Our House of Cards
Remember what we once did to pass the time when we were kids, before cell phones, video games, and TV remotes linked our fingers to every conceivable sensory diversion to while away the hours? We played outside with our friends, no adult overseers to script or supervise us. Just us kids—biking, running, playing make-believe, laughing, arguing—all of us innocently oblivious to dangers that loom over every child today. And I recall that we talked a lot to each other, up close and personal, no devices in hand to keep us at arms length or rob us of the sight, sound, smell and touch of each other’s company. How primitive was that? Yet how much more meaningful were these gone, but not forgotten moments of genuine human contact we once enjoyed.
But some days I found myself alone, most likely kept inside by driving rains and ankle-deep puddles. And I recall that, under such circumstances I amused and challenged myself by trying to build houses made of playing cards. Since my folks always had decks of cards in end-table drawers, easily at hand for them to teach us how to go fish, or learn more heady number games like casino or rummy, it took little effort or imagination for me to grab a deck, set up a work-site on the dining room table, and try my hand at construction.
Like most worthwhile projects, building anything out of cards, be they houses, castles, towers or forts, requires a steady hand, patience, and luck to succeed. Playing cards by nature are rather thin in dimension, not to mention slick to the touch and deficient of any grooves, gables or notches that make building anything with them rather difficult. And the wooden table top that served as a foundational platform lacked any slots in which to stand a card on edge. Oh, sometimes a table cloth helped, that is until a careless body movement created seismic tremors that quickly demolished whatever ediface was underway. I remember once laying snake-like playdoh strips on the table to support the card “walls”, but the stickiness and smell of the doh on my fingers held no appeal to me. Besides, using playdoh as a substrate seemed a bit like cheating to a serious card builder like me.
So, armed with a deck of 54—jokers included—I would set out to see if I could construct something tall enough and strong enough to withstand any passing breeze or the wrecking ball shake of an unsteady hand. Even though I didn’t know it at the time, building houses of cards was actually helping prepare me for far greater challenges I would face in life. It forced me to become more patient, to persevere in working through frustration, and to realize how starting over is essential if one is to see a project through to fruition. None of these lessons came easily or naturally to me. And each time one of my houses would collapse I was left with a choice: to quit or try again. Houses of cards also gave me some practical instruction in math and physics as I practiced manipulating geometric shapes like rectangles, squares and triangles that had to be used in accordance with such scientific principles as gravity, weight, and balance.
Success in building anything out of cards begins with discovering how much you have to lean one card into another to get two of them to stand up. If successful you can carefully add a third and a fourth “wall” to fashion a square design upon which additional stories or attached rooms may be added. I usually went for height rather than width in my constructions, so laying the roof was my next step, and it often proved to be my undoing. Setting that first flat card on top of the open-air 4-walled structure that so precariously stood on the table took great sensitivity and care. While most of the houses I tried to build fell flat when I clumsily tried to do this, if I was able to pull it off and then add a second and third card for strength, I ended up with a floor on which a second story could be attempted, much like the one pictured at the top of this essay.
I can’t recall ever constructing a house or tower of cards much beyond a third level. It was just too difficult for me to do and too taxing on my attention span to stay that focused for that long. You can understand, then, why I so marvel at what Bryan Berg, architect of huge and intricate card houses like the U.S. Capitol pictured here, has been able to construct. Incredible!
I haven’t built anything with cards in a long, long time, nor do I suspect I’m going to add doing so to my list of meaningful retirement pastimes. Yet, thinking about houses of cards has recently provided me with a way of trying to understand what is happening in our country today, particularly among those we’ve entrusted to govern this grand old republic. With no intended allusion to a television mini-series of the same name, House of Cards is a fitting metaphor for how our American government does, and doesn’t work.
Structures made of cards depend on individual building blocks that are the same in size, shape, and thickness. The numbers or images on each card seem irrelevant, these distinctions only being important when playing games of chance like Crazy Eights or War, or in more serious contests like Bridge or Poker. But the value of cards to builders begins and ends with both their uniformity and their common structural integrity both enabling each to stand up against similar cards and support the weight of those laid on top of them. No dog-eared corners, tears, wrinkled or bendable surfaces will do. In the hands of an artist like Bryan Berg, there seems almost no limit to how large, high, or detailed the structure that can be built, providing the cards meet these two requirements.
Could it be that what is true of card constructions is also true for those whom we elect to somehow fashion a more perfect union of these United States? I am inclined to say yes. Those whom we’ve elected to govern us are, by analogy, somewhat like the cards used in building card houses. They don’t all come from some common deck, however, nor are they uniform in appearance, size, weight, shape or age. Yet each of them must bring similar if not identical qualities of mind and temperament to the negotiations upon which governing depends. Namely our elected and appointed leaders must exemplify…
A uniformity in the length, width and breadth of their intellectual capacity and commitment to serve their country on behalf of their constituents. They must possess both the requisite knowledge of the Constitution they have pledged to uphold and defend and the necessary reasonability to interpret it and apply it within the body politic of the Congress, Executive Branch or Judicial system.
A uniformity in their structural integrity that gives them the ability and inclination to stand with their colleagues in supporting each other in service of the common good. People worthy of governing, being more than inanimate cards manipulated by human hands, must bring with them a measure of trust, respect for others, civility and good will that should resonate in how they speak to, treat, and work with each other and those whom they represent.
When our leaders demonstrate these attributes our government has its best—I’d even say only—chance to reach the kind of consensus necessary to craft laws and set policies upon which our nation’s prosperity and survival depend. Realizing that human nature is always a joust between self-interest and altruism, our founders deliberately created complementary yet oppositional branches of government designed to balance the better and worse angels of our nature that play out in the polis of our shared existence.
For much of this century we have found ourselves in the throes of increasing governmental dysfunction that has eroded much of the confidence Americans once had—or wanted to have—in their elected representatives.
They can’t agree on a budget for more than a few weeks at a time, repeatedly turning millions of public servants into government hostages.
They can’t agree on a fair and effective way to manage the deluge of immigrants poring across our borders.
They can’t put aside partisan differences over elections long past, fueling tribal crusades where investigation, indictment, and impeachment dominate the proceedings.
Neither the majority nor minority parties can agree on who should lead our most representative body of congress, rendering our legislative branch a “dead in the water” assembly.
It isn’t too much of a stretch to see how government has become quite a house of cards, one with far too many jokers in the deck. But these jokers are neither impotent jesters nor wild cards with the clout necessary to win a hand, let alone a vote on a congressional floor. Instead they seem intent on playing a hand of self-righteous grandstanding that disrupts and obstructs rather than builds up and advances. The prevailing cacophony of fringe voices in our government, with narrow priorities and parochial passions that misrepresent and dishonor the larger body politic of our Republic, is leaving in its wake a government increasingly unable to do its job and serve the people whom they’ve pledged to represent.
Who or what will right our listing ship of state, this house of cards now collapsing before our eyes under the weight of its own inadequacies? Will it be the progressive or regressive hand of one of the house builders currently jockeying for control over our Congress? Will our deliverance come from any of those would-be commanders-in-chief beating the bushes for support while throwing themselves to the lions in the made-for-TV arenas we call debates? Will we be saved by the steadying hand of one of the elderly statesmen now bracing for an encore showdown in next year’s presidential gunfight in the “not-OK corral”? Will we find deliverance in that unseen providential hand that many believe has guided our nation from its inception and now pray will ultimately step in to restore us to former glories of remembered greatness? Or will our house of cards be bolstered and strengthened by the triumph of reasonable men and women in whom Jefferson’s self-evident truths of freedom and justice yet live, and may ultimately yet prevail?
Eight score and five years ago our most revered president freely quoted Jesus of Nazareth in declaring that the America he knew and loved would not endure as a house divided. He was right then, and his words remain prophetic for us today. In looking at the teetering house of cards that our government, and our country now seem to resemble, dare we take lightly his predictive warning? The moment to act is upon us, and the cards we have at our disposal are ballots that we, and we alone can use. If a majority of us begin playing our voting cards right—in casting our vote for leaders qualified to govern—we can help rebuild what too many faux leaders, for too many years, have helped to tear asunder.
