We live obliviously in a dangerous world, a world where Putin appropriates territory as he pleases and his critics are murdered in the public square, where China smothers dissent and rattles its sabers, where ISIS – and its even more brutal disciples in Nigeria – have made slavery and beheadings instruments of dogma and recruitment. North Korea launched a couple of missiles yesterday, and Israel seems bent on instituting a policy of apartheid. And what do we do in the face of these challenges? On Friday, after the pettiest of brinksmanship, Congress extended funding for homeland security for one week. One week. And they had to go to zero hour to accomplish even that. Not that anybody particularly noticed. Sure, the press played up the melodrama leading up to the vote, although with far less ink than it gave the Oscars. When the vote was over and homeland security had been funded for seven whole days, the media returned to covering the 2016 presidential horse race as if that were the most immediate issue we faced.

This is America the exceptional, the nation that seeks to export our form of government to the rest of the world because it is so much better than everyone else’s. We can’t even govern ourselves. We have elected a Congress that has substituted grandstanding for governing and equates the empty gesture with “standing on principle.” For more proof, tune in tomorrow when Benjamin Netanyahu comes before Congress to insult the president of the United States.