HANOI, Vietnam – United Nations Day is an obscure occasion, but it inspired a we-our-the-world pageant recently at United Nations International School here. Students, parents, faculty and staff gathered inside the spacious gym for a parade of more than 60 flags, representing the nationalities of the student body. The big delegations – South Korea, the U.K., the U.S. – let out loud, proud cheers. The loudest was for our host, Vietnam.

Amid all this, a friend with the U.S. mission laughed and showed me a message on his smartphone – a colleague's snarky comment about the U.S. government shutdown.

The shutdown of “non-essential” U.S. government operations has now come to an end. Congress has agreed to what should have been a routine increase in the nation’s debt ceiling to cover costs already incurred by Congress’s actions. By averting default, the action delays the prospect of global economic fallout – delays, I say, because we may revisit this political theater of the absurd in a few months. Politically speaking, President Obama succeeded in staring down his arch rivals, the “Tea Party” wing of the Republican Party. These extremists, easily cowing the supposed Republican leadership, maneuvered to provoke the shutdown in hopes of blocking the implementation of a universal healthcare initiative, Obama’s signature legislative achievement, which was already passed into law and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. It was a done deal – and yet, bizarrely, the Teapublicans still thought they could undo it.

The escapade was rich in irony: The new healthcare law, dubbed “Obamacare,” would be disastrous for the U.S economy, Teapublicans insisted – to explain why they took action that damaged the U.S. economy. And while all kinds of federal programs deemed “non-essential” were shuttered, Obamacare was up and running, enrolling participants. (The problems in the roll out, which Republicans could have exploited for political advantage, were overshadowed by the shutdown they caused. Nobody has accused Teapublicans of strategic brilliance.) Republican elders had long warned this would be a kind of suicide mission doomed from the start. They proved too weak to stop it, however, and so the Republicans continued a downward spiral that began during their campaign to prevent President Obama’s re-election last November. The party’s antics might seem funny, sardonically so, until one remembers that in America’s two-party system of democracy the dysfunction of one party serves to damage the nation’s political culture and governance.

America’s dysfunctional politics is an embarrassment that can harm the global economy. As the New York Times reported, foreign observers, many of whom live in nations that face genuine crises, were appalled by the Americans’ propensity to invent one. In Mexico, people used a Spanish term I’d never heard before: “Technically defined as tantrums, berrinches are also spoiled little rich kids, blind to their privilege and the effects of their misbehavior.” Muy bueno!

In the U.S., the end of the shutdown inspired more weirdness. Heavy metal rocker Ted Nugent, famous for his love of firearms, cut his hair and hinted he might run for presidency. Former pro wrestler Jesse Ventura, whose blunt flamboyance once lifted himself to a governorship, also talked about a presidential run. The polls showed the public’s opinion of the Republican Party had fallen into the toilet – so why not?

All of this is good news for comedians who skewer American politics – and bad news for the rest of us. We Americans can get all misty-eyed talking the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. We like how our divided system of government – the bicameral legislature, plus the administrative and judicial branches – provides a system of checks and balances and spawned a two-party system, which in normal times encourages compromise. It takes two to tango, after all, and one hand washes the other, right? We like how Winston Churchill once declared: “It is said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”

So why is the happening? One pattern, sad to say, reflects a pattern of animosity toward a changing America that is illustrated by the color of President Obama's skin. Paranoia about race and ideology has long been an unfortunate aspect of American politics. With the rise of Obama came the bizarre notion that he was a secret Muslim socialist who was really born in Kenya and not really American at all. Understand that a small fraction of populace bought into this nonsense. But, more importantly, understand that the Republican Party did nothing to repudiate the racist conspiracy mongers. That, as well as harsh rhetoric regarding women's rights and immigration, enabled Obama in his 2012 re-election to increase his appeal among women, Latinos and Asians, and younger voters. Demographic trends are running strongly against Republicans since Obama's rivals handily won only one large demographic slice: white males, especially older white males. And the Teapublican congress members all represent areas that, through a politically-charged redistricting process, actually got whiter while America is becoming more diverse.

In the two-party dynamics, the party out of power is sometimes called "the loyal opposition." But since the election of Obama, Republicans have grown increasingly hostile and obstructive – even disloyal to the traditions of American-style democracy. So perhaps it’s a good thing that the U.S., doesn’t have a Reunification Day to mark the end of the fratricidal civil war in 1865. It would be a sham – or perhaps a reminder of the nation’s divisions. The United States is rarely united, actually. In my childhood, the war in Vietnam divided the nation, and more recently it was the invasion of Iraq. And now this idiocy. A two-party system is designed for division – and a kind of creative tension that leads to compromise. But the intense discord has produced “government by crisis,” as Obama put it.

And it’s still not clear whether the Republicans can pull out of their downward spiral.