The political narratives fed to the US public by the two major parties and mainstream media often have so little to do with reality that political coverage can amount to little more than a boxing match between phantoms. But every now and then, you get a flash point that makes clear just how much of a careful pretense the whole thing is. This is the case with the interminable debt ceiling negotiations on Capitol Hill that are right now reaching their dreary climax.

Up to now, the public has been told that US politics in the 2020s is an existential contest between two forces. On one side, there’s President Joe Biden, who’s a cross between Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, newly converted to progressive, even radical politics, with the legislative and dealmaking skills honed over decades in the Senate to make them actually happen. On the other, there’s a Republican Party that, like Biden, has realized the error of its Reaganite ways and has now become the party of the working class, renouncing its years of ruthless neoliberalism to now take on corporate power and the military-industrial complex for the benefit of the average working American.

Neither of these narratives ever matched reality, but the debt ceiling standoff has made them completely untenable. Take the Republicans. Led by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the GOP is, as per usual, using the debt ceiling deadline to extract painful concessions from Biden and the Democrats, threatening to dent US government credit and plunge its economy into crisis if they don’t get their way.