It is immensely sad when a few crazies spoil a place for the rest of us. I vividly recall a pre airport-security world. I grew up in Denver and I used to love to go to Stapleton Airport when I was in high school, ’68 – ’71. You could roam the concourses at will, look out of all the windows, go to a coffee shop or fancier restaurant, depending on how flush you were. There were gift shops, magazine and book racks, newspapers from different cities, Paris Match next to the New York Times, even clothing stores if you came from a warm climate and needed to buy a pair of boots. You could sit anywhere you wanted, watch people come off of flights from different places and after a while you could tell just by how people were dressed whether they’d come from Florida or Chicago.
There were Coke machines. If you were a resourceful kid you could sneak in the corner, pour a little bit of rum into a Coke, stir it with a straw and have a lovely cocktail to stroll around the vastness of space that was an international airport in those days. I have described that world to younger people, to their amazement.
All that is gone, has been for quite some time. Now you go where you’re assigned and nowhere else. You’re there to do business, not kick back and lounge. In essence, a publicly funded resource that was once available to one and all to enjoy in a myriad of fashions, was denied by crazies with bomb threats and hijackings, and then of course the coup de grace was 9/11.
Washington, D.C., our nation’s capitol and the Capitol building itself, look to be next in line for exactly the same metamorphosis, from wonderful facility open to the public to lockdowned uptight hell, and that saddens me greatly. I hope that the main reading room of the Library of Congress won’t end up walled off and barricaded, because that is a national treasure and a monument unto itself, no different from the Lincoln Memorial. It’s a great place to take a book and look up at the vaulted ceilings and imagine all the great minds who have been in that room and feel yourself a part of history.
I am heartened to find that I am not the only one who feels this way. The Triad:
Our government has two ways to make the Capitol more secure.
The first is to explain to Americans that Joe Biden is the fairly elected president of the United States. That his victory was quite large. That the former president and many of his enablers lied about the outcome of the election.
In so doing, this would leach the poison out of our political life and remove the impetus for mobs to attack the Capitol.
The second option is to put fences and razor wire around the Capitol to discourage people whose minds have been poisoned from attacking it again.
Faced with these alternatives, our government chose the latter.
The Republican party did this.
They lied to America for months about the 2020 election. They are still lying, right now.
And they would rather perpetuate this lie than try to explain to their voters what the truth is. Because the lie brings them nearer to power and the truth would repel the people they most need to vote for them.
Even if the price is insurrection. Even if the lie costs people their lives. Even if it means turning our Capitol into Fort Knox.
Because Republicans would rather lose freedom than tell the truth.
I’ve never seen anything like this in American politics.
And in addition to the sadness and the anger, there’s worry. Because a politics based on a lie cannot produce anything good. It’s simply not possible. It’s the fruit of the poison tree.
While this poison belongs to Republicans, it affects us all. It trickles into our polity, warping minds and blackening hearts. It changes the world—even the physical world—around us.
The fences and razor wire at the Capitol are the physical manifestation of the Republican lie. Every time you see them, remember Kevin McCarthy and Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz and Andy Biggs and the hundreds of elected Republicans across the country who created this lie.
Trump wasn’t the only one who incited the attack on the U.S. Capitol. pic.twitter.com/BbPbKBpNVg
— The Republican Accountability Project (@AccountableGOP) January 29, 2021
The facility with which these Republican lawmakers embrace conspiracy theory and lies is frightening to behold. These are the lengths they’re prepared to go to to hold onto power. It’s not the crazy base that’s the problem. It’s the corrupt, lying Republicans in both chambers of congress that is the problem. If they would take a stance and tell the truth, they could shut this all down today. They won’t. That is the national tragedy that we now face.
The only question is: how much crazier is it going to get? How many of our freedoms, how much of the beauty of our culture as Americans do we have to lose, in service to the power mad machinations of a few?
My mom used to talk about how easy it was to get around the Capitol when my old man was stationed there in the 1970s. It always struck her as a little crazy how insecure it was but she shares your grief on things in DC are changing.
Akso, if the GOP would take a stance and tell the truth, they would a) be out of power like they are in California by 2024 and b) the next target list of the crazies by sundown. Since neither is acceptable to them, we’re looking at what we’re looking at. And for such a decision, I name them cowards.
By allowing them positions inside the government, & they actively participating in an insurrection, IS INDEFENSIBLE. This should not be legal any more than me walking into a bank believing they owe me money, & taking it out by gunpoint. They have taken oaths, they violate at every turn, while retaining power through the process they discredit. MADNESS. You get what you tolerate. That’s a human law.
I hope that any permanent fence is easy on the eyes, and I regret that it’s become necessary because the GOP-T has gone over the edge to a conspiracy-theory cult.
Fredrick Law Olmsted is crying on the inside from what they are doing to his landscape design.
Remember when flights had comfortable seats and real meals (even in coach).
Not like now where airlines compete to see how miserable they can make passengers.
Capitalism, yeah!
I wound up stationed in the DC area and remained there after leaving active duty. I’ve often only partially joke about “escaping” the beltway rat-race in late 2003 but there are things I still miss. Maybe less so now. I too enjoyed being able to go just about anywhere I wished. It seemed like the only place I couldn’t just walk in to (albeit in some places passing a security guard/station) was the WH itself, or the WH grounds. I never tried to secure a tour which I have come to regret. Still, I could once just walk up to pretty damn close – right up to the lovely fence that (sadly) became necessary long ago. The thought of what things are now like, and the permanent changes that will surely take place to curtail freedom of movement around many of our national treasures fills me with a sadness I can’t put into words.
The more these elected “lawbreakers” cower in fear of the crazies, the more power they are handing over to them. They don’t want to lose their cushy jobs and perks, they don’t want to get death threats (as if every Democrat in Congress hasn’t been getting them for years) and even if they can’t stand the orange garbage bag, they will do nothing to save Democracy, only themselves. Instead of being heroes, they’ve become facilitators.