House cat

You know the one. The kid who blurts out the truth at family gatherings. The boy adored in private but censured in public.

The one parents clutch pearls over (who buys pearls anymore?), whispering “Watch your manners.”

I watched him, I really did. Guests giggling. Trembling. Nervously. “Hahaha, he’s very funny.” Right? They whisper, like whispering actually helps. It doesn’t. Everybody knows he’s right. Ever notice when somebody’s right, they’re annoying, but you can’t stop nodding? Very confusing. Nod, nod, nod. Like a bobblehead.

That’s Kiko Barzaga. At the national dinner party we call Congress.

Where “polite society” performs its polish, Kiko is the one who points and says, “That’s mold, not seasoning. Stop lying to yourselves.”

(By the way, mold smells terrible, awful, why would you eat it?)

They call him “flip” like that explains it. Flip, like a pancake. I like pancakes. I like syrup.

Anyway, they say it as if it’s a bandage that can cover up the irritation of seeing their own reflection. (Waaaaahh!) Like Kiko is some emotional aberration caused by childhood trauma.

If telling the truth makes you flip, then sign me up, too. I would be flip every day. I’d be flipping out all the time.

It’s easier to say he’s what happens when politics catches the influencer virus, a congressman whose emotional thermostat is either set by what’s trending or the fetish for revolt as if collapse excites the boy.

Every outburst smells faintly of childhood, the eternal nine-year-old rebelling against a father who never clapped.

Authority is a man who yells “Sit down!” and Kiko performs louder. And the adults in the room, they tell us to “understand him” the same way they once dismissed real problems as tantrums while stealing the spoils behind our backs.

Who hurt Kiko Barzaga? Irrelevant. The wound he carries is the wound of the republic: betrayed and gaslit and told to behave. While they rob the country with their manners.

He turned that wound into a brand, forcing the country to look at itself and squirm, so that ignoring us is impossible now.

The mistake is thinking Kiko is the problem. You think Congress is serious? Boring. Yawn. Congress has been laughing at itself for decades. Congress is pretending to work. And Kiko Barzaga refuses to lie.

Every age produces its jester when the court becomes too pompous to police itself. He’s the first twitch of a generation that refuses to wait for permission. Unbelievable generation, by the way — impatient and restless. Angry. Kiko is the natural child of a system that rewards showmanship over bright ideas.

Critics say he has turned Congress into some big-top circus tent. Totally wrong. The circus was already there. The clowns forgot they were carnies. Committees that should be in daycare. Ivory towers reeking sewage. And now they act shocked when Kiko arrives in full costume?

What higher service can there be than forcing this body politic to confront the travesty it’s become?

The House can censure him, suspend him, expel him. Congress can slap the mirror and hope the cracks disappear.

To say he “disrespects Congress” is assuming Congress still commands respect. In the end, someone has to name the elephant and handle the crocodiles.

And sometimes it meows. You ever meowed at an elephant? I would pay to see an elephant meowed at.