Life in DOGE City, 5 February 2025

 Yesterday I took a trip to downtown DC to put a little more money where my mouth has been, if only to provide a couple more boots on the ground for a demonstration I’d heard about. Here’s how my day went.

I arrived at the Archives Metro and walked over to the Treasury Building where a crowd had gathered the night before to see if anything was shaking in the morning. Nothing was, unless you could barricades and a large police presence.

All entrances into the Treasury grounds were barricaded and manned with DC police. The gates had signs reading, ‘Pass Holders and Appointments Only.’ Pennsylvania Avenue north of the Treasury and White House were sealed tighter than a tick’s asshole. Nothing to see, I had to ask a souvenir vendor and a cop “I wonder what those cocksuckers are so afraid of.” The vendor laughed. The cop did not. The atmosphere wasn’t too bad, though the quantity of  police and Secret Service units on what is usually a public thoroughfare made things a little surreal.

From there I walked to the headquarters of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). A small crowd had gathered there on Tuesday to encourage the career employees and I thought maybe I could hook up with a few kindred spirits. The only person there was a guy dressed casually in a heavy flannel plaid shirt holding what appeared to be a walkie-talkie who ignored me, far as I could tell. He hung for about ten minutes before going into the building.

Crossing 15^th Street again on my way to the Capitol I saw police cars in the middle of the thoroughfare. Thinking something might be up, I walked north as far as H Street only to find nothing  had changed except that 15^th Street was now blocked altogether; no traffic of any kind could pass. I chalked it up to Elon not wanting his mid-day hummer from Felon to be disturbed and went on my way.

The crowd at the Capitol was disappointing at first, about twenty people. I chatted one up and learned the larger gathering was a few blocks away at USAID protesting Little Marco’s effort to close it down. There I found about a thousand people in a little park outside the Russell Senate Office Building. Everything peaceful, and the cops were courteous and often smiling.

The knot of twenty I’d passed on my way by the Capitol had moved across the street and swelled to about a hundred and were doing actual demonstrating. People were chanting and a bullhorn cut through the standard traffic noise.

A young woman I think I remembered from the Women’s March last month had the bullhorn and she was encouraging people to have their say. I listened to half a dozen or so brief speeches before asking if I could have a turn.

I started with, “I am a veteran,” which was interrupted by a shout of “Thank you for your service,” and general applause.

I cut them off with a modified ‘penalty declined’ gesture. “Calm down, people. The closest I got to combat was Atlanta, Georgia,” which drew a respectable laugh.

“While I didn’t serve in combat, I took the same oath everyone else does to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That oath had no expiration date, and I still take it seriously. It does my heart good to see so many of you here today who also take it seriously, whether you swore to it or not. Let’s kick ass.” That last provoked a minute or so of ‘let’s kick ass!’ chants.

I hung around for another ten minutes or so before my 69-year-old prostate reminded me I should start looking for some kind of lavatory and I made my way back toward Metro.

My major takeaways:

·       Using the urinal in a public toilet always puts me in mind of old Japanese monster movies: you see what’s going on, but the sound runs a second or so behind.

·       Going up to career federal employees to thank and encourage them to keep fighting the good fight is always appreciated, though a couple showed trepidation when I asked if they were lifers until I showed them I was a friend. That’s what it has come to.

·       I amused myself by spitting at ant Tesla I came across.

·       I have no delusions. A thousand everyday people gathering near government buildings won’t change any minds. Still, it was a thousand people of all ages who came out in a damp cold with freezing rain in the forecast on short notice to protest on a weekday. (Fortunately the precipitation held off.) What we did wasn’t enough, but maybe it’s a start.

Even if it is, the mistakes of this past election are going to cost, some more than others. Whatever might have begun on Wednesday is going to have to happen again and again and again. Pro-Democracy forces in this country grew complacent, and I bear my share of the blame. It’s going to take work to get things back to something we resemble as normal.

I’m in. I just wish people in authority were doing a better job of directing the resistance more effectively.