It seems important we all take sides in the increasingly chaotic process of picking a Republican Speaker of the House.

If you’re liberal, you’re expected to react with glee to the mayhem, pointing at the opposition party and declaring them inept, unable to rule, the captives of the far right. You need to somberly point out that the Speaker is second in line to the presidency, as if Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are about to simultaneously expire this weekend, before Nancy Pelosi’s replacement is installed.

If you’re a mainstream conservative you’re supposed to indignantly harrumph and decry the fractious nature of your party and the rowdiness of the dissidents. You’re expected to demand that the renegades give up and fall in line behind Kevin McCarthy.

But the truth is, many of us just don’t care. Not having a Speaker of the House for a few days or even a week or so has no effect on most of our lives. Stop with the histrionics.

If only Congress would take this long before voting on other things, too.

The standoff means that nothing is getting done in Washington, which isn’t a bad thing.

I’ve always said that our form of government is a gorgeous mess. Americans argue, debate, disagree. It’s the beauty of a constitutional republic.

Yes, the Democrats are a more highly disciplined party than Republicans. They are skilled in sweeping their differences under the rug in the interest of unity. For the most part they don’t break ranks on major issues. I’m not sure there’s a single pro-life Democrat left in the party.

But is that a good thing?

This unified party just concocted a $1.7 trillion omnibus bill - more than 4,000 pages long, loaded with pork and waste - after midnight a few days before Christmas and demanded that it be passed by Congress before lawmakers left Washington for the holidays or had time to read it.

This sort of “unity” is the exact opposite of good government.

Anyone else remember 2018 when Nancy Pelosi was profoundly unpopular? A question posed to every Democrat running for the House of Representatives that year was whether they would support the far-left lady from San Francisco  for Speaker.

In my own 2nd District, Democrat candidate Elaine Luria played coy with that question, saying she wasn’t sure whom she’d support for party leader.

Yet what was the first thing she did upon her arrival on Capitol Hill? Luria merrily cast her lot for Pelosi along with the rest of the lemmings. She not only voted for Pelosi, but she voted WITH her time after time for four years until she was ousted last November.

Guess who was on the list when Pelosi was leading a junket to Belgium and the Mideast a few weeks after Luria was sworn in for the first time? Yep, Elaine Luria, her new best friend. It was clearly a thank you for her support.

(That was the junket that was turned around by Trump who said it was wrong for lawmakers to leave the country during a partial government shutdown. He told them they could go if they paid their own way. None did.)

Just yesterday Pelosi Tweeted this about the current House stalemate:

All who serve in the House share a responsibility to bring dignity to this body. Sadly, Republicans' cavalier attitude in electing a Speaker is frivolous, disrespectful and unworthy of this institution. We must open the House and proceed with the People's work

Hilarious.

This from the mean girl who tore up President Trump’s State of the Union speech on national TV. That was DIGNIFIED behavior worthy of a member of Congress? No, it was childish, spiteful and disrespectful to the president. Pelosi needs to take a seat and try to regain a little of her own dignity before lecturing Republicans.

Now that the GOP has a narrow majority in the House a far-right contingent from the Freedom Caucus is thwarting McCarthy’s ascendancy. As of this writing there have been 11 votes and still no Speaker.

Yet there is no impact on most Americans. The mail moves, the communications services are still up, our trash is being collected, we go to work every day. Life goes on.

Eventually the Republicans will settle on a Speaker. Inside-the-beltway stumpheads should stop acting as if this delay is cataclysmic.

It’s not.