WHY ARE THERE STILL NO TERM LIMITS IN CONGRESS; AND WHO'S GETTING RICH OFF "PUBLIC SERVICE"?
CONTRA FRAME #57
Here’s the Situation
It’s 2025, and somehow, members of Congress still face no term limits. Presidents have limits. CEOs get ousted. Soldiers retire. But Congress? It’s the one American institution where time is irrelevant, and grift is eternal.
You can go from bartender to congresswoman to millionaire celebrity in the blink of a news cycle. Or you can rot in power until death, embalmed in ritual tributes and legacy media coverage.
This is still packaged as public service.
Meanwhile, insider trading is legal. Pensions are luxurious. The media turns long-term incumbents into institutional brands. And once you’ve qualified for retirement? You’re not going back to your district. You’re signing on as a lobbyist for a Gulf oil state, an arms manufacturer, or a trial lawyer cartel. Service continues, just at ten times the salary and none of the scrutiny.
The Shift Underway
Congress no longer behaves like a rotating body of citizen representatives. It has morphed into a semi-permanent ruling class, an influence guild embedded in the bureaucratic state.
The shift isn’t about ideology or age, it’s about structure. Incentives now reward tenure, compliance, media fluency, and donor loyalty over independence, competence, or public responsiveness.
We are watching a system where the performance of representation masks the reality of consolidation. Symbols of choice remain, but the outcomes rarely change. Real power lives in the routines, staff, think tanks, and narrative managers who remain untouched by elections.
Systems drive behavior. And this system rewards incumbency, theatrical dissent, and permanent incumbents who “play their role” while executing none of yours.
The Fallout & Leverage Points
Who wins?
Career legislators who accumulate compounding influence
Corporations and foreign clients who lease access post-retirement
Narrative brokers who need continuity for scripted polarization
Institutional players who rely on predictable proxies, not volatility
Who loses?
Reformers blocked by seniority hierarchies
Citizens who think votes translate into shifts of power
Democratic ideals replaced by bureaucratic inertia
The leverage point? The absence of term limits is not a flaw. It’s a design element. The system wants memory, not turnover. Predictability, not disruption. Illusion, not renewal.
How Will You Reorient?
Stop interpreting dysfunction as failure. It is function. Ritual outrage is part of the programming. The incentives are stable, the exits are lucrative, and the turnover is an illusion.
In a structure without term limits, the role of the representative has decoupled from the will of the represented. Legacy replaces legitimacy.
The smartest leaders and operators recognize that when systems reward permanence over performance, politics becomes simulation, and public service becomes a gateway drug to private empire.
