When our politics are in such a stalemate that we can’t even agree to fully finance the Department of Homeland Security, and this in the country that just can’t seem to say no to major land wars in Asia, maybe it’s time to admit the truth: The American political class is suffering from testosterone poisoning.

In a modern twist on the lead lined water pipes that corrupted the Roman elite, we all know testosterone leads to aggression, combativeness, intractability (and body odor), but we don’t seem to give a damn. We’ve got too many men in congress and the result is that domestic politics are a chest thumping, poo flinging, and genital display based ritual to make male mammals with one tenth our brain size envious.

Some seem to enjoy a good old fashioned alpha male challenge. Witness the rise of what I can only describe as Boner Politics, with Rudy Giuliani as the chief proponent of a test for citizenship that sends directly to Gitmo anyone who doesn’t get a spontaneous erection upon hearing the first two bars of America the Beautiful before wagging it in the face of the nearest foreigner while draped in the flag. The ideal leader apparently, is a sort of hyperbolic love child of Oliver North, Paul Little (the pornographer — don’t Google at work … Or ever, actually), Vladimir Putin and Apollo Creed.

So at home, so abroad too, and as Chris Walsh reminds us of Adlai Stevens in Aeon, poo flinging is one thing when it’s just hot air in the senate, but quite another when the monkeys can start flinging nuclear warheads instead of turds. And speaking of Putin, and his Super Bowl ring stealing ways, I’ve heard the hypothesis that it is his Asperger’s that is the root of his anti-social behavior. Given that Asperger’s might be an example of extreme “maleness,”

perhaps we have a new explanation for the power madness of alpha males who find themselves awash in man-hormone when they ascend to the apex of the pecking order. Retrograde Asperger’s Psychosis?

What we need is an antidote to the poison: Estrogen. Women. Females, we know, are more apt to cooperate to find solutions while remaining capable of projecting strength. There is very little dick wagging among women. The old school misogynists had it backward, it’s not women who are compromised by their monthly moods, it’s men who are constantly compromised by their hard-ons, both literal and figurative. But the halls of power are so stained and reeking with testosterone that it’s difficult to find women that can move in that world without taking on the very male characteristics that a feminine touch could help to moderate (here’s looking at you Hillary Clinton).

There are 104 women in congress today. We need more. Not just more, actually, but a majority and a sizable one at that. We need to air out the capitol for awhile before reintroducing males in anything but a minority capacity, long enough so that by the time representatives regain gender parity the new men have evolved past resolving problems like horny Walruses in the same way they long ago moved past dueling as an acceptable social engagement.

Perhaps we need a new party? Forget the Bull Moose party, how about the party of No Cock and Bull?