The Never-Ending Mène

Every mène is supposed to end. The boules are thrown, the points are counted, someone writes the score in the dirt with a stick, and a new round begins. But imagine a mène where one team simply refuses to shoot — where they keep pointing, softly, endlessly, placing boule after boule in the general direction of the cochonnet without ever trying to win the point. The sun goes down. The pastis gets warm. Nobody goes home.

That is the filibuster: American democracy’s never-ending mène.

The mechanism is pure pointeur energy. A senator takes the floor and talks — about anything, at length, with great courtesy — and as long as the talking continues, the mène cannot end. No vote can be taken. No point can be scored. The opposition’s boules sit there, perfectly placed, while the clock is pointed into submission. It is obstruction as placement: never strike the other side’s argument, just make sure the round never finishes.

France has its own version, and it plays it with Gallic drama. The obstruction parlementaire — thousands of amendments filed like boules tossed one by one into the circle, each one technically legal, each one buying another hour. The navette, the bill shuttling between chambers like a cochonnet nobody will let land. And then, when the government tires of the game, the 49.3: the constitutional carreau, the single decisive throw that clears the board and ends the mène by fiat.

Both systems have discovered the same truth about the game. A mène that never ends is a mène nobody can lose. The filibuster is the art of losing slowly enough that losing never officially happens; the 49.3 is the art of winning so abruptly that nobody gets to watch. One is a dink that never stops coming. The other is a carreau thrown by the referee.

The filibuster points forever. The 49.3 shoots once. Both are terrified of the score.