the.com/logjam
When everyone agrees something must move, and nothing does.
means A complete standstill caused by too many things (or people, or decisions) stuck against each other, each one blocking the next.
from From the literal logjam of 19th-century logging: cut timber was floated downriver in huge batches, and if logs snagged against a rock or riverbank, hundreds more piled up behind them into an impassable tangle. Loggers risked their lives as 'log drivers,' picking their way across the jam to find and dislodge the one key log holding the rest — a 'jam-breaker.' By the early 1900s, the term had drifted onto dry land to describe any stalled process, especially political or bureaucratic ones, where everything backs up behind a single unmoving obstruction.
- origin
- Literal: jammed logs stuck mid-river during timber drives
- irony
- Caused by too much progress arriving at once
- fix
- Historically solved with dynamite, not patience
- modern use
- Congress loves creating them, hates breaking them