nude highway driving

I love walking to work. It takes about 50 minutes, and I get to walk past all the Capitol Hill bars, around the deck and down the stairs of the Capitol, across the Mall and up a bustling Pennsylvania Avenue. People are out and about as the monuments, museums and buildings vogue in the sun. D.C. actually is a pretty city, in most spots. Walking to work on days like today usually becomes a sort of meditation, bumping me into a sun-induced relaxation before dealing with nine hours of hectic news.

Today walking to work pissed me off.

You can’t walk through the Capitol like you used to. Congress has implemented many different little security additions, probably costing us millions, and for the past several months has limited public access to a building the public owns. Today they even had the sidewalks through the grass off-limits to visitors, as well as walking on certain sides of the street on some blocks. Public streets. Public sidewalks. While Congress is on vacation. This “security” is a blazing example of self-importance and nothing more, as nobody is going to attack Congress. Nobody needs to. Congress is irrelevant. They don’t do anything except rubber-stamp whatever the Redneck Across Town wants. It’s sad and deplorable, but it’s true. No terrorist is going to attack Congress because the effect on the country’s policies and operation would be nil. (Unless a French nationalist attacks and the country, in the confusion of the aftermath, forgets and starts calling fried potatoes “french fries” again.)

Yesterday Donald Rumsfeld submitted a proposal to overhaul the military that would, among other things, transfer up to 300,000 jobs to civilian contractors, let the DOD skirt environmental laws and get him out of reporting to Congress on weapons programs. I am confident Congress will pass this, right after they give Bush the go-ahead to invade Syria.

The loss of the Capitol, coupled with not being allowed in Lafayette Park some days, reeks of a government that no longer is for the people, but for those who think they are above the people. This is the most public of America’s cities and the public areas slowly are dwindling in the name of national security. I don’t buy it. I want my public spaces back. I want my country back.