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PaperclipPerfector  20hr ago (text post)   2604 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 16, 2026

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Overheard at work:

Did you hear about the shutdown?
What? The whole government?
No, just DHS. Check your flight info.
So TSA is shutdown, or at least running slow, or—oh, my flight is just delayed an hour.

Business as usual. I was also unaware of any particular crisis brewing over TSA, so I looked it up. Lo and behold: this is actually old news. Nothing has changed since DHS was pseudo-defunded a month ago.

So why am I hearing about it now? Well, a month is long enough for a missed government paycheck. Which means the TSA staff, who were apparently holding down the fort, are getting increasingly antsy. Somewhere around 300 have quit. Combined with a surprise cold front, airport security lines have been upgraded from mild to moderate inconvenience.

The usual suspects are blaming Democrats: Schiff, Booker deflect on shutdown blame amid terror concerns, thousands of DHS workers without pay. I’m still trying to figure out how this is their fault, given the Republican trifecta; Rep. Collins suggests that they are completely stonewalling any attempts at compromise. I think the last attempt was supposed to be a White House proposal from late February, but I couldn’t find the actual text of it, so I don’t know if it was at all credible. Sen. Schumer naturally insisted that it wasn’t. Perhaps we’re seeing two parties sticking to the foot-in-the-door tactic.

So, how does this type of gridlock get resolved? Do Republicans come to the table first? Do Democrats? Do airlines start privatizing security, or do they just give up on running flights?

I’m still trying to figure out how this is their fault, given the Republican trifecta;

Republicans voted to keep it open but Democrats didn’t. It takes 60 votes to avoid a filibuster. You already know that because you admit it takes two parties to negotiate.

It only takes 51 votes to remove the filibuster. It's a fig leaf that the senate uses to avoid blame, nothing more. I blamed the democrats for being useless when they could have removed it before, and I'm happy blaming the republicans for refusing to remove it now.

Removing the filibuster is getting fairly popular with anyone of intellect. A lot of people are realizing we have too many checks and balances and congress does nothing.

congress does nothing.

*taps constitutional conservative sign*

This is a feature of congress, not a bug. The point of the structure of the Senate (equal state representation instead of proportional, longer terms, advise and consent duties to executive branch appointments, most special of which are SCOTUS judges, etc.) is that it is supposed to be the "collegial institution" that slows down the structurally populist, high variance legislative whipsawing of the House. The filibuster necessitating close to a super majority to override is a continuation of that.

Americans' problem isn't with Congress per se, it's mostly with the creeping Federal bureaucracy, regulatory apparatus (which has a positive feedback loop with general PMC culture), and the imperial presidency. The growth of Leviathan since WW2 is the problem. I don't want to see Congress becoming fundamentally more active. I'd like to see them pare back the powers of the executive branch (which they can do but most members are a bit too tied at the hip to any given sitting President.)

Then, I'd like to see a hard RETVRN to Federalism that places states as the primary "actors." California can experiment with its polyamory socialist redistributionism while West Virginia fucks around with legalizing machine guns.

Right now, this is extremely murky in actual application because of 1) The 14th amendment and 2) The 1964 Civil Rights Act and the several amendments passed on it in the intervening decades. We'd probably be looking at a SCOTUS decision so far reaching that this SCOTUS - which is conservative any way you slice it, the argument is only to what degree - wouldn't take such a case.

That's the deeper "Straussian" view of the gridlock.

It ain't the filibuster.

...I hope you're not claiming to get that view from actual Straussians. The closest thing there is to a (West Coast) Straussian perspective on the current state of Congress is that the Constitution intends for the legislature to be a dynamic, powerful branch which acts to shape the law as necessary. The Senate is a participant in that process, but a participant in an actual working process. Congress today is a castrati choir because of the Leviathan you mentioned, but Congress also willingly abdicated their power to Leviathan in order to keep their chairs comfy and spend more time fundraising.

Then, I'd like to see a hard RETVRN to Federalism that places states as the primary "actors." California can experiment with its polyamory socialist redistributionism while West Virginia fucks around with legalizing machine guns.

From your lips to Lady Columbia's ears.

Regardless we already expanded the executive powers to rule instead of congress.

Filibuster isn’t in the constitution. The founding fathers definitely believed that there are things that need to be done at the national level.

For this specific discussion we are talking about border security which every founding father would 100% agree congress should make laws about it.

For this specific discussion

That's fair. Regarding immigration specifically, I generally agree with you and the other posters above.

I was trying to develop the full picture, however. I am generally hyper suspicious of "if we just did this one thing" style solutions. And so, here, I was pointing out that nuking the filibuster won't actually "fix" congress.

Current country partisan makeup basically means nothing can pass with the filibuster. The government does have to govern

Yes I would like to see it ended too but it changes this calculus of who is to blame. “The Republicans”? Trump called for eliminating the filibuster. MAGA wants to end the filibuster. Blaming “the Republicans” makes it sound as though MAGA is to blame, too extreme, maybe they should abolish ICE so Democrats feel comfortable letting planes flies again?

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