Waiting for December 51, 2020

No, the title of this post is not a typo. I think we need to annex the first three weeks of 2021 onto 2020 and start fresh on January 21, 2021. After all, we have been stress drinking for almost five years. Surely we deserve three weeks to recover from the hangover.

Except we’re not going to get a quiet, dark room and a cold compress in the first three weeks of 2021, are we?

Without going into the politics of what happened in Washington, DC last week, I will just say that it was a level of bad that even I don’t have words for. I have lived here since 1999. I was here on 9/11. In fact, I wasn’t so far from the Capitol that day. In the immediate aftermath of that terrible day, there weren’t as many troops stationed in Washington as there are now. In fact, many are actually quartered in the Capitol building. The pictures of soldiers sleeping wherever they can make space in the Capitol is jarring.

Think about that. The internal threat to our constitutional process, the peaceful transfer of power, now rates more security than the possibility of a second wave did for an external terrorist attack that destroyed buildings and killed hundreds (in DC). On MSNBC this morning, one of the correspondents said that there hasn’t been this level of military presence in this city since it was a military camp in the Civil War.

In addition to the boots on the ground, the entire Mall (the space between the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol, including the museums of the Smithsonian and the White House) has been closed and put inside of a perimeter, over a dozen metro stations have been closed, as well as dozens of bus routes cancelled. Even Airbnb has cancelled reservations in DC to discourage the presence of non-residents.

The National Mall is America’s front yard. I know it better than I know any place on Earth. It’s my city. For those of us who live here, who have invested our time, interest, educations, and careers in the American political and bureaucratic machine, it wasn’t just a horror-inducing attack on our process, this felt like a personal violation. It probably felt that way to those outside DC, too.

AdobeStock_195283160.jpeg

Even as we grapple with the reckoning that has been coming for a while -- the atrocities committed to get here, the ugliness of ever-present and systemic racism, illusions of equal opportunities for all, the gaps in the protections for certain people – I still marvel that the flawed system they created so long ago is still functioning. Even a car that stalls can still be driven, but if we want it to continue running, we need to take it to a mechanic.

It’s no mistake that all of these things are coming to a head at the same time, and I think it is going to take a long time to diagnose and articulate all of our issues. Longer to address them, at least 10-20 years to feel like we are on the road to fixing things. I think we may be in the midst of a political realignment, which is always painful. But our institutions have held thus far and while incrementalism is no one’s favorite way to make changes, the changes made through incrementalism are stronger and last longer.

I am ready to tackle all of these issues. We will all have our small parts to play, such as voting or volunteering or contributing if you can. But first I really need to take some time and recover from the involuntary bender that was the Trump administration. We all do. Starting on December 51, 2020.