What do you think of when you hear this phrase: "institutional flip-flops"?

I ask Meade, as I'm reading this op-ed by Cass Sunstein, that begins:

What are the legitimate powers of the president? Of Congress? Some people’s answers to these enduring questions seem to shift dramatically depending on a single (and seemingly irrelevant) fact: whether the current president is a Democrat or a Republican. These shifts amount to “institutional flip-flops,” a defining feature of modern political life.

In recent weeks, the filibuster has been the most prominent example...

Meade says:

I'm picturing the characters in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," shuffling about in paper slippers...

He demonstrates the drugged mental-patient walk.

Sunstein recommends the "veil of ignorance" as a solution to "institutional flip-flops." He's actually saying something smart, so smart it feels obvious and mundane at the point when you understand. You're all: Everybody already knows that. I'm distracted by the accidental metaphor "institutional flip-flops" — I know he didn't mean to make us think about footwear — which is intensified by the old intentional metaphor "veil of ignorance."

The veil goes over your face and puts a barrier between your eyes and the world you'd otherwise see, and the flip-flops go up between your toes and put a barrier between the soles of your feet and the ground they would otherwise come into contact with, not that the filth of wherever it is your walking doesn't rage up and contaminate the insole.



I'm distracted by the concrete.