The Soul of America is Outside DC
Whenever I go to Washington, DC I am still awed by visits to the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, the White House and the US Capitol, the Vietnam and Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorials, the Reflecting Pond, and so much more. I have worked in DC at times as an intern, a Congressional staffer, and a White House adviser. All my moments in DC have been brief and it never felt like home, and I wanted to keep it that way.
Why you ask did I never move there in any permanent way or always kept my home in Texas even when I worked there for brief stints? The answer my friends is not “blowing in the wind”, the answer is pretty clear. Yes, I have many friends who have lived and worked in DC. So many good people I have known have resided there. The problem I have consistently had with DC is that it is a place of transactions and transitions, lacking in an inherent soulfulness.
DC is where people make deals and then move on. It is primarily rooted in the political marketplace where quid pro quo or “I get this, and you get that” is the most universal principle. If DC was a game show it would be Let’s Make a Deal. It is where connection is a process and not a value. And even when some positive result happens for the common good of America, it is because DC followed where someone else lead from somewhere else.
Washington, DC has never been where real change started or movements which moved America forward began or built into the energy needed for DC leaders to follow. Think about this for a second: the Civil Rights movement didn’t begin in DC, the women’s right to vote movement didn’t start there, the gay rights movement didn’t build there, and all the labor movements and anti-war movements were birthed and built outside of DC.
Right now the answers most in DC will provide will be all about some tiny steps built on a transactional process. It will be about making some horrendous policy just slightly less awful. It will be about voting for unqualified appointees who lack the character needed so that one can claim “bipartisanship”. It will be about working with the White House and Republican leaders so one can get some small step promised in a political campaign. We are at a critical moment in our history, and the typical DC way is not the answer. This is also true of the political media which covers the news now there. They too are based in the typical DC process of transactions and will not address what is fundamentally needed today.
And so in this moment where our democracy and our freedoms are threatened, where there is a rise of fascism in DC, and where the marginalized and most vulnerable in America are not treated with dignity and are under attack from powerful forces in Washington, the movement and momentum to counter this and reimagine a multicultural America in the 21st century will net rise and resonate from DC. It will come from connections and communities throughout America. And once this manifests itself in the cities, towns, and neighborhoods in our country, and voices are raised so people have to listen, then and only then will DC leaders will be elected and then follow where we want to lead them.
This movement we must build is one infused with spirituality (not necessarily religion) based in values which nearly all of us hold dear: treating all our brothers and sisters with kindness and compassion, equality and justice for all, accountability for people who grift and game the system for their own benefit, and a nation that can lead the world in education, health care, and decency. Yes, our anger at what is happening can motivate and help us rise and stand up, but once we rise, we must act and push not using anger but love for our fellow citizens and a desire for deep connection.
I don’t have all the answers, but I do know being consumed by the latest DC news isn’t helping. And trying to slightly mollify the destructiveness emanating out of DC isn’t the answer. We can’t walk away from it and ignore it, we must though act in the way real change will come. And that starts in engaging at home where we live and touch most intimately. And we build a spiritual movement of kindness and decency with grit and grace that DC can’t ignore. Until then we are just trying to convince the pyromaniacs to just light fires a little more slowly or to talk them into lighting the fire in someone else’s neighborhood.
We can do this, and it starts with us. Permanent positive deeply rooted spiritual change will not come from a place lacking soul primarily concerned with temporary transactions.
