When candidates complain that this system is “rigged,” what they generally mean is that the will of the voters is tempered or overridden altogether by the will of the party elders. But is that a bug or a feature? I’m here to argue it’s a feature.
It is a safe bet that at every institution of secondary education with female students, there are Mean Girls. It is also a safe bet that there isn’t a reader who needs the term defined, because there probably isn’t a reader who hasn’t experienced Mean Girls – or been one of them. And one trait we know the Mean Girls all share is they make people want to kill them. The phrase has a jocular sound, and it should, because it isn’t meant quite literally. But it’s a fun conceit that someone might mean it quite literally.