Government Reopens Just in Time to Pretend it Never Really Closed

By Tammy Pondsmith, Senior Correspondent, Article 107 News
(We report the facts before they happen so your disappointment never falls behind schedule)

The shutdown is over, which is Washington for We ran out of ways to pretend this was smart.

For weeks the government was a haunted house with better lighting. Federal workers were unpaid extras in a horror franchise nobody asked to reboot. Now the same people who chained the doors shut are staggering out to the microphones, hair artfully mussed, declaring themselves heroic survivors of the crisis they personally set on fire.

They did not avert disaster. They catered it.

You can already hear the greatest hits on the victory tour
We held the line
We fought for the American people
We proved democracy works

What actually happened is simpler and uglier. They played chicken with your rent, your paycheck, your medical appointments, your kid’s school programs, then swerved at the last second and called it courage. That is not leadership. That is a drunk driver bragging about only hitting three mailboxes.

Federal workers are promised back pay, which the talking heads keep repeating like it is some kind of miracle. Back pay is not a gift. It is the money they were already owed. You do not rob a bank, return the cash a month later, and expect a thank you basket.

The overdraft fees, the maxed out credit cards, the landlords who do not take shutdown as a valid payment method, the quiet panic attacks at three in the morning wondering which bill not to pay this week none of that gets refunded. The damage is baked in. The apology is air.

Both parties are sprinting to control the post game narrative like this was the Super Bowl instead of a hostage situation.

One side insists they bravely stopped the other from feeding grandma to a hedge fund.
The other insists they heroically defended America from runaway spending, woke bureaucrats, and whatever else tested well with a focus group of people who think reading a budget is elitist.

Here is the part you are not supposed to say out loud. None of this was about policy. Shutdowns are never about policy. They are about leverage, branding, and screen time. This was a limited series prestige drama produced by people who know you only tune in once there are countdown clocks and ominous graphics.

And the media happily played supporting cast.
Leading story every night
Government on the brink
Closed parks, empty federal buildings, sad music, shots of worried faces in airports
Endless panels of professional shout machines jabbering over each other while a digital clock bleeds toward zero

Then the deal hits, the chyron flips to Crisis Averted, and everyone moves on to the next shiny outrage like none of this was completely optional.

Want to know who actually won the shutdown
The donor class won.
Defense contractors won.
Influence peddlers and lobbyists with reserved tables at the good steakhouse won.
Political consultants who bill by the crisis won.

They always win. War, peace, shutdown, surge, debt ceiling standoff, it is all just different packaging for the same product permanent access.

You know who lost.
The TSA agent who spent three weeks calculating which bill to skip.
The park ranger who got locked out of the park they maintain.
The single parent with a federal job who watched their bank account drain while politicians tweeted victory memes.

You know who else shares some blame. Look in the mirror between rage scrolling sessions.

We say we want competent adults, then reward whoever drops the spiciest one liner on cable news. We say we hate dysfunction, then keep reelecting the same pyromaniacs because they wear our preferred color and pose better with flags. We treat politics like a team sport, then act shocked when the players care more about winning than about the stadium collapsing.

Now that the lights are back on, every lawmaker is claiming they were the adult in the room. The hilarious part is there was no room, just a food fight held in a burning building. What they actually passed is a short term truce designed to punt the exact same crisis a few months down the road, where it will be dusted off, rebranded as unprecedented, and sold again with updated graphics.

At Article 107 News we report the facts before they happen, which saves time, so here is your spoiler.

There will be another shutdown threat.
It will again be labeled historic.
Each side will insist they had no choice.
Fundraising emails will scream that democracy dies tonight unless you donate fifteen bucks.
Cable news will hire three more analysts whose only skill is dramatic sighing.

And when that one ends, you will see these same faces, slightly older, explaining that once more they have pulled the nation back from the brink it was their job not to drive toward in the first place.

If this country actually believed in consequences, shutdown rules would be simple. Every federal worker gets back pay and hazard bonus. Every contractor gets made whole. Members of Congress get nothing until everyone else is fully paid. No checks, no side perks, no lobbyist dinners, no donor retreats in scenic locations where accountability goes to die. You want to gamble with the government
Fine. Put your own mortgage in the pot.

Instead, we hit reset and pretend that returning to barely functional is some kind of triumph. The government reopens like a surly employee who knows they cannot be fired. The bosses grumble on Sunday shows. The public shrugs and mutters they are all clowns. Then we reelect a healthy percentage of those clowns because the opponent seemed annoying in a thirty second ad.

The shutdown did not end. It paused. The crisis is not resolved. It has simply been rescheduled to a more convenient ratings window.

So yes, the government is open. If by open you mean back to selling off your future wholesale at a discount to whoever can afford the right lobbyist and the nicest wine at the fundraiser.

Tammy Pondsmith once tried to fact check a congressional budget hearing in real time, blacked out from secondhand stupidity, and woke up fluent in disappointment.

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*Article 107 News: The Facts, Before They Happen
Article 107 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice covers “false official statements.” As the name implies, Art107 News is Havok Journal’s satire wing, and you shouldn’t take anything published under this byline seriously. You should., however, mercilessly mock anyone who does.