By CCN.com: Friday Donald Trump announced the government would reopen for three weeks, giving federal employees a reprieve from the month-long government shutdown, which has been the longest in history.

It may be that the federal government’s credibility has been permanently damaged by the partisan dysfunction that left 800,000 federal employees without pay for a month while many services were closed to the public.

Even when there are general strikes in an industry during clashes over wages or working conditions between organized labor unions and ownership/management, the interruption in productivity is only confined to one company or one industry.

Why Did the Government Shutdown Take Place?

Why was the gov’t shutdown for 35 days? Over funding for a border wall. Did they add funding for such a wall? No. POTUS changed his position on the wall? No. Did the shutdown deal differ from the pre-shutdown bill? Not really. … Why was the gov’t shutdown for 35 days? — Shawn M. Griffiths (@TheShawnG) January 25, 2019

A Slow Motion, Man-Made Natural Disaster

But the economic damage of the government shutdown was something like a slow motion, man-made natural disaster that affected a number of different industries.

This included private businesses as well as the government organizations that operate under the purview of federally-appropriated and managed resources.

It is a hallmark of despotism that so few people could grind the business of so many others to a complete halt and hold it there for more than a month over a disagreement about something completely unrelated to nearly all of the business that was lost, destroyed by the shutdown.

For over a century the progressive movement in American politics has made the case to the American people that various goods and services are so important that we cannot trust private organizations to bring to the market for profit.

But the shutdown illustrates how vulnerable the organizations that provide these goods and services are (under the purview of the federal government) to political reaction and caprice.

Relying as they do on politicians for payment, all these sitting ducks are hostages for the taking when political antagonisms are inflamed, and clearly the politicians see them that way.

Over A Controversy That Is Completely Made Up

All of this fuss and fighting between political factions for the cameras and the fans, this totally fake, professional wrestling-style drama of antagonism and rivalry.

And to give them their props, Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi sure have put on an entertaining show, with Pelosi saying the Constitution considers her equal to Trump, then canceling his SOTU speech; Trump firing back by canceling her trip to Davos.

Over what? Over a $5 billion appropriation? Republicans and Democrats were able to come together to appropriate $700 billion for Wall Street banks with the TARP bailout in 2008, even though American patriots were melting Capitol Hill’s switchboard telling them not to do it.

And $5 billion for what? For more border fence between the U.S. and Mexico and tighter immigration policy, something Democrats are pretending that they’re against.

This is to contrast themselves with Donald Trump to keep the branding signals of their corporate political marketing simple for their idiotic partisan voting bases.

You think the Democrats are really pro-immigrant?

Barack Obama deported more immigrants than any president in history (over 2.5 million–– ABC News). Bill Clinton was an immigration hawk just like Trump.

Listen to Dianne Feinstein in the early 90s. She sounds more anti-immigrant than Donald Trump:

This shutdown happened because these two major political parties in the U.S. have to dramatically differentiate themselves due to the fact that they’re actually so similar.