If, in the Congress of a reunited United States, 151 years after everybody got together at Appomattox, ol' Jeff Davis can triumph over a genuine public health crisis, can we really determine who won that damn war, or whether or not what happened at Gettysburg was worth all the fuss?

You may have noticed that the Senate proved unable to pass a dog's breakfast of a funding bill to help fight the encroaching Zika virus. This is because the Democratic minority declined to vote for it. The reasons for this were simple: The bill had turned into a sop for the angry white Christianist bigot base vital to the re-election chances of Republican senators.

It had become a Christmas tree hung with poisonous ornaments, including a provision that would loosen restrictions on the use of dangerous pesticides and a provision that would deny funding to Planned Parenthood, which seems just the thing to do in the middle of an epidemic of a tropical disease that strikes primarily at unborn children. But the whole thing descends into comic opera when you get to the ornament waaayyyy up there at the toppermost of the poppermost on the tree.

Back in May, the House passed a bill banning the display of the Confederate battle flag at VA cemeteries. This was the last big victory in the fight to eliminate the gonfalon of sedition from its entirely undeserved place of honor in our national life, one that began after the Mother Emanuel massacre in Charleston. Somehow, by a calculation so twisted it defies rational explanation, some Republicans in the House decided to sneak a provision into the Zika bill that would rescind this new rule.

The Democratic opposition to the bill in the Senate primarily dealt with the whack the bill took at Planned Parenthood, and the president was likely to veto this bill anyway, not least because it contains half of what he asked for to fight the disease, and because it does so by draining money from other urgent priorities. But, honestly now, babies are being born with severe birth defects, and this is seen as an opportunity to get back a fight you've already lost?

That's not governing. That's a talk show.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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