The United States has been at a standstill since midnight. A country that sees itself as a bastion of stability and reliability begins October with closed offices, empty counters, and 750,000 federal employees who do not know if they will ever return to their workplaces. It is the third shutdown under Donald Trump - and the first of his second term. And as always, he does not stage it as an accident but as a threat. "We can do things that are irreversible, that are bad," he declared with barely disguised delight in destruction. Words that hardly conceal that this time it is not about a tactical skirmish but about an attempt to restructure the state apparatus.
The trigger for the blockade is a dispute that should not even exist. The Democrats insist on extending subsidies for health insurance that secure affordable premiums for 24 million Americans. Without this support, premiums will explode at the end of the year. But the Republicans refuse any negotiation and encourage the president to boycott talks. Instead of compromise there is mockery: after a meeting with congressional leadership, Trump released a manipulated video that ridiculed Democratic politicians in a racist tone - a caricature of politics instead of responsible leadership. The consequences of the shutdown are severe: agencies close their doors, research projects at the National Institutes of Health risk decaying, aid programs for education and the environment come to nothing. FEMA can barely approve flood insurance, new mortgages stall, millions of citizens are thrown into uncertainty. Only Trump’s deportation apparatus continues unimpeded, as if it were the only immovable program of this government.
It is a shutdown that reveals more than a technical gap in the budget. It is a symbol of how the politics of the United States thrive on outrage and define compromise as weakness. "Shutdowns only inflict cost, fear, and confusion," says Rachel Snyderman of the Bipartisan Policy Center. But Trump thrives on precisely these three ingredients - cost, fear, confusion. It is the fuel of his second mandate. The US therefore begins a new political cycle - not with renewal, not with reform, but with a president who elevates paralysis to principle. A country at a standstill, realizing how standstill becomes a weapon.
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