We have all heard the term “draining the swamp” as applied to politics and politicians in Washington D.C. - and I get it. Afterall, our country’s Capitol was actually built on a drained swamp. But allow me, please, to bring a more at-home analogy that moms and grandmoms all over this country can relate to.
It is about bathroom etiquette.
Items every new apartment dweller or homeowner should buy are a bathroom plunger and a toilet brush. These are necessary tools and play a large part of bathroom etiquette in the United States. If you are wondering why, then you obviously were not raised right. This is much more important than whether you replace the toilet paper roll correctly (But if you don’t replace it at all, that’s comparable in the lack of manners you are displaying.)
You see, when things are put into the toilet by whatever means - by you - it is your moral duty to make sure that they get flushed away leaving that toilet bowl reasonably clean for the next person. Like bad legislation should be cleaned up by whoever writes it.
Sometimes, unfortunately, the bathroom byproducts leave skid marks - and it’s your duty to use that scrub brush and flush again. Do not leave your mess for someone else to clean up.
Sometimes the load exceeds the out capacity of the toilet and the drain gets clogged. That’s when it becomes your duty to employ the plunger and fix the problem.
If you don’t - and no one else does it for you - the byproducts continue to build up, spill over, stink up the place, and leave things pretty much uninhabitable for everyone.
This is similar to the problem we have been seeing in our Legislative Branch of government.
Our Representatives and Senators seem to think someone else - someone not them - is supposed to unclog the legislative toilet that they have been trying to flush more and more Bills down. Most of them never even look to see if there wasn’t already too much for the outflow to handle.
One really important reminder to our legislators is - stop piling more in there if there’s already enough. It just gets uglier if you do.
There are currently so many laws on the books that no one can even give a straight answer about how many Federal Laws there are. Going back to the toilet analogy...think of them as toilet paper. Too much toilet paper will definitely clog up the system. And if you don’t get rid of some of it, you surely should not add more. Before you know it the whole septic tank, or wastewater management system becomes overwhelmed.
For the safety of keeping the waste system of our country healthy, perhaps no new law should be proposed unless the author and co-signers can name two laws that can be done away with.
It’s good toilet etiquette after all.
And wash your hands.