The next time you get a chance to talk to a member of Congress, ask them who they think their peers are. If they answer "my constituents," you may have found someone worthy of a conversation.
If they answer anything else, then you end up with the dark-comic circus we see today on Capitol Hill. At any given moment, I half-expect to see some lesser-known member to come running down the hall with their suit (if they wear one) in bloody tatters, hair on fire, shoes covered in mud and a look of extreme horror on their sweaty, bulbous face. Keeping pace behind them, of course, will be a senior member in the same state of disarray, but brandishing a machete. Or, if the member you encounter is Kevin McCarthy, his hair is on fire and a junior member of his delegation is chasing him down with a chainsaw.
