How many people does it take to screw in light bulb? 100.  One of them holds onto the bulb and the other 99 spin the house.  It’s not supposed to work that way.  There are written instructions on how to install a light bulb, but who reads those?  It won’t be long before LED bulbless fixtures will cause some of the younger among us to say “what’s a light bulb?” and “what instructions?”.  Here in Washington, DC, 545 politicians try to “spin” the country around popular opinion while “old pieces of paper” – or the “instructions” – try to hold it in place.  We are close to the point where the majority of people living in America will say “what instructions”?

Is it a matter of out of sight – out of mind?  I know most people have never read a bible and simply let a “representative” priest or minister tell them what’s inside the book – if they even care.  The same holds true for the Constitution and Bill of Rights; most Americans have never even seen it, let alone read it so who needs it?  It’s so “history”.  As I sit in my hotel room in Washington, D.C., I’m thinking about the sheer amount of living history in this city and I am simply in awe.  While driving along the George Washington Memorial Parkway as I came into town, I saw many of the famous structures, monuments and land features.  Some of these have been present for a quarter of a millennia and played important roles in the formation of this country.  Even the street names reflect the rich heritage of the District; names like Jefferson Street, Adams Street, Webster Street and George Mason Drive.

I’m equally struck when I see the grave markers in the many graveyards around DC and stand near the various monuments.  Great men came here with great vision for a new kind of nation; one that would be a land of freedom for all people; one that would be ruled by the people; one where the leader would live in the “Peoples’ House” – what we now call the “White House”.  It’s fitting that today, as I write this article, it is President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday; the man who said “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

I’m not as idealistic as James Stewart’s “Jefferson Smith” character from the iconic 1939 movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”, but I AM just as exhausted by the experience of trying to figure out D.C.  I get the feeling it would be nigh on impossible to make much of a real difference here.  Scott Walker, Governor of Wisconsin, called Washington D.C. “68 square miles surrounded by reality”.  If you look at the restrictions placed upon you only while in D.C., that description seems apt.  Even the motto on license plates of vehicles registered in the District – “Taxation Without Representation” – bemoans the disparity between the ideals written into our Constitution by our founding fathers and the current treatment of our citizenry by the Untouchable Self-aggrandizing Unaccountable Regulatory Powers (U.S.U.R.P.) formerly known as a “government of the people, by the people, for the people”.  Will you allow our Constitutional Republic to be turned into a “government at the people, to the people, on the people”?  If we do, then we deserve what we get.

© 2015 Curt Savage Media