About Us
The Gavel's Diatribe acts as the satirical medium for short rants over topics ranging from complete triviality to utmost importance.
Many of you may be wondering how that governmental gridlock is going, but great news! Someway, somehow, our government has finally reached an agreement: time is a just concept!
We can all learn something from Congress’ triumphant example of teamwork. If agreeing on how to move our country forward and secure the freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution is hard, why try? The trick is to pick something easy with almost no impact on people's lives and make it a law! Maybe next week we’ll see an “Is Water Wet?” debate on their agenda.
What is especially important about this legislative strategy is to give the bill a hard-hitting name that implies a level of seriousness that at best is loosely reflected in the legislation. “The Sunshine Protection Act” serves as a perfect example of how to obscure absurdity under the guise of the preservation of rights. Ladies and gentlemen our sunshine is at risk and we must defend it!
Before we dive into the specifics of Congress’ testament to their efficacy, let’s consider why we even use daylight savings in the first place. We change our clocks because we want more sunlight in the mornings, but by 4 pm it's dark and miserable. Once we've had enough seasonal depression, we flip it back over because: time is literally just a concept.
Once we decided that we would make an hour a biannual disappearing act, we had to choose an hour we wanted to part with. And as we all know, nothing good happens after 2 am. But what possible reason could someone have for changing the clocks 2 hours into a day other than just because they felt like it?
After scouring the internet for primary documents, I discovered that we change time at 2 a.m. because of WWI railroads, which makes perfect sense as they are still an integral part of our society today. Apparently, 2 a.m. was the only time that trains were not running and for some reason, trains would be too confused to experience daylight savings while mid-trip. Hopefully, the new bill reflects careful consideration of the foundational role of trains when deciding our country’s new time.
There are so many great lessons to take from the Senate’s prioritization of the meaningless concept of time, but the most important is: time is for us to pick and choose.
Marco Rubio, the sponsor of the bill, put it best: permanent daylight savings is “an idea whose time has come.” Congress has decided to work neither smarter nor harder and I couldn't agree with them more. (P.S. if you’re Rubio’s intern who decided to slip in a pun into his remarks and hoped he would still read it, keep it up)
If Congress is giving us the go-ahead to change time whenever we see fit, it is imperative we do so. Late to class? Not according to your time! Your professor claims you slept through your midterm? That's not what your clock says! Forgot your mom’s birthday? Not possible because you've got hours left according to your calculations!
It is of the utmost importance that you understand that time is not real! Let's use it to our advantage and if anyone questions us they'll have Congress to deal with. If they can do it, why can't we?
Making being from the PNW a personality trait.
