I’ve been pretty worked up about the government shutdown, and more so now since it appears that we’re headed for default. Yesterday I let loose some thunder from the pulpit of my church about Republican lawmakers who had gummed up the works for everyone, yet still managed to pass some legislation, a bill that slashed funding for food stamps, knocking 3.8 million poor people off the rolls, mostly children and their mothers. (Republicans were captured on camera high-fiving one another after they managed to pass their bill.) I know some of these moms and children. I’m pretty sure they’re not going to get a magical visit to Wegmans from John Boehner or Ted Cruz when it comes time to go grocery shopping. I tried to moderate my remarks in church, stopping short of the Old Testament fury of the prophet Isaiah when he railed against “the powers that be” in his day:

Last weekend, The New York Times ran an article in the Magazine encouraging people to default on their mortgages because, essentially, this is what big business does all the time under the rubric of “strategic defaults.”

Basically, the argument goes, when big business does it, it’s strategic. When individuals do it, it’s unethical. So why not adopt the morality of big business? After all, they were the ones who duped us into taking the mortgages in the first place. Right?

The author gives two reasons such defaults are frowned upon. The first is that defaulted mortgages depress neighboring property values. The second is that “default (supposedly) debases the character of the borrower.” Gotta love that parenthetical word. It’s as if “keeping one’s word” were something that we’ve all just been kind of force-fed by a society which wants nothing more than to exploit our good, trusting natures.

Well, so maybe that’s so. What then? Do we return to the Wild West? Obviously, one op-ed piece isn’t going to change anyone’s mind (well, maybe a few), but it just strikes me as another symptom of our deepening sense of ambivalence about what, after things we believed in begin to fall way, we should keep of the “old ways.”

Aren’t things like “character” worth keeping? Do we want to relive the Wild West? I don’t know. Anyway, who am I—a novelist—to complain? It may have been hard living, but it sure made for some good storytelling.