I don't wanna spend a lot of times on politics here, but this seems very true to me:
No, the filibuster is not 232 years old. It is not as old as American democracy because the Founders did not write it into the Constitution. Yet somehow, people routinely get away with casting the filibuster as an essential building block of American democracy that verges on an essential virtue in human nature. All of this is completely made up, along with all of the ridiculous procedural workarounds that have sprung up around the filibuster: reconciliation, the Parliamentarian, the Byrd rule. All of it is made up and stupid. It's a tool of obstruction, but it's also cover that allows lawmakers to avoid actually voting on policy proposals. If the bill never comes up for a vote because it's been blocked using the filibuster, you don't have a record of voting against shoring up voting rights. It's not unlike the eagerness that members of Congress have shown to fork over the legislature's war powers to the Executive Branch in order to avoid having to own any of our endless military interventions abroad. It is a device abused by cowards to avoid accountability in office. If you're against the voting-rights bill, or the Build Back Better act, then vote against those bills. Don't prevent the bills ever getting a vote.
Grrrrrrr.
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