Restoring the Problem's Problem-Solving Capacity

I have to learn math and fight oligarchs now? I'm still learning to code!

I asked AI to draw R.B. Lamb’s Final Form and the joker coughed this and similar images up while strangling it for its impertinence. I deleted the others.

---

Hail Lambpoonies!

What follows is yet another entry for a political policy contest with The Boyd Institute. As long as they keep not filing cease and desist or restraining orders, I'll keep missing the point of the contests. Maybe. Not sure about this one. It makes me kind of nervous. It has a source, for instance, and links to information with a higher fact-content than I normally tolerate or bother you with. Consider it an exception, like Lamb breaking bad.

---

I am going to talk about politics now. Normally, I try to come up with a funny or at least “clever” introduction for essays. But politics, as your favorite dead-horse joke, is merely the sucking of blood by many ticks and I'm a bit lightheaded from keeping track of the extrajudicial killings to be honest. I don't like the state executing the mentally infirm. Not without a jury of their peers saying it's okay first. Even then due process is often just bookkeeping to the state, if bookending to a human.

It isn't my style to provide citations usually since it isn't anyone else's style to cite me as a source either so far, so just browse the BBC or something if you're unsure what killings I'm talking about. Or crack a window. Seems pretty rough out there. And in here. I opened a web browser to look for jobs and even the blank pages of these things sell hate, outrage, and a level of histrionics as peak as it is oddly familiar.

Now, the contest inspiring these words hopes to solve one particular problem. How to improve America’s problem-solving capabilities. This seems easy enough. Let me lay it out as I see it, beginning with The Problem and moving from there.

The line one finds from Democrats, as always, reads as follows. The duly elected president must be resisted in the street as our institutions have obviously failed in the high halls of wherever. Thus spake the institutions and their case is a good one. The evidence lay in the fact a lizard is President I did not vote for. Now, this does happen on occasion. But this particular one is impressively icky enough to inspire the fundraising arm of the Democratic Party to take notice from the blank pages of my web browser, forcing me to do the same from the blank face of my head.

One is struck with the sense, should they foolishly consume political copy, about half our politicos recently lost some sort of sporting contest and didn't grow up like free citizens, growling “good game” to their enemies over a hasty, crushing handshake. A ritual familiar to many Americans if not many American politicos.¹ That is a shame. Back in the day, we had to prove we weren’t sore losers if we wanted to eat pizza. These days, you need to be rich and understand pizza party is quite possibly code for pedophilia.

The point here is you must wish your opponent a good game before you molest their son. There are forms to observe. America could learn something from observing the proper forms. In fact, I thought we had, but we need to relearn how to lose every other generation as it turns out every other generation is as stupid as the last one was.

I understand rotten lemons do not taste good but there is a certain je ne sei squawk to the thing lately. It is suspiciously French in its brand of revolution. An unhelpful petulance from people ostensibly lobbying us for a job. I don’t know if it will work. Encouraging inventive slogans like “Fuck Trump!” and “Ugh!” is all well and good and erudite as balls, but these sound bytes lack the quiet gravitas rank after rank of pink hats made to resemble the noble pussy enjoyed during protests in 2017.

A democracy must tolerate a lost election now and then. Why? Math. It's this new thing that lets us model reality through abstract symbols with a bunch of rules and such to keep it consistent. We can get an idea of how something will go or how things are going. Seems useful for all sorts of stuff. It is what makes my web browser angry, in fact. Unfortunately, math also says you can't win all the time. I know that. You know that. So, what's up? Let's see.

When Democrats are yelling rather than sniffing the air and waving a champagne glass you know all that delicious union cheddar turned to government cheese and it's time to get back to work on the private sector. If just to see how the rats fare in the maze of immigration law both parties’ leaders (important) have refused to reform over the last couple decades. The game then, after having fixed the outcome rather than the problem, is to tell the people you serve there's nothing to do but kamikaze your own government. This is a real risk one runs by harassing armed men and these reptiloids need a few good men to do that. Don’t worry, though. There is no vetting process for the job. This is their current problem-solving capacity. This. Doxxing.

I won't bother explaining who I truly blame. It may sound like Democrats. That would be one-third correct with another for the GOP. Then add two-thirds on John Boehner as the originator of the practice I mean to do away with and the final third on Speaker Johnson as the individual currently possessing the power to change it. There's enough blame to go around. Too much to worry overly on how much to blame whom when we don't really need blame to fix it. Except the last third. Know it but don't use it yet.

Because the blame and shame game is real tired by now. Let's give their witch hunt a rest for a bit. We spend all our time blaming and shaming instead of half our time finding better ways to blame and shame with the remaining three quarters spent on math lessons. We need to take a look at the method keeping us so engaged to news all the time we can’t locate a moment to ask AI how many thirds are in a single body politic without our web browsers telling us martyrs are like so hot right now. I don't disagree the pay just sucks and the severance package is particularly fishy.

But I also find my own attitude to be a healthy helping of the problem. I already know the answer. That, alongside the certainty emotional situations grant a human in a flash of fanaticism during a double-blind Mountain Dew taste test. Not only is that vile brew diet, sir. It is violence.² But your so-called-committee apparently thinks very differently. We will never see eye to eye, sir. For I am sick and we are both human.

I am almost always going to see fault in the federal agent because I suffer an antihero complex along with an awful lot of other people. Serving loonies like us an IV drip of kamikaze politics is not conducive to the health of the state or anyone else. Believe it.

Confirmation biases³ are a humanity-level affliction unlikely to desert us when we really need it to. We shouldn't hope it will. We should enslave it and force it to work for us. Like we did with Diet Coke. Why is that brew perfectly imbibable while decent flavors like Mountain Dew can't get a sundowner option that doesn't taste like a sundowner's number two option? Wish someone had some ideas on that who weren't like… evil. An idle wish, of course. If we only accepted solutions from good people, we wouldn’t be seriously looking at colonizing Mars right now.⁴ Bad people make rockets.

Knowing that, and as everything base and evil finds a home in Neo-Rome, I come down from Mt. Dew smelling suspiciously of Elmer’s glue as I do, with revelation regarding what we can do about this baffling situation where our elected leaders encourage us to get killed as they refuse to change the laws. But if you're hoping to punish anyone here, you will be disappointed. Cycles of violence generally only end when we want them to and I’m keen on them ending. No crucifixions here. Nor French Revolutions. Don’t be basic, balls out bitches. Be Burkes, if you must be anything.⁵ Please. Blood is bad. Life is good. Humanity is dignity. Etc.

Besides, as mentioned, the situation remains regardless of who created it. A suicide pact, with malaise aforethought, reaching its scaly claws across the aisle. It exists to consolidate power in Congressional party leadership's talons rather than the other 99% of elected Congresslizards, as well. Leadership of both parties. The only way to fix this situation is to empower your representative to represent you in Congress.

I speak finally, of course, of the Modified-Closed Rules near-always demanded by the Speaker of the House and stupidly approved by its remaining members every two years. On an unrelated note, the term for a gelded lizard is gelding, which I thought odd. You’d think it’d be something different. Maybe like Your Voice In Congress. But it isn't. Gelding is shorter, at least. I asked AI what the term for a lizard who gelds themselves is and they just showed a picture of Robert Reich. It seems confused. This is probably because it hasn’t actually ever seen a debate occur in Congress in its own lifetime.

Anyway, this rule. This Modified-Closed Rule, as everyone knows, prohibits proposing amendments on the floor. This means your Congressgelding is not allowed to edit the content of the bill. It also means the amendments are all done behind closed doors by leadership. Leadership hailing from a district far away from yours math says you probably didn't vote for. And if math doesn't, your attorney says you certainly didn't.

Here's how this works according to the people I actually am going to cite because I'm a lazy liar who doesn’t want to burn one-thousand words explaining the ins and outs of Congressional procedural maneuvering and rules. Not when someone else has already wasted the time on my behalf.

“Usually, Members submit amendments to the Rules Committee that they hope to offer to bills expected to be taken up on the floor. The Rules Committee, which acts in coordination with majority party leadership, works with the committee (or committees) that have jurisdiction over the policy in the legislation and recommends to the full House which amendments (if any) can be called up, debated, and voted on.”

Congressional Research Service, CRS R47314.⁶

These Annunaki bastards in Congress sold us on giving them one job to solve big problems and the lot-lizards outsourced the duty to the empirically worst among them. Leadership. I didn't vote for majority party leadership nor did my district. But the guy my district did vote for has to butter up his slithery party overlords from some other noble armpit of the country just to get an amendment heard. My district’s guy lost before he’d even had a chance to slither and hiss and fail on his own merit.

Oligarchs rendering representative democracy a rubber stamp assembly aside, the real cost of all this is the lives lost in the nonsensical mob-driven arena it has exiled conversation and debate to. Whatever debate was going to occur publicly through our elected hand puppets happens on the street, instead, and it is played out by total strangers who never interviewed for the position nor won an election in their life.

Worse than a tiny minority of reptiloids exiling public debate to the street rather than the House floor or C-SPAN where it bloody belongs, is all the blind hate this debate succeeds in creating. For no matter where the debate is staged, the problem has already prevented the solution. That problem is the Speaker of the House, whoever they are at any given time, every second they have not brought back deliberative proceedings and allowed amendments on the floor under open rules.

To be clear, this specifically affects the House of Representatives. The House has been doing this for about twelve years now, or six baboons⁷ starting with the 113th Congress, across both parties. Tell me if you think the United States’ legislative efficiency improved over the last decade. Tell me the government is more efficiently run now. That's the argument justifying castrating democracy with Modified-Closed Rules. Efficiency. Just like Caesar suspending elections. Efficiency. Get out with your demands for efficient government! You're making it impossible to republic!

These rules have prevented reforming immigration law in a satisfying way as the lizards elected to give voice to the people are not allowed to hiss on behalf of the people. They can vote up or down on oligarch-produced garbage or offer their own bills, but that’s it. It's no good. Congress is the closest to a sovereign body we have in this country. The stakes are too high to let it rest in the hands of two lizards from beyond space and time. We need to place it in the hands of four hundred and thirty-five lizard's hands like James Madison sort of intended.

The call to action here is the abolition of Whorehouse Rules preventing your elected Houselizard from proposing and voting on amendments that do not originate with leadership. This leadership is currently Speaker Mike Johnson and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. These two slitherins possess the power to kill Modified-Closed Rules between them right now and quite possibly in the next Congress if things continue this way. Destroy Modified-Closed Rules in the House of Representatives so the debate people think happens in Congress can happen in Congress, not Minneapolis.

This will get the fist fights and bullets (it's a metaphor, calm down) moved back into Congress and off the street. Somewhat. I promise you this will save lives. It may even solve other issues I’m not aware of. The interns call those downstream solutions, I think. Hard to say with my thumbs in their mouths half the time.

Now, I have no doubt the data-driven readers of the world would appreciate some graphs or data or some picture to support my astonishing claim some rule in Congress is why Americans have lost their minds. But it’s not coming. I don't know how to do that stuff as an accredited data scientist.⁸ Sorry! Like I said, I’m still learning to code from the last time Congress gave up on its constituents.

You’re lucky I was even able to or had time to count to two in the first place, never mind tell AI to draw some random graphs I already know show whatever I wanted. Besides, I really do think someone screwed up the math on AI, because all it would draw was lizards when I asked it to model legislative efficiency over the last twelve years. Red and Blue lizards swirling champagne glasses watching a football game, laughing along as the losers refuse to wish the winners a good game.

Maybe we need a new game. The Don't Make Us Count To Three Game. It won't do anyone any favors. I've already established I'm not so good with factions. Fractions? Same thing to a lizard learning to code.

Sic vivitur.

1. I found individuals familiar with this in the suq of Bukara and Samarkand playing Chess. As readers of The Traveling Cynic know the Tajik for good game is, “Dikki xar dar daxonat.” Probably.

2. According to Suetonius, Julius Caesar's last words were, “This is violence!” Spoken today, the statement would be met with skepticism and historicist revision. “This is mostly peace!”

3. Confirmation and verification are not good enough alone. I find my belief humanity is a featherless, flightless bird to be confirmed every day until some dog comes in and chucks a plucked chicken in my face. Also, I believe people are mostly courteous and polite.

4. This is probably the neatest thing to happen in my lifetime and I do recall an era prior to the internet where going viral meant the entire neighborhood hated your guts but the means of up and downvoting you hadn’t been produced just yet so you had to assume.

5. Edmund Burke was an Irish Member of Parliament in Britain known for a lengthy letter detailing his concerns over the revolution in France. His philosophy of managing inevitable change is one which dominated American conservative thought until recently. The guy running the show now can't find Ireland on a map and doesn't know the difference between North Ireland and North of Ireland. Don't tell him. He thinks it's Ireland and Greenland.

6. Despite the Kafkesque nature of its title I found the full document to be most readable for a report about Congress for Congress.

7. Baboons is a perfectly legitimate and respectable manner of counting Congresses among those with any interest in history whatsoever.

8. I really am. Got certified during COVID-19. But I hate it, so I don’t do it for free.