Editor’s Note: A version of this column first appeared on Matthew Dowd’s Medium blog. It is republished with his permission.
Whenever I go to Washington, D.C., I am still awed by visits to the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, the White House and the U.S. Capitol, the Vietnam and Martin Luther King, Jr. memorials, the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool, and so much more. I have worked in D.C. as an intern, a congressional staffer, and a White House adviser.
All my experiences in D.C. have been brief and it never felt like home. I wanted to keep it that way.
Why, you ask, did I never move there in any permanent way or keep 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 D.C. So many good people I have known have resided there. The problem I have consistently had with D.C. is that it’s a place of transactions and transitions, lacking inherent soulfulness.
Washington, D.C. 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 D.C. were 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 D.C. followed where someone else led.
Washington, D.C. has never been where real change started, or movements that moved America forward began or built into the energy needed for D.C. leaders to follow. Think about this for a second: the Civil Rights movement didn’t begin in D.C. The women’s suffrage 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 D.C.
Right now, the answers the capital city will most 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 to get some small step promised in a political campaign.
We are at a critical moment in our history, and the typical D.C. way is not the answer. This is also true of the political media which covers the news there. They, too, are based on the typical D.C. process of transactions and will not address what is fundamentally needed today.
And so in this moment when our democracy and our freedoms are threatened, where there is a rise of fascism in D.C., and at a time when 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 not rise and resonate from D.C.
It will come from connections and communities throughout America. Once this manifests itself in our country’s cities, towns, and neighborhoods and voices are raised so people have to listen, then and only then will D.C. leaders be elected and follow where we want them to lead.
We must build a movement infused with spirituality (not necessarily religion) and based on values that 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 know being consumed by the latest news from Washington isn’t helping.
Trying to slightly mollify the destructiveness emanating from D.C. isn’t the answer. We can’t walk away from it and ignore it.
Rather, we must act to bring about real change. That starts with engaging at home, where we live and touch most intimately.
We will then build a spiritual movement of kindness and decency with grit and grace that D.C. can’t ignore. Until then, we are just trying to convince the pyromaniacs to light fires a little more slowly or 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 and primarily concerned with temporary transactions.