Growing up in some basic US suburbs never did much for my patriotic spirit. Politics always felt far away. Not that it didn’t affect me, because it obviously did. It still never felt like it. Which is weird considering that politics is physically close to you pretty much wherever you are in the US, with the influence of state governments, local governments, and school boards. The reach of these institutions, however, does naturally diminish as the federal government grows, and as the marble cake of federalism marbles more, so to speak. I’m not necessarily saying that’s a bad or good thing, but it is a reliable trend of American history. That’s just to point out that, if the federal government becomes more and more ubiquitous, local politics becomes less important as time goes on. Also, considering how most Americans actually don’t live in the US capital, this means the nexus of politics inevitably contracts farther from the average American. Kinda lackluster for most of us. That does make it very cool, however, to be in D.C., which I had the pleasure of visiting last year.
It’s really an awesome place. It’s full of American history and all sorts of towering monuments. I rode in a subway for the first time there, which was honestly one of my favorite parts of the D.C. experience. The subway stations all look like giant Star Wars tubes or something, quite sci-fi. It was pretty spectacular to get off at our first stop from the airport. It really does look like you’re in this giant spaceship with huge rounded ceilings and a fantastic mechanical air of whooshing subway trains. It’s great to take a comprehensive transit system around such a cool city. You can take the train to such iconic stations as “Pentagon,” which, yes, goes straight to the actual Pentagon. Pretty metal. I think you need some kind of security clearance to go inside, but still. “Smithsonian” drops you off in the middle of the national mall next to all the Smithsonian museums. You can look straight across and see the Capitol building at the end. Just think of all the logrolling that goes on in there. Thanks, high school gov class.
D.C. was cool to visit for a couple days, but it seems it would be a lot cooler to live there. If you lived in D.C., you would really have no choice but to face history everywhere you turned. I wonder how D.C. residents cope with that. Just kidding, it would actually be awesome. It makes me think of the scene from Captain America: the Winter Soldier where Steve laps Sam several times on the classic circuit around the national mall.1 While I was there I saw plenty of runners taking the same route. Wouldn’t it be so cool to fit all that architecture and grandeur into your daily routine with a run? A run is such a personal and mundane activity, and yet in D.C. your morning jog is adorned by museums, democracy, and giant statues of men. Inspiring.
Where democracy and personal life really intersected for me the most was outside the Supreme Court, where I saw a woman on her running route hold up the middle finger to the Court the whole time she went by. Who knows what she was protesting but really I find this a fascinating depiction of democracy in action. So yes, again with the runners. For some reason running around national monuments is a spectacular exercise in living democracy. Amidst all of politics’ negativity, I think it really says something about America conceptually that you can run straight to the Supreme Court’s front door, all the while flipping it the bird, with no consequences besides looking cool while doing it. One might extrapolate to assume this woman actually runs this route every day, and every day rededicates her displeasure with the Court through the ritualistic gift of that obscene gesture. If nothing else, one must imagine Sisyphus democratically involved. I think the real takeaway here is that running is a weirdly American and democratic thing to do.
Left to right: Studious Ben Franklin in the White House, Chick-fil-A in Chinatown, Magnolia blossoms in Arlington National Cemetery, Pentagon Station
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UGu2sRmSHI ↩︎
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