To those of us of a certain age and experience, there is a famous retort to threats. It is: “What’re they going to do, send me to Vietnam?” It was generally uttered by GIs, who, while humping the boondocks in Southeast Asia, were threatened by some shave-tail lieutenant over some infraction. Maybe the hapless GI failed to salute a passing colonel. “You better salute your colonel, troop.” To which the GI might tap a cigarette on the stock of his M-16 and reply: “What’re they going to do, lieutenant, send me to Vietnam?” Meaning, “I’m already in Vietnam, sir, so it don’t mean nothing.”

It struck us, while reading about how President Obama is preparing to summon congressional leaders to Camp David, that this is how a lot of Americans feel today in the face of threats that the federal government might default on its debts. They’re being warned by the president that Social Security might stop functioning. They’re being warned by the New York Times that the teachers mightn’t get paid. The politicians are all beating their breasts about how terrible it will be, but people are saying — or at least thinking to themselves — : “What are you going to do, send us to Vietnam?”

They are becoming impervious to threats. They have, after all, been out of work in some cases for more than a year or two or three. Some are being warned they’ll never work again. They’ve lost their savings, often their homes, or their dwellings are worth less than their mortgages and values are said to be still plummeting. Their grown children are forced to live with them, while the government racks up huge debts these children will have to pay off. The companies that might hire them won’t do so because they can’t bring back from overseas the profits they’ve accrued, lest the profits be seized by the federal tax collectors.

And the value of what savings the people do have left has dropped to less than half of what it was worth only three years ago. A dollar today is worth barely a 1,600^th of an ounce of gold. There are millions of people alive today who regard that with incredulity. They remember JFK vowing that the dollar, then worth a 35^th of an ounce of gold, would remain as good as gold. They listen to the government talk about how the inflation rate is low, but groceries are going up and gas is above $4 a gallon. And the definition of inflation is being rejiggered to exclude the price of the things they really need. Many people today are listening to their leaders with contempt.

This is a dilemma for President Obama and, for that matter, for Senator McConnell. How is one going to threaten the American voter these days? We don’t make a policy prescription here. We just observe that there are millions today who listen to all this talk about default on the debt and wonder how things can get much worse for them, or their neighbors. They wonder whether out of the threatened cataclysm of default may come an opportunity to rebuild altogether. No doubt there is a risk. But they’re already in a ditch. So maybe the government will default. Maybe radical measures will have to be taken. But what are they doing to do, send us to Vietnam?