reality seems to stubbornly follow its own ways

From today's NYTimes:

In a July meeting, Chinese officials asked their American counterparts detailed questions about the health care legislation making its way through Congress. The president's budget director, Peter R. Orszag, answered most of their questions. But the Chinese were not particularly interested in the public option or universal care for all Americans.

"They wanted to know, in painstaking detail, how the health care plan would affect the deficit," one participant in the conversation recalled. Chinese officials expect that they will help finance whatever Congress and the White House settle on, mostly through buying Treasury debt, and like any banker, they wanted evidence that the United States had a plan to pay them back.

In the face of so much conversation about modeling our way out of the current problems, reality seems to stubbornly follow its own ways. Even a happy accident may be possible, but not before we see higher taxes, I said it then, I say it now. One of the effects of this situation is probably a more common understanding in the US of what national interest is.