Well they finally decided to fall on their sword, accept the inevitable and vote to re-open the government.
The "they" of course were the Republicans in Congress, particularly in the House who finally came to the conclusion a failure to meet the country's debt obligations could cause irreparable harm to everyone in the country which had created understandable distrust among our many billion dollar creditors that a default on our obligations would bring to say nothing of the complete bafflement by the rest of the world of how a small handful of zealots could hold the country hostage to its arcane beliefs.
What began as the tea party's pique over "Obamacare" became intransigence over the need to raise the debt ceiling, a necessary element to keep the country afloat and pay its bills.
This "crowd" has no empathy [i] for the plight of others. They are simply incapable of being in the shoes of others to begin to understand their hardships.
These supposed good "Christians" have no charity in their hearts. They believe in taking no responsibility for and reject the idea of aiding those most in need. They've bought into the worst of Ayn Rand's philosophy of selfishness and indifference toward others and blame those that have fallen on hard times, though mostly not of their doing, as being entirely their fault. And with that attitude they're hell bent on dismembering the social safety net of unemployment insurance, Medicaid, food stamps, school lunches, to say nothing of their desire to privatize social security, scrap Medicare and let people fall into abject poverty.
They're people who have been brainwashed into believing in laissez faire capitalism and the free market apparently completely oblivious to the government's rescuing (socialism?) the financial institutions too big to fail in 2008, those same rogues of capitalism that created the financial meltdown and subsequent great recession.
Even beyond their objection to "Obamacare", to them Medicare for all, a single payer system of health care covering everyone is a European style of "socialist" health care and want no part of it. They prefer our costly uncompetitive, corporate controlled private health care system that in a recent survey of health care systems worldwide comes in 37 th in providing best outcomes.
The disconnect they exhibit to reality is breathtaking. They appear to live is some parallel universe of some 1950's like fantasy that never existed but in their imagination was real and they want to return to.
But getting back to the reopening of the government; at least the latest nightmare has ended (for the next few months at least until the "next" budget fiscal crisis threatens to shut down the government again) for all those directly affected, the federal government workers, national park employees and the nearby businesses that were directly impacted, some maybe even decimated by the recent madness on Capitol Hill.
Real people were hurt by the shutdown but don't tell that to the Ted Cruz led, far right wing tea party crazies in the House. They're now too self absorbed licking their self inflicted wounds. Besides as was said earlier, they're incapable of empathy, too single minded in their pursuit of" I have no idea.
[i] A former Republican Congressman in Maryland, Wayne Gilcrest who was unseated in 2008 put it succinctly in an interview with Dan Rodricks of the Baltimore Sun saying, "There's a bizarre mix of people opposed to the ACA (Affordable Care Act). But why? Where's the empathy? Where's the conscience? Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. What's that? Love thy neighbor. I think we have a political system infiltrated by sociopaths."
