It always strikes me as absolutely amazing that the government is capable of shutting down. That it is expected to do so at a certain time — say midnight tonight — is a major achievement. That many of those who rely on the government to cease operating when it is supposed to cease operating are some of the same people who think that the government can hardly operate at all is even more amazing. Many of these people are legislators, members of the Republican Party, and own their own business. It would take them weeks to shut down.

Still more amazing is not just that the government can shut down, but that the people who most criticize government actually expect it to shut down — just like that. Stop! They give the order and it happens. The gates close at the nationals park and the Lincoln Memorial and the Smithsonian and even (yea!) the IRS — and then when this nonsense is over, it all starts up again. In the meantime, the bears at the zoo are fed and Abe is guarded and Social Security checks still go out. This is the kind of efficiency many large organizations strive for — and which only Donald Trump achieves — and never realize.

Once I worked for a large insurance company. I did not know it then, but I was in the vaunted private sector. The waste was epochal. Once a procedure was adopted, it ossified, calcified, petrified and was fiercely defended by those who simply preferred the familiar — never mind if it was efficient. For instance, as head mail boy, I solemnly informed my boss that we were using airmail where there was no airmail service. He nodded, praised my industry — and continued paying airmail rates for a nonexistent service. He soon got promoted.

The government is vast, lumbering and sometimes sloppy. It is, of course, nowhere as efficient as GM was, or as was Chrysler or Lehman Brothers, may it rest in peace. This is because those institutions were profit-making and when you have to make a profit, meet a payroll and the rest of the blarney, you have to be efficient. This is a law of nature, and we all know it.

And yet, somehow, if no agreement is reached, much of the government will shut down — just like that. This, I insist, is a model of efficiency that ought to impress even the Tea Party. Someone’s doing something right.