One must admire the sheer, unadulterated audacity of the American political system. In the Old World, when a government finds itself unpopular, it might dissolve parliament or, in more spirited nations, face a general strike involving burning tires and blocked highways. In the United States, however, the preferred solution to a difficult electorate is simply to delete it and draw a new one. It is a level of bureaucratic surrealism that would make Kafka blush, and nowhere is this farce currently playing out with more tragicomic vigor than in the Empire State.

New York, a state that loudly proclaims its moral superiority over the ruthless gerrymandering of the American South, has once again found itself knee-deep in the ink and mud of redistricting. State Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey Pearlman ruled on Wednesday that the congressional map must be redrawn. The timing, naturally, is impeccable. With the midterms looming like a thunderhead over a Democratic Party already soaking wet from inflation and approval rating downpours, the judiciary has inadvertently—or perhaps entirely advertently—offered a lifeboat.

The specific theater of operations for this particular battle is New York’s 11th congressional district. For those unfamiliar with the tribal geography of New York City, the 11th is an anomaly. It encompasses Staten Island and snippets of southern Brooklyn, forming the lone Republican outpost in a city that otherwise votes with the uniformity of a Soviet bloc assembly. It is currently represented by Nicole Malliotakis, the only GOP member representing the city in Congress. To the Democratic machine, she is not merely an opposition politician; she is a glitch in the Matrix, an error in the code that must be debugged via the judicial system.

The ruling follows a challenge by a "Democratic-aligned law firm," a phrase that does heavy lifting in describing the modern American political apparatus. One does not convince voters anymore; one hires litigators to ensure the voters who disagree with you are diluted into irrelevance. The argument, as always, is framed in the lofty rhetoric of fairness and representation. But let us not be naive. The surgical precision required to redraw these lines is not about civic virtue. It is about power acquisition in its rawest, most caloric form. The Democrats see an opportunity to snatch a seat back from the abyss, and in a House of Representatives where the margin of error is razor-thin, a single seat in Staten Island is treated with the strategic importance of a nuclear silo.

What is truly exhausting to the outside observer is the pretense that this is a functioning democracy rather than a game of Risk played by consultants. The judge’s order requires the state’s Independent Redistricting Commission to convene—a body whose very name is an oxymoron in American politics—to draft a new map. If they fail, as they have spectacularly in the past, the legislature will step in, or perhaps a special master, or perhaps they will simply read tea leaves. The process is a bureaucratic ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail while the voters look on in bemused silence, realizing that their agency was traded away long ago for a cleaner district shape.

Consider the plight of the residents of Staten Island. They are the perennial shuttlecocks of New York politics, batted back and forth between the conflicting desires of Albany power brokers. One day they are a conservative stronghold; the next, a judge’s pen stroke threatens to flood their district with enough liberal Brooklynites to render their local political culture extinct. It is social engineering via map-making. The goal is not to represent the community as it exists, but to curate a community that produces the desired result. It is the political equivalent of shooting an arrow and then painting the bullseye around where it lands.

While the Republicans gnash their teeth at this development, their outrage is hollow. They pioneered this dark art; New York Democrats are merely clumsy apprentices trying to catch up to the masterworks of disenfranchisement crafted in Texas and Florida. Both sides view the map not as a reflection of the people, but as a weapon to be wielded. Justice Pearlman’s ruling is merely the latest skirmish in a war of attrition where the casualties are stability and public trust.

So, as we watch New York scramble to redraw its lines before November, let us raise a glass of something strong and bitter to the American experiment. It is a system where you don't need better ideas, better policies, or better candidates. You just need a better lawyer and a sharper pencil. The map is not the territory, as the philosophers say, but in New York, the map is the only thing that matters.