The Strongman Detox Plan: Clearing Clutter Without Losing the Culture
Flex Appeal & Red-Tape Tango
A short parable…
Why every society ends up needing both a muscle-bound bouncer and an inclusive planning committee—then fires them, then hires them back.
Act I – The Mighty Bicep Arrives
Picture a Strongman™. Barrel chest, cannon-ball shoulders, fashion sense forged entirely from discount military surplus. He’s sure he can hoist the nation onto his traps the way he dead-lifts a barbell—never mind that nations wiggle, complain, and don’t fit neatly onto squat racks.
His perspective? A one-rep-max worldview:
Problem? Smash it.
Dissent? Bench-press it flat.
Complexity? Drop it like a bad curl form.
This tunnel vision feels glorious at first—until you notice that tunnels are excellent places to get run over by the oncoming train of unintended consequences. Neighborhoods are bulldozed, nuance is declared “for weaklings,” and suddenly society looks like a protein shake made with gravel.
Act II – The Regulatory Jungle Gym
Enter democracy, that talkative roommate who labels everything in the fridge so nobody’s feelings get hurt. Democracy hates empty space; it fills it with institutions, agencies, oversight boards, sub-committees, super-committees, and at least one committee dedicated to reducing committees (which naturally meets bi-weekly and issues a 200-page report).
Regulations start as helpful guardrails—then multiply like hangers in a closet: you swear you owned three, now there are thirty-seven. By year ten we’ve got detailed bylaws on acceptable font sizes for municipal hamster-permit applications. Reform? Sure—just fill out Form R-E-F-0-1 in triplicate, submit before last Tuesday, and be prepared for a 90-day public-comment period hosted in Esperanto.
Act III – Calling the Human Weed-Whacker
Eventually citizens look at this kudzu of well-meaning paperwork and cry, “Bring in the strongman again! At least he owns a machete.” Our brawny protagonist returns, hacking through red tape like a prizefighter swinging nunchucks made of tax codes. Whole departments vanish before lunch. The backlog shrinks. The air smells… liberating.
But machetes aren’t scalpels. Along with the obsolete fluff, out go consumer protections, minority-rights clauses, and that tiny line preventing your cousin’s brother-in-law from buying the national railway for three goats and a coupon.
Act IV – Re-Planting the Garden (now with 100 % more diversity)
Cleanup finished, someone has to re-seed the institutional lawn—ideally without pure monoculture. Enter inclusion and real diversity: people who spot blind spots, raise flags nobody else sees, and veto the “mandatory bench-press day” policy. They build structures flexible enough to bend with future storms yet strong enough that no single arm-vein hero can topple them for likes.
The trick is to:
Epilogue – The Eternal Superset
Society, annoyingly, is a circuit workout: prune, plant, rinse, repeat. Strongmen remind us motion is possible; diverse democrats remind us whose lives that motion affects. Too much of either and we’re either stranded under barbells or buried in binders.
So next election cycle, before you fall for the guy tearing phone books in half on TV, or the candidate promising “a small task force to explore feasibility of considering a study,” ask:
Who’s holding the scissors when the tape gets tangled?
Who’s holding the blueprint when the scissors go rogue?
The answer shouldn’t be the same person—but they do need to share a break room (preferably stocked with both protein shakes and vegan muffins). That, dear reader, is how you keep a nation healthy enough to lift together—without tearing its own hamstrings.