When did they stop teaching civics in high school?

Words fail me. I feel the urge to do a rant about the idiocy currently happening in Congress, but I'm finding the depths of stupidity on parade render me speechless.

As an opinion piece on CNN notes,

For politicians in Washington, and for the American people, angry and frustrated with the increasingly partisan and dysfunctional government, the shutdown that started on Tuesday looks like a battle over domestic politics. For the rest of the world, the closure of U.S. government institutions says America is growing small, small-minded and unreliable. 

A small band of extreme right-wing politicians couldn't win the debate, or the vote, or the legal argument over health care, so they decided to close down the government instead. A system that allows that to happen is dangerously flawed and in urgent need of repairs.

It probably doesn't help my mood that when I do listen to the news or even talk with various acquaintances, I keep hearing the same old bullshit: the ACA was crammed down our throats, no one knows what's in it, the Obama administration is a tyranny. . . ad nauseum. How anyone could claim that no one knows what's in the Affordable Care Act when it was debated for over a year before it was passed in 2010 and it's been endlessly debated since then is beyond me.

Then again, when I read the local newspaper (another mistake I made yesterday) and see letters to the editor in which the writers basically brag about their complete lack of knowledge of how a democracy actually functions, I find myself hoping the zombie apocalypse happens soon.