As an Empire Declines, the Imperial capital becomes awash in selfishness, greed, deceit and dysfunction. Washington, D.C. is no exception to the historical rule. The September, 2010 issue of Vanity Fair includes an article Washington, We Have A Problem by Todd Purdum which asks some pertinent questions—
How broken is Washington? Beyond repair? A day in the life of the president reveals that Barack Obama's job would be almost unrecognizable to most of his predecessors—thanks to the enormous bureaucracy, congressional paralysis, systemic corruption (with lobbyists spending $3.5 billion last year) and disintegrating media.
Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter gives us a longer perspective on Washington. I am soooo grateful when somebody other than me says stuff like this—
Washington, in the years before World War II, was little more than a segregated, southern hog town... Back then, Washington and its transient population of lawmakers did not govern every sector of American life the way it seems to today... The press corps was a clubby group, and the beat was a sleep, lubricated one; reporters by and large lacked pretensions to superstar status, and were not under the illusion that what happened in Washington was more important than anything else that might be happening in America...
The change since then has been gradual but dramatic. Twin pressures of the most intense kind—to manage the economy and to protect national security—have relentlessly altered the character of the Federal government and all it's constituent parts. (The Washington Post estimates that more than 1,200 government organizations and 1,900 private companies now manage the various components of our national-security infrastructure.)
With every passing year, more money and more power have shifted toward the capital. And as it has grown more influential nationally and globally, Washington has become a capital rife with corruption, rot, and systemic dysfunction. Congress has become a virtual prisoner to special-interests, and is in many ways now defunct as a truly deliberative body. The executive branch is saddled with new managerial tasks every day, and clearly lacks the capacity to deal with them.
The president still wields considerable power; the flip side is that he is held responsible for everything that goes wrong anywhere—from an underwear bomber on an international flight to a drilling-platform disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The Washington press corps has mutated into a pious, overpaid class of political touts and scorekeepers with little grasp of real-world problems or life as it is lived among ordinary people in the vast sweep of America away beyond the Beltway.
[My note: No emphasis added because none is needed.]
Amen! How broken is Washington? — completely. Beyond repair? — it is unless all of human history up to this point was a just a fluke, and we will see the real deal starting now.
And how about those—
1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies working on programs related to counter-terrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
1,271 hundred government organizations and 1,931 private contractors working on our national security? Do you think there's any corruption going on there? Of course, not. I'm sure it's all on the up and up. I'm sure we need every one of them!
Can you say Gravy Train?
And will all these assiduous, hard-working, honest freedom fighters protect us from the less numerous terrorists? Former national security honcho Richard Clarke doesn't think so, as he told Stephen Colbert a few days ago. In fact, he thinks this corruption overkill is making matters worse. No doubt.
911 as govt. Military Job Creation Programme No. 1. War against X(fill in the blank) will always be needed as a stimulus programme. What comes next as public enemy no. 1, Will Smith?
Maybe with $300/barrel oil the airplanes will stop flying and the computer servers of CIA and co. will have blackouts due to overloaded electrical lines. The roads in and outside of the beltway won't be paved anymore due to costs and sewage will back up into the white house and congressional toilets. AC will fail in DC in another series of Long Hot Summers forcing the lobbyists and politicans to flee the capital to cooler climes. Collpase will be meant literally not just on a virtual bank statment of Citicorp and JP Morgan Chase. We can only hope and pray for the day that Washington becomes just another backwater with malarial infested Potomac swamps making life miserable for anyone unfortunate enough to not be able to get away.
Posted by: Edward Boyle | 08/18/2010 at 02:07 PM