Friday, February 18, 2011

{All writers write crap sometimes.  I'll temporarily hold off on deleting this immature embarrassing late night ramble.}


Washington, D.C., is weird, weird, maybe, and maybe in the same way, as Ancient Rome. Surprise surprise.

A further surprise: Washington, D.C., runs on arrogance. It is run by people (Capitol Hill stuff, I mean) who think highly and unquestioningly about themselves, who size you up and use you for whatever you can be used for. Charm is a weapon, yes, of theirs, but also their innate grasp of where you fit into the economy.

Now that is all well and fine and to be perfectly expected, but there is one small problem. The arrogance of holding, or pretending to hold, power gives rise 100% of the time to equally cold and arrogant people wanting their share, and more, of power. One form of arrogance begets another, and so on. The Tea Party is only the latest example of the long line of the Robbespierre-like arrogant back and forth.

How many Washington people ever step out of the cycle? How many ever acknowledge arrogance as a systemic endemic problem? How many are willing not just to point the finger at the next guy, and like old Dick Nixon try to 'screw him.'

"When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry teaches him of his limitations." Yeah, old JFK said something like that once, not long before he went to Dallas.

But that's something you might know only if you watched stuff like Public Television (or were insane enough to search through the most obscure blogs.) And the Tea Party, as you know...

We all end up in nursing homes, listening to the guy in the next bed having a dialog with himself. "You shut up. No, you shut up." Back and forth.

3 comments:

Vic Fedorov said...

I always though washington was known for its sexism and racism. arrogance?
Washington IS like Rome in its (unnecessary) uniting of the states.
I'm not sure what is arrogant about the tea party. Is manipulating arrogant? I like to think I/We have a comic arrogance. If I can't be laughed at, then I am not arrogant enough...?...
That washington can not consider letting states run themselves is arrogant---letting each state craft their own health care mandate would be humble---there is something arrogant about the nature of the office of senate, and in the ego of thinking the DC politician is so great and exalted.

DC Literary Outsider said...

Thanks Vic. ! I am loathe to enter into any disagreements with a Constitutional lawyer. I was speaking impressionistically, with a novelist's imagination, a diatribe based on a perceived absence of 'love thy neighbor' that happens, probably in any modern city. Lincoln, say about him what you will on the issue of states rights, strikes one, at least through the hagiography, as a guy who would have been an okay neighbor, tolerant as he was of listening to whoever dropped by on certain afternoons at the old house.
But of course, there is something inherently arrogant about rule.

Vic said...

There is something arrogant about rule that is designed to not let the truth ring, or be applied.
These senators, I believe, are about plugging a hole the waters of good change can gush through, not encouraging the good water to flow.