I hope all of you are happy getting to vote in the Democratic primary! I also get a vote. Dead last, as it turns out. Either I support the decision made by the rest of the Democratic party, or cast a protest vote against it. That’s my choice.
But that’s okay. As a DC resident, I’m used to most of the important decisions being made by other people before I ever get consulted.
Like, for example, gun control. Which I’m personally pissed about because someone unloaded a pistol around 9:30 last night in my neighborhood. We don’t think anyone was hurt, but I did throw myself to the ground and yell that people should stay away from the windows while calling 9/11. Sure enough, the crime map for our sleepy little neighborhood has been updated to include one assault with a deadly weapon (gun). So that’s fun.
But the great white fathers over at the capitol building have decided that we just aren’t intelligent enough to decide on our own gun laws, or on Marijuana decriminalization. Thankfully, they’re not smart enough to write legislation that got rid of the decriminalization, just prevent us from fully legalizing it in the future. So thanks for that, rest of the United States!
This is fine. I’m okay with the way things are proceeding currently. Someone empties a pistol magazine outside my home? That’s okay, things are going to be okay.
But if you’re not going to give us statehood, or do anything for the people in this city, or even allow us to write our own laws, perhaps you could refrain from slapping a map of our town on an article, and blaming us for the people who we don’t even get to vote for, whom you send here to rule us.
You blame me, a Washingtonian, for the mistakes the rest of you people make. We have to live with your decisions and the congress you collectively elect. We don’t get a voice in congress. We don’t get a vote on the floor of the house or senate. We get to make suggestions which are summarily ignored. You never hear how Marion Berry revitalized downtown DC, built our convention center, or helped right our economic direction so that we’re actually growing again. People sure love making fun of his personal issues, though.
Yes, yes, we’re all a bunch of crack addicts here who can’t be bothered to run our own affairs, which is why we need the assholes the rest of you elect to tell us what to do.
Thank you, by the way, for who you’ve been sending us lately. Though it doesn’t much matter. Whether they’re Democrats or Republicans they all seem to complain about beltway or DC insiders. As if we, the serfs who keep your capitol city running, have any say in anything.
Any time I hear a term like “Inside the Beltway” or “Washington Elite” I look around at my neighbors who live in the same working class neighborhood I do and I wonder who the hell you’re talking about. Nobody who makes up the majority of the population, that’s for sure. My downstairs neighbor, one of the inside the beltway elite, had to choose between feeding his children and owning a car, after he was laid off by a nearby factory which closed. His wife’s a school teacher, so they’re obviously sitting pretty. My upstairs neighbor is trying to figure out how to support a new child on a security guard’s salary. My next-door neighbors are a bus driver and postman, who are roommates. Clearly, we run this city and the rest of the country, and are part of the status quo everyone’s obviously so fed up with. Which is why the rest of you have sent just so many white men to Capitol Hill in order to tell us serfs what to do.
The least you could do, though, if you’re not going to give us statehood, or even local autonomy, if you’re going to treat us like an occupied territory, if you’re going to make sure that we have taxation without representation is to refrain from blaming us for the decisions the rest of you make. We aren’t the problem. We don’t even get a vote in congress. The problem is the rest of you, and the people you send to this city.
So please, stop it.
Though I do expect that this suggestion will be ignored, just like everything else we propose. I apologize, as one of the lowly serfs who keeps your capitol running, I have clearly overstepped my bounds.