“In an emotional address at the state capitol, Nebraska Governor Paul Burmaster made a public apology for his state being so flat.” – Hot Shots! Part Deux
If I could have a steak dinner with any historical figure, it would be Gandhi. More steak for me.
The Family Wilder was having dinner out a few weeks ago. We generally do that every Friday. Pugsley has OCD so he insists that we give the waitress what we want starting with the highest priced item first. It’s an extremely rare dish order. Of course, I kid.
As is our custom, before we go out for dinner we toss all of our cell phones on the table. We literally party like it’s 1999. Discussion takes place without the constraint of Internet-enabled fact checking. Rather than argue the facts, we agree to table that discussion until later, and can talk instead about pure ideas, like when The Boy decided that giving up spreadsheets forty days before Easter was an Excel® Lent idea.
Our conversation often travels into weird subjects, like it did that night. This is actually the combination of several conversations we’ve had over time. Being married for years means that a lot of what’s included in this conversation was said weeks or even years earlier, so it’s not exactly our dinnertime discussion.
John Wilder: “You know, part of the problem is Washington, D.C. is just in the wrong place. Sure, when the nation was founded it was smack in the middle of the 13 states. Now? It’s stuck on a seaboard, three thousand miles away from California, and 1,500 miles away from anything that could plausibly be called the center of the country.”
I want to ban the sale of pre-shredded cheese. Together, we can make America grate again!
The Mrs.: “Yes, plus all the lobbyists flock there. They spend huge amounts of money wining and dining Congress. Gotta get that bacon-wrapped shrimp.”
JW: “Yes! Plus the population there has just grown to love government. Heck, in 2016, 90.9% of the folks in Washington, D.C. voted for Hillary. Donald Trump got 4.1%. This doesn’t have remotely resemble the nation as a whole. It also explains why the Left was so surprised when he won. They probably don’t even know someone who voted for Trump. Though you could have made a fortune mining the salt from their tears.”
The Mrs.: “Perhaps there’s a better place for the capitol?”
JW: “Perhaps. How about Sioux Falls, South Dakota? I think it gets hot there in the summer, but also cold in the winter. If we just made sure the new capitol building had substandard heating and air conditioning . . . .”
The Mrs.: “And made sure that no hotel better than a Holiday Inn Express® could be built . . . .”
JW: “And made sure that all fancy parties had to be catered by Sonic®?”
It would be so nice if Sonic added an “e” to its name.
It was a fun thought – fancy lobbyists forced to eat chili-cheese tater tots instead of the previously mentioned bacon-wrapped shrimp. Perhaps the reason is that I, as an American citizen in the southern part of Northern Midwestia, have no real connection to the level of luxury and power that our Congresscritters experience on a daily basis.
It’s not just that. The power in Washington, D.C. has proven to be as attractive to Leftists as Jeffrey Epstein’s plane was to Bill Clinton.
I recall back in 2000 when some sort of group on the Right was thinking of marching on Washington, D.C. In the comments, one person asked, “Why would you want to go there? There is no one from the Right there. You’re travelling into enemy territory. If you want to protest, try Wyoming.”
Make no mistake about it, Washington, D.C. is enemy territory. Although everyone there isn’t a Leftist, it’s Leftist enough that wearing a Gadsden Flag t-shirt in a public location is probably not conducive to long term oxygen use here on Planet Earth. There’s a reason that Trump “inspected” the bunker as fires and riots were raging outside of the White House. I mean, riot season so early? I still have my COVID decorations up.
There were riots in Detroit, too. They caused $7 million in improvements.
Would that riot have happened in Sioux Falls? Or Hastings, Nebraska? Or Missoula, Montana? Or Bismarck, North Dakota? I think not.
Since the conversation that night, I had the idea that there’s no real reason that the United States needs to have a fixed capitol at all. Put the thing into a group of double-wide trailers and move it around from state to state – each state gets a shot to have the capitol for six months or so.
To make it even spicier, make sure that the cities the capitol lands in have populations of less than 300,000 or so and are more than two hours from a really big airport. Heck one month they could skip telling the New York delegation where they were going, just for giggles.
I tried to think of a social-distancing joke, but this was as close as I could get.
It wasn’t long after this conversation that I got an email from a reader suggesting exactly this same idea. “Defund D.C.” was the suggestion. I’d name them, but I didn’t have permission, but here’s a direct quote (with minor changes – style only):
“On January 21, 2021, start moving all Federal offices out of D.C. and Northern Virginia. Leave only small legislative liaison staffs, and establish new offices in currently red states. All national monuments in the area will continue to operate, if they charge admission and become self-sustaining without National Park Service funds.”
I’d add that we don’t want to burden Red States with a batch of imported Leftists, so the offices would be moved, and we could pick up new staff at the new locations. We could house most of them in empty big box retail stores and malls. Plenty of locals would like the jobs, but I worry that they’d be more efficient than the Leftists they replace and we might actually get the government we pay for.
All in all, I like the idea. Heck, anything we could do to reduce the power of the Federal government at this point, I’m for.
I once pushed a female mathematician into a swamp. She ended up with algae bra.
But I worry it’s too late.
When I look at the way that both sides have been spending money over the last twenty years, I am fairly certain that all of them go to parties where “deficits don’t matter” is written out on the buffet table in prosciutto ham wrapped asparagus. Beyond the financial stress, the political stress has been built up. To be clear, this political stress was built up when things were relatively good in the country. When things go bad financially?
Look out below, it’s a long way to drop.
Given that, it might be too late. But I will admit that it does make me smile when I think about Congresscritters bathed in rivers of sweat in July and having to give speeches in overcoats and mittens in November in double wide trailers on the Great American Prairie.
It might not solve anything.
But it sure would be amusing.