Janet added a new category to the pasture compliance manual today called Don’t Make This Weird, after concluding that ordinary rules were failing to address a growing national shortage of normal adult behavior.
The change came after another stretch in Washington featuring executive orders on childhood vaccines, citizenship, and even “restoring trust” in the Smithsonian.
Janet read the list twice, removed her glasses, and stared across the pasture.
“Why is the president involved in the museum?” she finally asked.
Nobody had a satisfying answer.
Under the new rule, any government official considering an executive order, emergency declaration, congressional investigation, retaliatory tariff, special commission, or novel constitutional interpretation must first answer three questions:
Does this actually need to happen?
Does the president actually need to be involved?
Are you making this weird?
Fancy Pants immediately supported the reform, noting that government had become increasingly skilled at turning ordinary policy disagreements into situations requiring seventeen lawyers and a cable-news countdown clock.
Marvin requested clarification on the definition of weird. Janet pointed toward Washington.
Whitney suggested calling the rule the Mindful Institutional Boundaries Framework.
“That,” Janet said, “is exactly what I’m talking about.”
Bruce and Frankie proposed enforcement through a reality show called So You Think You Can Govern, where officials would explain their latest decision to six ordinary people at a diner.
Anyone beginning a sentence with “Technically, the statute allows us to” would be eliminated immediately.
By sunset, Janet had reduced the entire federal compliance manual to one page.
At the bottom, in bold, she added:
If everyone in the room suddenly needs a constitutional lawyer, you have probably made it weird.
My flock strongly disagrees, unless molasses oats are involved.
I gots molasses oats, I can't run fast enough to get them in their pen.