the Gentle Cabinet: Reconfiguration as accomplished "coup," its costs glossed

The Reconfiguration presented as a done deal from the top: Gentle calls it "a thoroughgoing logistical coup," and the human cost of the map-redraw is glossed into deadpan understatement — "Delaware's looking a bit crowded" is the whole displaced population of four states compressed into a real-estate quip, and "rather less overall good sportsmanship in downstate New New York" is the dispossessed's rage rendered as poor manners. The scene's political comedy is exactly this: catastrophe administered as a logistics report.