Hello, Congress!

You need to do much better than knee-jerk decision making based on those sitting next to you. The two party system has been palatable and constructive only when its members retained the power of individual human thought. Where did this go wrong, and are you responsible?
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Grow up! Could you please get out of the middle school yard at recess and stop this juvenile bickering? Did you notice that you have a 16 percent job approval rating? That means 84 percent of us think you are pathetic, immature and that your process is shambolic. Your inability to find the middle and actually govern as adults is unacceptable and undemocratic. It is not why we sent you to Washington.

I've chaired hundreds of committee and board meetings, maybe thousands. They always have a wide range of opinions. The job of the chair is to find the middle consensus, let the outliers fall away, and impose Robert's Rules of Order towards the middle, correct decision. It was ever so: Truth is in the center aisle. Remember what they taught you in ninth grade about democracy? Do some of that.

Rude you say, to compare you to some bunch of 11-year-olds gathered in cliques in a playground? Have a look at your chamber. Really, adults seat themselves with all the red on one side and the blue on the other? What are you, the Crips and the Bloods? Really, you have separate entrance doors so God forbid you should have to mingle with people who hold other opinions? Outrageous. This is not a school cafeteria, but the Congress of the United States. Could you perhaps seat yourselves alphabetically? Not a novel thought, one going on in most every school assembly around the country. What do school principals know that you don't? Tribalism is the curse of the planet, and you should be less critical of the Shiites and the Sunnis going at it, if you can't even sit next to people with different opinions.

This is not a football game. Take off the sweatshirt. Blind allegiance to party makes about as much rational sense as blind allegiance to team, especially after the players move around from one to another. The need to believe in a tribe, through thick or thin, is defensible in sport because it is mostly harmless. But lives and livelihoods depend on your decisions, Congressman... you need to do much better than knee-jerk decision making based on those sitting next to you. The two party system has been palatable and constructive only when its members retained the power of individual human thought. Where did this go wrong, and are you responsible?

Time to find the middle and grow up, please.

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