This is my favorite piece of video of the week. Not only is it plainly hilarious, and not only does it summon up the image of the worst fistfight of all time, but it is a brisk and complete summary of the great ship of fools that is the United States House of Representatives under the barely noticeable leadership of Speaker Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin.

In this corner, we have Mark Meadows, Republican of North Carolina, and leader of the House Freedom Caucus, and in the other corner we have Ryan, cloaked in all the majesty and power of his office. Meadows is all up in Ryan’s grill, in the well of the House, in front of God, man, and Louie Gohmert. If someone had done this to Sam Rayburn, that person’s desk would be out on the sidewalk by the end of business that day. But, because Ryan is as terrible a leader as he is an economist, Meadows pretty much blows him off.

This content is imported from Third party. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

They can’t get anything done. They have a substantial majority in the House of Representatives, and the Republicans can’t get out of their own way. On Thursday afternoon, there were two bills pending to address the crisis caused by the administration*’s cruel and boneheaded zero-tolerance policy on the southern border. One of them was a draconian bill, and the other a purportedly more moderate one backed by Ryan and his Keystone Kops leadership team.

The former got clobbered when it came to a vote. And then, when it was time for the latter to come up, the Freedom Caucus belfry came alive with bats, and Ryan had to postpone the vote lest he suffer yet another embarrassing loss. From The Washington Post:

Instead, the House was expected to vote Friday on the endangered legislation, with multiple Republican aides saying they did not expect the delay — and a scheduled Thursday afternoon meeting of all Republicans — to change the outcome. Rather, they said, it was meant to assuage members who wanted to better understand what the bill does before voting on it. Several GOP hard-liners said Thursday there was nothing leaders could do to convince them to vote for the bill. “I’m a big fat ‘no,’ capital letters,” said Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.). “It’s amnesty, chain migration, and there’s no guarantee the wall will be built.”

Aces, fellas. Really. Nicely done. Now make shadow pictures on the wall and don’t eat your oatmeal with your toes.

Getty Images

(Of course, no Democratic member of the House signed onto either one of these plague ships, and none of them likely will until the zero-tolerance policy that’s at the root of all these horrors is rescinded. This is because, whatever some Democratic candidates might think, Nancy Pelosi is still a kickass legislative leader.)

They can’t do it. Ryan has lost control of his caucus to a bunch of extremists you wouldn’t trust to run a bake sale. It wasn’t entirely his fault. The president* weighed in with a tweet that suggested that anything the House passed was dead in the Senate—which is undoubtedly true, but not something you want to hear if you’re a Republican House member scared silly by the crazy base of the party. And, where the administration wasn’t torpedoing its allies, it was making them subject to a policy that seems designed to substitute incoherence for inhumanity.

Getty Images

First, on Wednesday, the president* signs an executive order he’d previously said he wouldn’t sign and didn’t need. Then, on Thursday, the Border Patrol announces that it will stop referring migrant parents with children for prosecution. This, of course, would signal an end to zero-tolerance. Whereupon, the Department of Justice released a statement denying what the Border Patrol official had said.

The dysfunction is massive and general. Nobody in a position of authority in the Republican Party seems to have the faintest idea how to govern the country. And, on the border, children who once were hostages to political gamesmanship have traded that status for being hostages to political incompetence. Cruelty has many faces. This one is the one wearing a clown nose.

Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page here.

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

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io