Just when you think the Tea Party Republicans can’t stink up this country any more, you see something that gives you a welcome, overdue dose of American pride. Thank you former Army Captain William D. Swenson, who yesterday received the Medal of Honor for his amazing heroism when he rescued fellow troops and recovered bodies during a fierce fight in Afghanistan.

And then you have people like Ted Cruz, and Phil Gringrey and Michele Bachman and the rest of the Tea Partiers who have shown an equally amazing lack of patriotism for their country. Admitting they now have not enough votes to defund the Affordable Care Act, they continue to resist re-opening the government and avoiding default. America be damned. These people — and the people who support them — are now working actively against the government (or what was the government) of the United States, in violation of the oath they took when they entered the House of Representatives. Their motives are now clearly revealed as selfish and vindictive. And more, if you want to read into it a little more.

There was a demonstration on Sunday in the nation’s capitol by several thousand protestors supporting the Tea Party. It was advertised as a “million person protest” but there were more people at our local high school football game on Friday night. Some of the protestors carried Confederate flags. Mmmm, Confederate flags. Symbols of slavery. Black man in the White House. Wonder if there’s any message there? And– ridiculously — speakers like Cruz decried the closing of the nation’s war monuments, an action caused by Cruz and his comrades. Unbelievable. Cringe-worthy.

So, no matter how you cut it, I’m afraid, there’s a piece of America that stinks right now. It’s a stink off people whose actions — not just their perverted words — tell us clearly they no longer care about the country they profess to love. So maybe something happens at the eleventh hour, and the government is reopened and the debt ceiling is raised. Maybe there’s some sort of agreement. But maybe it doesn’t matter any longer — we’re not fighting for our country overseas, we have a more serous battle for our nation here at home. We have a republic in danger of disappearing; we are the world’s greatest power, now rapidly diminishing. And there is no doubt about who is blame. And it’s not the Kenyan in the White House. No, we have met our real enemy, and it is us. At least the tiny part of us who make up the Tea Party belligerents. What a disgrace.

The new film “Gravity” hardly needs another review. If you scan the internet even casually, you can’t miss the number of highly favorable commentaries, praising everything from the director to the actors to the technical wizardry. They are all correct — “Gravity” is a mesmerizing movie, probably coming as close as any of us will ever get to realizing an experience in outer space. It’s also one hell of a nerve-wracking film, a suspenseful 90-minute suspension of disbelief.

The director, Alfonso Cuaron, and the actors — Sandra Bullock and George Clooney — take us through a memorably thrilling journey when a routine spacewalk turns into a frightening disaster for the two astronauts, As others have noted, the film is a visceral treat, not an intellectual one (on the order of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001.” But I think a couple of points about it are worth making, or perhaps repeating if others have not already done so to the point of eye-rolling.

One is the 3-D effect. My movie-going experience goes all the way back to the debut of the first commercially released 3-D feature film, “Bwana Devil” in 1952. I remember clearly the native’s spears hurled at the camera, the lions seemingly about to leap from the screen. It was all unique and exciting — for about an hour. Then everyone realized the film sucked. And really, so did the primitive 3-D process. Fast forward to recent years and we’ve worn those glasses for a handful of 3-D films worth the trouble and many others less so.

I confess I’ve never seen a 3-D film which makes more artistic use of the experience than does “Gravity.” The 3-D is never intrusive, nor does it ever seem added-on. Rather, it is employed as part of — and to enhance — the storytelling. The movements of the astronauts outside their spacecraft with the Earth below are sumptuously beautiful, and the 3-D gives it a vivid frame hardly less thrilling than the plot. It was really only at the end of the film that I remembered I was wearing glasses. Employed this way by these skilled artists, what can easily be, and has often been, a gimmick becames instead an signal contributor to the film’s impact. See it and believe.

The other point I wanted to make concerns the technical aspects of having Bullock and Clooney move naturally in a weightless environment. How this is done has been covered in stories you can easily locate and which would take too much time to elaborate on here. But please know that the process works magnificently. We’ve all seen clips of real astronauts in their craft, and our eyes here are treated to extensive time that never is less than realistic to my eyes. It is another part of what causes that suspension of disbelief and that makes “Gravity” such a grand achievement.

I don’t do Academy Award selections — ok, I’m not above rating my favorites come Oscar time — but it is difficult to believe another film can match the breathtaking experience of this one. Just thought you might want to know.

The people in Congress who are sponsoring the current government shutdown — and also were responsible for the congressional dysfunction for the last two years — hope the rest of us are enjoying the results as much as they are. Everywhere you look there are things you can point to that connect directly to this well-thought-out shutdown, whether the convenience of finding no crowds at national parks or the pleasure of knowing the meat you eat hasn’t been tampered with by nosy inspectors. Oh sure, a few people are complaining — like the teenager who can’t get his bone marrow transplant, or the restaurant that’s slowly going out of business — but really, nothing’s perfect, right?

The rest of us know that there is a small group of congressmen who see the shutdown as a moral principle enacted, initially because it kept us from the Affordable Care Act (with a name like that, who wouldn’t oppose it?) and lately because they can’t remember why. We shouldn’t be surprised, because when you look at this small group of congressmen who represent a small group of Americans, you see some fascinating people — really, all white, older and sharing curiously similar intellectual traits. Well, to be accurate, let’s drop the “intellectual” and stick with “curious traits.”

All of them are high school graduates, so let’s not hear anything about stunted educational growth. They all have a healthy (possibly unhealthy) lack of knowledge of and respect for science. They love freedom and the American way, as long as it affects only certain Americans. They especially love wealthy people, no matter their background, because they are “makers” not “takers.”

That’s perhaps why Rep. Steve King, the mind-bending Iowan, could tell us recently that for every immigrant who has been a valedictorian “there’s another 100 out there that weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.” Only the Border Patrol knows for sure. King, you might remember, has a distinguished record that includes opposing aid to victims of Hurricane Katrina (they were poor to start with, so what’s the point?), devoting time and energy to demands for President Obama’s birth certificate, and insisting that the sea level isn’t going to rise because of global warming since “we don’t even know where sea level is.”

Texas Rep. Louis Gohmert is another stalwart of the shutdown, and his record affirms the belief that “all climate change data is fraudulent.” He sponsored a bill to allow every taxpayer a two-month break from paying income taxes, a quasi-populist move that no one else seemed to think a wise idea.

Then there’s Florida Rep. Ted Yoho — don’t you love saying his name out loud? — and Rep. Fruitcake Michele Bachman, and …. well, we could go on, but these are among the leaders of the congressional people who know the shutdown isn’t affecting anyone and will rescue the rest of us from the Affordable Care Act. Who wants affordable health care anyway?

So, we know the people responsible for giving us a shutdown and government chaos. A grand bunch they are. And a bunch who are incredibly easy to satirize and poke fun at their infinite shortcomings. But then, really, there’s so much we don’t know. We don’t know the people who back home in Iowa, Florida, Minnesota, Texas and other places who voted to put these uninformed, unprincipled and uncaring people into office. We don’t know them at all, only that they represent a small part of the American electorate who have gained a disproportionate voice in government, ironically too, because they don’t seem to like government. And who believe they don’t need it. The buffoons in the Congress are like that proverbial iceberg — the tip that conceals the real dangers below and out of sight. More on that at another time.

Good morning, and here’s a little quiz to begin your day: Who is the worst Speaker in the noble history of the United States House of Representatives? Wait a minute, before you knowingly shout “John Boehner,” let us take a brief moment to think back over that history, and to perhaps better define just what we mean by “bad.”

The job of Speaker goes back to 1789 when Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania, an ordained Lutheran minister, became the first to hold the position. He had been a member of a Continental Congress, signed the Bill of rights and by most accounts was a dedicated, attentive and capable Speaker. Admittedly those are not words with which we associate the current Speaker, but let’s move on. There have been several notable Speakers: The legislatively gifted Henry Clay was one, tough-minded Sam Rayburn was another, and one of the first was Jonathan Trumbull, whose credentials include serving as aide-de-camp to George Washington in the American Revolution. John Boehner, you may recall, served as president of a plastics company.

There have been a few bumps along way for Speakers, of course. Newt Gingrich still stands out for his witless shutdown of government during the Clinton administration, suggesting a level of incompetence not yet overcome. Both Jim Wright and Dennis Hastert had some quibbles over ethics. Too bad not one of them could match the flawless record of Theodore Medad Pomeroy, whose career record as Speaker engendered nothing but … well, nothing. Pomeroy only served in the office for one day in 1869. We should be so fortunate in 2013.

And so we come back to the current Speaker, “Weepy John” Boehner, the orange-tinted, links-loving representative from Ohio, a Republican so devoted to his office that absolutely nothing can deter him from holding on to it. Not reality, not the welfare of his country, not the interests of a majority of the American people. Nothing. You have to admire that kind of iron resolution. Well, actually you don’t.

So — where does that leave Boehner among the best and worst of Speakers? For one, you never hear the name “Henry Clay” mentioned in the same breath as Boehner, do you? But you do hear the name “Newt Gingrich” mentioned, albeit usually in the sense of “Wouldn’t it be grand to have someone as wonderful as Newt back as Speaker now?” Of course the old days always look better than the new. It can be said that Boehner has shown a degree of two-facedness that appears unmatched by any of his predecessors. He has cannily developed the skill of saying one thing one day and flipping 180-degrees the next. And denying he ever said any such thing. It’s really amazing to watch his daredevil changes of position as he floats between mainline Republicans, Tea Partiers, Democrats and the Great Ogre Obama, all in pursuit of keeping his job as Speaker, because he is convinced THAT is what is good for America. And good for the American people. If he has any principles — and that’s a subject for another column — they surely revolve around keeping his job as Speaker so that he can serve the needs of the American people by keeping his job as Speaker. There is no question he is committed to that 24/7.

Finally, though some people have begun referring to Speaker Boehner as a “whack-job,” that seems unnecessary. While he is certainly far from the brightest bulb ever to serve as Speaker of the House, and nowhere close to the most accomplished and capable Speakers, and definitely not among the most principled of Speakers, he does boast of that most peculiar orange skin tone, which my research indicates has never before been present in any of his predecessors. So when it comes down to labeling one Speaker as the “worst,” perhaps we should hold off a bit longer. After all, we may not have reached bottom yet. And this session of Congress is not over.

William W. Starr is a prize-winning author and editor, a former journalist for print and broadcast media, a manager for United Press International and the executive director of a statewide literary organization in Atlanta. He now lives in New Hampshire, coping with weather mostly unknown to native Southerners and is working on a pair of new books including a novel. His writings on literary topics, government, classical music and traveling have appeared in numerous national magazines and newspapers since the 1970s.