Those firm rubber mallets come closest, so far -- the ones over there, with the wooden handles and the black, hard rubber heads. The bamboo cutting boards aren't bad, but they're brittle and splinter too easily under heavy loads.
Pounds per square inch of pressure, deflection energies, angles of attack -- all these have to be taken into consideration, and a lot more.
See, like many Americans, and an increasing number of observers eyeing our system from other countries, I'm looking for something -- anything -- to make the political pain in my head stop. However, I would like to leave something like a smoldering tree stump inside my shirt collar, where my old head used to be -- you know, something that might yet grow back in the transformative Spring, after the numbing kindness of Fall, after the hibernation and healing of Winter. It has been a simmering, killing cruelty, this inflamed, and inflammatory, Summer political season.