Killing US with Lawsuits

A very long time ago, back before 9/11 and George W. Bush, before I was really paying attention to national politics and instead spending my time dealing with serious healthcare issues, keeping my home and husband going, and working full and/or part-time jobs while also attending college, I played a city-building game. 

I think it was one of the versions of Civilization, but I am not certain, so I won't claim that to be so. The game started you out as a nomadic human and eventually you built up your civilization to the current time period and beyond.

The one thing that stood out to me in that game was that at a certain point, it wasn't wars or terrorists or people being people that stopped my game to the point I walked away from it.

It was lawsuits.

Thousands upon thousands of lawsuits. Every move I made, the game threw a lawsuit at me. Every construction, every attempt to move forward, brought a lawsuit.

I remember watching helplessly as the "lawyers" represented by the game flung lawsuit after lawsuit at me. It was a game stopper, for sure. 

However, now I see this same notion playing out in real time. We live in the new world of lawsuits. There are lawsuits being filed by the government against states, against corporations, against real people who are just going about living their lives, and lawsuits filed by people against their neighbors, cities against counties, states against communities.

Every time I look around, there's another lawsuit.

Locally, this happens a lot. I looked up the lawsuits filed in Circuit Court against various departments in my county and stopped counting at 100.

According to Microsoft CoPilot, over 328 lawsuits have been filed against the current administration this year alone, with dozens more filed on its behalf. Everything from executive orders to regulatory actions ends up in court.

I don't know about you, but I miss the days of people sitting down and talking over their issues before immediately heading to court. I don't know that a lawsuit would stop a war - if that were the case, there would be no wars - but it sure adds up costs for one party and great funding for someone else.

Long ago, people resolved things over a beer and a handshake. Will we ever get back to those more mannerly times? Because right now, even a good bar fight looks like a better way to resolve an issue than what I am seeing on C-Span these days.