The District of Columbia has always been valued as a beautiful city, both by its residents and its millions of international visitors. The district is world-famous for its museums, cemeteries, cherry blossoms, galleries, architecture, hotels, churches, statues, harbors, Rock Creek Park, lovely smaller parks and public squares — all have engaged and delighted residents and tourists for generations.
The capital’s original elegant and functional French architecture — completed in personal collaboration with Gen. George Washington — has been emulated by capital cities in the U.S. and internationally. Its cuisine has long represented regional and international fare and has risen over time to its recently competitive level with epicures of New York City, Chicago, and New Orleans; its closed-in, manicured, and coveted suburbs in Maryland and Viriginia have been, as with tourism, essential sources of its business tax base. (READ MORE: How to Make the American Taxpayer Pay for Chicago’s Shoplifting)
And ever since 1975, Democrats have far outnumbered Republicans in D.C.: No Republican has ever been elected mayor since “home rule” began not long after Watergate.
D.C.’s 1975 Home Rule Act, a long-fought battle, did not change the essential reputation of the district as a highly attractive venue — at least, not as that reputation has devolved today. Marion Barry’s three-term, notoriously drug-fueled mayoralty was represented as a new stage in the upward climb for many blacks in D.C., as both district and federal government used affirmative action and social “safety net” legislation to grow the ranks of the black population in the bureaucracy to further secure the Democratic Party’s local, huge majority.
The old-time “racial” (or cultural) rigidity of the district’s neighborhoods modified to a degree from the ’60s onward, as many, excepting the working poor, were able to upgrade residential situations. However, the urban blight introduced with the Great Society’s welfare programs disrupted neighborhoods and rendered fatherless and unemployable thousands of poorer families in D.C. and nationally.
Into the late ’70s and ’80s, district-wide crime and racial hostility had breached the soft, internal boundaries of the original four quadrants (northeast, southeast, northwest, and southwest). Yet even open murder, drug use, drug sales, rape, and robbery, on the streets of even the “safer” areas, were rare until now. District homelessness is, by problematic extension, now rocketing, as DCist reports:
This year the District counted 4,922 unhoused people — an 11.6% increase from 2022, with a 12.1% increase among families and a 10.2% increase among single “unaccompanied individuals.”
Of those 4,922 people, 50% are experiencing homelessness in D.C. for the first time….
The population of people who are experiencing homelessness is also skewing younger than in previous years, and there’s a higher prevalence this year of substance use. [emphasis added]
The very rich in D.C., including some in Congress, now buy their own neighborhood and residential security. In “neighborhoods” like Kalorama (once largely diplomatic), the nouveau riche likes of Jeff Bezos and Barack Obama (the latter of whom set up one of his mansions — an “inexplicable” break with post-presidential tradition then but much clearer, in its motivation, now) have set up shop.
Post Jan. 6, 2021, Nancy Pelosi’s fanatical barricading of the Capitol building — as the high razor-wire fences came up, then down, then up again, then mostly up — to keep us all out. Barring Pelosi’s putative Jan. 6 reenactment, the semi-permanent barricades against the public into 2022 made everything in D.C. ugly, in every sense.
We can wonder about the then speaker’s guilty motivations for this over-the-top security, reminiscent of Lady Macbeth’s post-murder outbursts:
Out, damned spot! out, I say!–One: two: why, then, ’tis time to do’ t.—Hell is murky!—Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? [emphasis added]
On its 2023 streets, Washington has historically high crime and illegal drug usage rates, up near the top of all U.S. cities. Capitol Hill neighborhoods see congressional staff daily fearing for their lives. Battering, robbery, and carjacking are common occurrences.
The district’s basic costs for survival are now 39 percent higher than the national average — mostly due to the cost of housing, which is 148 percent higher than the national average. Its 2023 Police Department is fractured internally, disrespected, politicized, understaffed, and ineffective. The Capitol Police has taken a major hit since Jan. 6. Now enter Hamas, and even the Democrats are feeling the heat. As the Washington Post reports, “Protest outside DNC headquarters in Washington turns violent.”
The COVID shutdowns and lockdowns were enthusiastically adopted by both the district and federal Democrat-dominated governments. While federal staff, and the entire Congress, were paid during the lockdowns and shutdowns, thus easing the burden for the bureaucrats, the effects on the balance of D.C. citizens and the regular order was chilling. NPR reported in 2021:
Washington, D.C., is experiencing a major pandemic surge — making it the highest-risk place for COVID-19 infection in the nation….
Demographically, the D.C. area skews younger than the rest of the country; about 50% of residents of the District are between the ages of 20 and 49.
Fast-forward to November 2023, and D.C. has fallen into yet another emergency:
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has declared public emergencies on the opioid crisis and youth violence in the District.
The Bowser administration says that both problems have not only persisted but worsened since the COVID-19 pandemic….
Between 2018 and 2022, opioid-related deadly overdoses have more than doubled, from 213 to 461 lives lost per year. [emphasis added]
In 2021, the Democrats in Congress coordinated with the D.C. city government and radical, “protesting” citizenry to push for the extraordinarily regressive proposed “statehood” for the district. The statehood legislation failed in Congress. “Good” Democrat President Joe Biden, naturally, had voiced unconditional support — until he didn’t. As the Atlantic reports: “Give President Joe Biden democracy, self-rule, and statehood for Washington, D.C. But not yet.”
Statehood for D.C. is more than a stretch: There are no city-states in America. The very concept of a “city-state” is chiefly relegated to ancient history. “The Greek city-states were the dominant settlement structure of the ancient Greek world,” National Geographic explains, “and helped define how different regions interacted with each other.” We can only hope that the federal/district Democrat cabal is never able to pull this electoral vote heist for “statehood” — a defunct political/civic entity — from their box of tricks.
The 118th U.S. Congress still largely live and work, with many bring their families, in the district and its suburban environs. Are many of this 2023 Congress not more than a bit frayed from the close and personal negativity of their civic engagement? The current statistics on members of Congress jumping ship may support such a possibility:
As of Dec. 1 2023, 36 members of Congress—seven members of the U.S. Senate and 29 members of the U.S. House—announced they would not seek re-election in 2024.
Of those 36, 20 have announced retirement.
We can’t assume that the sorry state of the District of Columbia has a direct bearing on the current and on-going spate of bi-partisan Congressional resignations and “retirements.” But it is common sense to expect the looming political attrition as fallout from life-qua-chaos in D.C. When our “home” environment — even a “home away from home” — reaches a pitch of human crisis, of worry, fear, damage, death, insecurity, and anger, it may be well past time to pull up stakes.
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