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No wonder people are cynical. The nation increasingly appears to be governed by cheap political theater: made-for-TV melodrama more like professional wrestling than actual combat. As I write, the United States allegedly hovers on the edge of a fiscal crisis.

Should Congress fail to raise the National Debt limit between today and Aug. 2, the government will default on its debt for the first time in U.S. history -- a cataclysmic event, should it happen.