Waziristan on the Potomac

Congressional Republicans hold Loya Jirga

What happens when the world's most powerful nation becomes ungovernable?   Often when authority becomes ineffective it gives rise to power vacuums that invite other actors, oligarchs or armed oligarchs, warlords,  to intercede.   Such is the fate of Waziristan and, to a much more subtle degree, Washington.

Paul Krugman laments that the United States has become ungovernable largely due to a mass mental disorder that has infested the ranks of the GOP.

Republican leaders are about to reap the whirlwind, because they haven’t had the courage to tell the base that Obamacare is here to stay, that the sequester is in fact intolerable, and that in general they have at least for now lost the war over the shape of American society. As a result, we’re looking at many drama-filled months, with a high probability of government shutdowns and even debt defaults.

Over the longer run the point is that one of America’s two major political parties has basically gone off the deep end; policy content aside, a sane party doesn’t hold dozens of votes declaring its intention to repeal a law that everyone knows will stay on the books regardless. And since that party continues to hold substantial blocking power, we are looking at a country that’s increasingly ungovernable.

...neither you nor I should forget that the madness of the GOP is the central issue of our time. 

Conspiracy buffs could be excused for questioning whether the Republican agenda in rendering the U.S. ungovernable, this constant blocking of government, isn't creating a gateway for the installation of a corporatist state rid of most inconvenient democratic trappings.