The US shutdown crisis has shown us democracy red in tooth and claw | Simon Jenkins

A catastrophe has been avoided, but the conflict over resources was real, and the problem has not gone away

The US has uttered a sigh of relief, and its critics the world over have chortled with glee. The nation that never ceases telling the world how to govern itself – even taking admonition as far as war - cannot run its own whelk stall. Was hypocrisy ever more grotesque?

Yet to visitors such as myself this week, America's budgetary hysteria and exhausted resolution have seemed a synthet...