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The Column: 01.28.22

I was in college when I first saw a moving sidewalk and the ingenuity of this machine in speeding up us pedestrians in an airport was a revelation to me and I realized that the great advances would not come from us writers but from engineers and this has turned out to be true judging from the gigantic telescope they’ve put a million miles out in space to study the origins of the universe and perhaps visit God, meanwhile we writers are cooking up the same old meatloaf and mashed potatoes except we’re putting garlic in it. Engineers are changing the world.

Change is a powerful tonic. My Uber driver has a GPS device with a woman’s voice telling him precisely how to take me to JFK to catch a flight. Years ago, the old cabbies Gus and Butch and Spike were proud of their knowledge of the city and now the GPS device opens up the game to newcomers, immigrants, Muhammad and Rafael and Aisha and Eliana. It’s an amazing invention, the inflexion of the woman’s voice is so natural, not robotic. If engineers can develop a device programmed to navigate the streets of New York, then surely they can create a reliable electronic lawyer, and when they do, we’re on the way to reducing the cost of government by 50 or 75 percent. If programmers can’t design a more capable U.S. senator than Ted Cruz, then my name is Kyrsten Sinema.

Change is a tonic and we need it desperately in this country, which has become all too set in concrete. The U.S. Senate is a very ornate 19th-century chamber where not much happens and so it’s practically empty most of the time. A senator will stand up and address a roomful of unoccupied desks, arguing for or against the filibuster, which is as archaic as the dial telephone or tuberculosis, and meanwhile the Royalist party is attempting to suppress voting, which has become too popular in the wrong places, and the suppression is happening in broad daylight, just like the guy I saw years ago on West 90th Street in Manhattan, busting a car window with a broom handle and reaching in to steal the radio, and I said, “What are you doing??” and he said, “None of your business.”

Well, it is our business, even if it’s not my car, and voter suppression is nasty mischief carried out by nabobs and bozos who feel they own the franchise, and I say, Let’s shake things up so these yahoos don’t feel too secure. It’s time to call a new Constitutional Convention. The previous one was held in a nation of fewer than four million persons and now we’re around 330 million, time to go back to the drawing board.

This convention will be populist, representing population, not territory, and its purpose will be to clear out some outmoded bric-a-brac and pack it off to the attic, and we’ll start with the Senate, an elitist body based on the assumption that each state sends its brightest minds to act as a control on the popular whims of the House, but when you look at the membership closely, the assumption falls apart.

If the new Constitution provides mandatory retirement at 62, the quality of the Senate immediately jumps from lackluster to promising, and if we reduce the Senate from 100 to 80 by consolidating states—unite the Dakotas and Carolinas, make Nevada and Utah into Nevuta, Washington and Idaho into Wahoo, Vermont and New Hampshire into Montshire, Texas and Oklahoma into Tokses, Iowa and Missouri into Missiowa, and grant Hawaii and Alaska their independence, and if we use electronic lawyers in government agencies and reduce America’s 3,243 counties to, say, 1,843, we’ll reduce the cost of government dramatically and use some of the savings to expand the Supreme Court to 27, a body that represents the diversity of America rather than a committee of the Federalist Society.

We need more women in power like the GPS woman. I know this from personal experience. I walk into the living room, having read the paper and thought about the news from eastern Europe and I have an interesting opinion about it, and my wife looks at me and says, “You’re spilling your coffee.” And I go to get a paper towel and she says, “Let me do it” and she mops it up because she wants it done right. Men have been spilling coffee more or less constantly the past ten years and we need a change. Don’t argue with me. Just do it and you’ll see I’m right.

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If you are in the area (70 miles from Washington DC and Baltimore, MD)

Get your tickets for Garrison Keillor Tonight! at the Avalon Theatre, FEB 6th 7:00PM. FOR TICKETS

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This Saturday we are featuring a show from 2012 with Brad Paisley, Cantus and Andra Suchy. Join the Facebook crew at Saturday 5PM CT to create a listening community or if you can’t wait, check it out now.

Enjoy this video of Cantus singing “This is My Song” (“Finlandia” by Jean Sibelius).