So There’s Fist Fighting in Congress Now

Great.

In February 2017, The Wall Street Journal, surely doing some pivoting to video, put together a clever video showing, in the wake of a brawl in the Japanese Parliament, how there were often fights in the United States Senate in the 19th Century, and how common they were in the rest of the world. It’s a funny video. You should watch it.

The inherent comedy comes from the contrast of fancy serious people in suits and sharp clothes, all middle-aged or older, unable to resolve their differences in the way fancy serious people are supposed to be able to and thus devolving into the fisticuffs, the oldest (and arguably most effective) means of conflict resolution possible. You can try to politick all you want, make your fancy speeches, write your dogmatic screeds, but at the end of the day, you’re just an ape hitting another ape in the head with rock.

And it’s also funny because, as Americans, it’s the sort of thing that only happened: a) in the past, and b) in other countries. How foolish and silly those other countries are. How sad it is they can’t be as…