I mentioned in an earlier blog that I would get to this subject -- Washington, D.C. As a 12 yearold boy, I visited our nation's capitol in the Summer of 1968. Yeah, one of the year's that will go down in American History as a time when we thought it was possible that the great experiment of a democratic state might not last. The Vietnam War had pitched the half the country against the other half. Riots erupted on college campses from coast-to-coast. The Chicago Police brutally beat Anti-War protesters on National TV. The National Gaurd was called out to help. The newspapers and magazines of the day were filled with photos of tear gas, flower power, troops with young college students, people being beaten and dragged away.
The spin from the was into the Media was atrocious -- always listing how many "enemy" dead as compared to how many US sodiers killed each day and each week. And this on the six O'clock new delivered straight to the family dinner table. Never were the numbers believable -- the US troops were always less killed sometimes by orders of magnitude, but the reality surfaced that whole battalions of troops had been killed, sometimes in single days.
It was a time that tried everyone. I really began to believe that the future of our country would not stand, if things continued like this.
And yet, in 1968...
When I visited the Senate, there were no security lines. When I visited the Washington Monument, I walked the stairs all the way to the top with a friend of mine, there was no security ensemble or Xray room to stop us. The biggest security was at the US mint! My friend, Michael, and I went to the Smithsonian, the National Archives, the Sentate, the House, the White House, the Washington and Lincoln Memorials, the Jefferson memorial, the Tresury Building -- heck, we even had lunch in the Senate Office Building cafeteria and rode on the subway to get there from the Capitol with Senator Edward Kennedy! No xray. No security details. No fear.
But in 2008...
I had told my son and his friend of my Summer in '68 and what I had done, and how much I had enjoyed the great City of Washington. How proud I was of it and what a shining example of honor and peace it was.
Everywhere we went, streets blocked off, barricades to prevent "who knows what". Xray machines, and military-like security personnel, yelling at us to stay in line and stand against the wall in order to go into the Capitol rotunda. Heck, my wife had to get her purse Xrayed just to visit the National Aquarium in the Federal Triangle. It was ridiculous, the complete overkill of security and disdain for visitors to our Nation's Capitol. We couldn't climb the stairs in the Washington Monument any more -- closed due to Security. We couldn't visit the White House (owned by the Public since the 19th Century) -- closed for Security. We managed to visit many places, but going to them was worse in most cases than boarding an airplane's security.
And some of you might think that this is necessary because of the terrorists. Is it necessary in your city? Is it necessary in your hometown? Would it make any less of a headline if terrorists blew up something in your city than Washington, D.C.? Would it kill any less people?
What I saw in Washington, D.C. this Summer was fear mongering. Out-and-out marketing to tell everyone who participates in that city that you should be afraid, all the time.
I say that this is wrong. It wasn't necessary in the bomb-throwing times of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, it's not necessary today.
Washington, D.C. needs to lead by example as an exemplary city, the quintessential American city. If the new president wants to lead, the city he lives in and governs from should lead as well.
You know, on the Federal Planning and Urban Development Building there are NO solar panels? There is no water reclamation system in place for any of the city parks or memorials? The traffic gridlock is horrendous and the subway system is fabulous! Oh, by the way, no security measures in the subway system -- oversite? No, just doesn't take as good of a picture for the media marketing.
Fix our city, Mr. President, make it a place where fear doesn't exists again. Lead by example.
Comments are closed for this post.
