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Throwdown at the Memorial

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As The Baffler’s Zero Tolerance blog noted Wednesday, a full 95 percent of the news coverage of the 2013 government shutdown, days one and two, was devoted to our Greatest Generation not being able to visit the World War II memorial in Washington, D.C.

For a little while, at least. The National Park Service, which has a few essential government staffers guarding for trespassers on closed park grounds, has been given the greenlight to allow our cherished, dying World War II veterans to visit the memorial. This, after Republicans spent all of Tuesday and Wednesday lambasting president Barack Obama for “giving the order” to arrest any World War II veteran who dared break through his iron barrier to the monument, which was not what he said and is not how executive power works.

On Thursday morning a hilarious clip emerged showing one red-faced Republican congressman employing a bizarrely unrestrained shutdown strategy: to yell his head off at the few remaining government employees for executing a shutdown that congressional lawmakers caused.

You really must watch as this cad, Rep. Randy Neugebauer from Texas, scolds a park ranger for doing her job, which is, at the moment, to keep everyone out of the WWII memorial, except for WWII veterans. In the fevered world of House Republican shutdown theater, NPS personnel have become Obama’s “shock troops,” a sort of Stasi-KGB hybrid of purge and terror and secrecy who answer only to our Kenyan Muslim overlord himself. Park Rangers: the nastiest piece of Obama’s vast state security apparatus.

If you cannot watch the video, here’s a summary, via the Washington Post:

“How do you look at them and say—how could you deny them access?” Neugebauer says at the World War II Memorial. “I don’t get it.”

“It’s difficult,” the ranger responds.

“Well, it should be difficult,” Neugebauer says.

“It is difficult,” the ranger says. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“The Park Service should be ashamed of themselves,” Neugebauer says.

“I’m not ashamed,” the ranger says.

“Well, you should be,” Neugebauer says, before walking away.

The congressman is then confronted by a man who says he is a thirty-year veteran of federal government employee, now out of work. The man tells Neugebauer that the ranger is just doing her job, and says that Congress is responsible for federal parks and memorials being shuttered.

Who’s right here? On the one hand, the park ranger is being blamed by Neugebauer for the effects of a shutdown that is the direct result of decisions made by Randy Neugebauer and his closest legislative friends and colleagues. On the other hand, Neugebauer is wearing a massive fucking American flag on his lapel, which instantly grants any stupid, mean argument he makes profound moral authority. Or not.