Rule Creep

Back in 1982 Douglas Hofstadter in his Scientific American column Metamagical Themas described a game called Nomic which was invented by philosopher Peter Suber. Nomic is a game where play consists of modifying its own rules. Initially rules changes have to be by unanimous consent, but this rule itself can and usually does change. Play continues until one party twists things so that they are the winner, or the game mutates into something completely different. It was a game perhaps ahead of its time, and play of it spread on the ARPANET which then turned into the Internet. Nowadays the home for the game is at nomic.net.

Would that real life were as playful as games of Nomic. The Republicans are about to pull a maneuver which, if this were a game, would lead to shouts of cheating, an argument, and then one party storming out of the house not to return. Changing the parliamentary rules of the Senate takes a two-thirds vote. If the Republicans carry out their threat to eliminate the judicial filibuster through only a majority vote (which they can do in actuality since they are the majority, and nobody is in a position to call them on the rule violation), they will have effectively broken the rule system. Simply put, this deed would be an act of fascism. And as the changes in the rules creep on we find ourselves disintegrating ever more into the soup.