wrote as if prescribing the game plane adopted by many players in the current battle over the role and size of American government, "Choose the one that's best for you."  Surely, this approach, used by everyone in this town in which the most dangerous entitlement program is the one that leaves everyone believing they are entitled to their own facts, is taking the theory of relativity to new depths, previously unimagined by science.    

Or, as the United States hurtles toward outcomes that were once unimaginable -- like debt downgrades and withering gridlock in what was once the world's most outstanding set of government institutions -- Ionesco offers the following dry acceptance of what follows when the absurd becomes the commonplace: "I can easily picture the worst, because the worst can easily happen."

In Washington today, the rhinoceroses are winning. Our extremists are not murderers like the jihadists we are at war with or Anders Breivik, but they are nonetheless at work on America's political system in a way that follows the pattern about which Ionesco warned.  They promote a doctrine that is a kind of solvent for facts-breaking them down and distorting them until they become unrecognizable.  They argue in the true absurdist tradition that somehow they offer a superior form of mathematics that involves only subtraction.  They deny history-whether it is the compromises of Reagan, the big-government spending of every recent Republican president, the debt-ceiling extensions of the past, or the culpability of failed Republican tax cuts and spending n unnecessary wars for creating the problem we face.  They view reason and compromise as weakness. And they claim they are helping those who they are irreparably hurting.

Magnificently ... from an absurdist perspective...they are combining inexperience, ignorance, intolerance and intransigence into a formula by which they are setting the rules for America.  They recognize that, as military strategist Ed Luttwak once observed to me, "In most wars, it's the dirtiest fighter...or the craziest...who sets the rules of the game." Regardless of the final outcome of the debt ceiling drama, a few things are emerging as new realities in Rhino DC:

• Until the election nothing will happen that involves a major spending increase or a major revenue increase. With these off the table, that means essentially nothing will happen. And if we get into a further economic downturn, that will leave all responsibility for getting us out with the Fed. QE3 is becoming more likely all the time.
• Even more likely is a downgrade of U.S. debt. Where that leads-small increases in borrowing costs or big ones-is uncertain. (See David Wessel's excellent WSJ piece on this.) But if we're honest with ourselves, we should not be surprised. In fact, if the going forward policy of the U.S. is that we can't incorporate increasing revenues in our efforts to balance the budget, then we deserve to be downgraded.
• The decision by President Obama to support the extension of the Bush tax cuts may go down as one of the worst of his first term. It was a bad compromise that set an unfortunate precedent for future deals and it was lousy economics.
• Obama has been thoughtful, reasonable, constructive and not terribly effective. As presidents go, it increasingly seems as though he would make a terrific Supreme Court justice. Jackie Calmes had it right in her Times piece.
• We need a new edition of "The Federalist Papers" that deals with the issue of tyranny of the minority.

It was all put into perfect perspective for me in a conversation with one of the most experienced diplomats currently resident in Washington who, after expressing deep concern over the current follies on the Hill, recounted a cartoon that had recently run an international newspaper which showed Hamid Karzai and another leader from the region reading headlines from Washington and wondering aloud whether America was ready for democracy.  Or, as Ionesco, observes in "Rhinoceros", "Lunacy is lunacy and that's all there is to it."

On Monday, there was some throat clearing in debt crisis discussions in Washington and in Europe. The theatrics came from the one participant common to both discussions, one who had been omni-present but comparatively quiescent for the past few weeks.

This participant hasn't made headlines in the way that Barack Obama, John Boehner, Jean-Claude Trichet, or Georges Papandreou have recently. In fact, the participant has been virtually silent compared to the loudest, most flamboyant participants in the budget debates, the Eric Cantors and the Silvio Berlusconis. But yesterday, this participant said in its unmistakable, firm, monied accent:

I am here, I have been listening, I have watched your one-step forward, two-steps back, approaches, heard your ideological posturing, listened to your threats and I have one thing to say, none of you powerful men and women are as powerful as I am, none of you will have the last word on this. You will produce the outcome that I want or I will produce an outcome that you dare not contemplate. And I am not a politician. This is not empty rhetoric. I have no constituents to report to but myself. I have a long-term perspective that lets me absorb short-term pain. And, one more thing, I'm the one character that you don't want to tangle with in the fight. Make no mistake about it. I am the craziest guy in the room. I will move so fast, respond with such fury to what you may see as a casual throw-away comment or just another minor delay, that you won't know what hit you. But you will all be gone, out of work, forgotten or worse, remembered badly. Remember, I am the guy who made Herbert Hoover who he is today. And then you will ask yourself, why didn't we listen to him? "

This previously relatively soft-spoken guest didn't have to raise his voice to send this message … but the other participants really did have to listen to hear it. What we all should fear is that some ignored it, were too entranced with the sounds of their own voices to get the message.

The player who spoke out was, of course, the markets. The sharp drop in world stock markets and the spiking of the rates at which countries like Italy could borrow may have come primarily as a result of the concerns that arose late last week about the ability of Italy's political "leaders" to manage that country's debt burdens. But it was a message also to the participants in U.S. debt discussions. It said:

You toy with deadlines at your peril. Today was 150 points. But at some moment between now and August 2 if I see this coming off the tracks, I will speak much more loudly and remind you that I am the biggest narcissist among all of you preening narcissists. I am the market. You think it is about you and your politics and your sound bites and your next tweet. But it is always about me."

The message sent was that the next intervention of this cigar-chomping fat cat to the budget talks may come at any moment and it may feel like a sharp-right to the kisser. It could be 450 points that time. Or it could be 700. And it could say, in no uncertain terms: "Remember that Lehman Brothers moment? That was nothing."

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