Roger L. Simon: Four days in the nation's capital

I arrived back in my LA house from Washington DC at two in the morning today and am still pretty groggy. So take the following for what it's worth. But for work-related reasons, I have visited nation's capital more times in the last couple of years than I had in the rest of my life combined. At first I found it exciting, indeed heady, to be in the center of things. Increasingly, I find it depressing. No matter whom you are talking to, the atmosphere is grim and extraordinarily polarized, as if the air itself were polluted by hate and suspicion. Few people think objectively about anything from global warming to the war on terror. They just seek advantage over each other. You are in a world of such mutual loathing between the two sides that everyone seems to have checked their brains at the door. Today's party line vote on Iraq is just another predictable manifestation of that. Meanwhile, the world continues to be the world. Iran has taken British servicemen hostage in the Shatt al Arab. Ahmadinejad the Mad is on his way to New York. And our politicians bicker on. The word morons is a euphemism.

UPDATE: Ahmad the Mad is apparently not coming to New York. Perhaps he's afraid we would kidnap him.

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We have long neglected to remind Washington of its job. Instead of serving the needs of the country, they serve the needs of the party. Worse yet, they've pulled most Americans into the same hole of idiotic behavior. My democratic friends refuse to see the stupidity and lack of focus in their party and my Republican friends fail to see the problems in the GOP. They just blame the other side for everything.

As for the withdraw... I don't think it matters. The way I see it we can stay there and likely get involved in a Civil War fueled by sectarian violence (for which the US will get blamed), or, if we pull out, there will be a complete collapse of the existing government and a Civil War fueled by sectarian violence (for which the US will get blamed). Neither party has provided a solution. Bush seems to think we can beat them into submission, Pelosi seems to think we can talk them into submission.

Even better the supporters for both sides argue that their side DOES have a plan, but they're all pretty fuzzy on any real details. Bush has a plan called "Troop Surge", but then thats just for Baghdad. Pelosi has a plan "Pull Out", but that just gets our people out of immediate harm's way but doesn't provide any answers for the harm that will be headed our way in the near future.

If I were an evil Bond villain and wanted to destroy America, I don't think I could come up with a better plan than to use the media (CNN, FOX and the rest) to set American against American.. and lett the world go to hell around them while they fight over health insurance, carbon emissions, gay people and abortions.

It's a wonder our nation is not quaking from the vibrations of millions of Americans rolling over in their graves. We are, at last, nothing more than pathetic inheritors of an amazing ideal.

Of course we don't know why you were in D.C., but is it fair to wonder if you weren't at, instead of in, the center of things?

It has seemed to me for a longish time now that we are bizarrely replaying the Germany of the 1930s, with blisteringly goofy rhetoric (in my view, primarily by the Democratic Left, playing the Nazi role) responded to by a well-intentioned, more reasonable, more negotiation-prone, but increasingly incompetent Right/Bush Administration, playing the Hindenburg role. It is bizarre because America today lacks the precipitating convulsions experienced by the Germans in the several decades before the ascent of Hitler et al.

There is plenty of reason and reasonableness in the US, but the chasm is being dug by one side: the side where the educated prefer Echinacea, Palmetto extract,anything 'organic', home birth, instead of the chemicals derived therefrom and the safety of the hospital delivery room; the reality denial of "Give Peace a Chance". Was there something permanently impairing cognition caused by the boo they smoked in the '70s?

The cardinal rule of negotiation is that both parties must be willing to give for negotiation to have a chance to yield a useful outcome. When one seeks only to get, the ground-giver loses in every negotiation. Thus we can't give in, and thus the chasm widens and deepens. That chasm is being dug by ONE side, though. We'd be fools to start filling it in.

I'm a CSI man, I hardly ever watched Law and Order. But for the good of the nation I'm willing to compromise. ;)

i continue to be amazed that we are supposedly in a "war on terror and the states that sponsor it" yet the leaders of acknowledged terror states, by our and others definitions--iran, syria, hamas, hezzbollah etc continue to fly about and get feted at the UN and by US politicians looking for photo ops. they sip their lattes in relative comfort as they scribble on napkins how they intend to kill a few more americans.

Washington is truly a beautiful city, but the polarization makes it beyond stiffling.

As to Fred Thompson, he's never going to be president. However, he might make a very good running mate for Rudy.

We ought to be bold enough to kidnap the s.o.b., but of course, we're not. I'm not sure where I can see the conservatives to add to the polarization you felt in D.C. It is Lefty-land, from city government to the suburbs of Maryland and Virginia. Maybe's it'a the new Dem disdain vibe you were registering. They're almost entirely Dems.

TomTom..."we are bizarrely replaying the Germany of the 1930s"...to some extent, but I also see us replaying the France of the 1930s. I keep thinking on a conversation that Paul Reynaud (who became Prime Minister shortly before the German invasion of 1940) had with the writer Andre Maurois:

Maurois: "Nevertheless, Daladier (Reynaud's great rival) is certainly a man who loves his country."

Reynaud: "Yes, I believe he desires the victory of France, but he desires my defeat even more."

For a significant number of today's Democratic Congressmen, you can't even say this much for them. "He desires the victory of the United States" would be a false or meaningless statement in many cases.

I agree! No wonder nobody respects the USA anymore. The United States of Myopia!

We also make the mistake that we can reason and appeal to the reasonableness of our Islamic enemies. We are projecting ourselves and our values onto them. We are deceiving ourselves.

We're damn lucky our biggest problems are so much in the realm of psychological demoralization.

What if we had masses of enemy armored divisions poised at our borders, and were outnumbered and outclassed in the air and on the sea, and had a depressed economy with shortages, rationing, corrupt money, massive unemployment, AND had to cope with psychological demoralization?

"We're damn lucky our biggest problems are so much in the realm of psychological demoralization."

So, the big chicken will not come to New York fro fear someone will do the same thing to him that his henchmen did to the British sailors? What a coward.

I am sure there is polarization in the DC and I am not sure what to do about it. It is easy to blame it on the war, but it is more complex than that. It seems to me that there has always been a rivalry in DC, but during the Clinton years it began to turn into something else and it has only gotten worse.

Bush had a high approval rating in Texas and managed to work well with both parties. I think he actually believed at first that he could overcome that snarky back stabbing mindset. Not a chance. DC eats people.

But this happens from time to time. At least so far the Democrats have not fired on Fort Sumnter.

And I don't think we will be fighting in Iraq forever either. We might have a base there in the Kudish part of the country, but I think people are confusing four years with forever and I think they are confusing sectarian violence with Antietam. And I think it is insane for General Pelosi to believe she can order the troops around. If the intent of the Democrats was to do anything other than piss people off this vote sure as hell could have fooled me.

No much evidence of the much touted Blue Dog Democrats, then? Or is Pelosi too skilled at bending arms?

The "big chicken" will not come to New York because he is projecting on us what he would do if the shoe was on the other foot.

Maybe if we had the guts to do something like that with all of these diplomats who flout our laws, things would be different.

I loved your General Pelosi comment. And I agree, this vote will be sure to piss of anyone who can see even the smallest bit of reality.

We're damn lucky our biggest problems are so much in the realm of psychological demoralization.

The psychology of the citizens seems to have a far greater impact on things over time. The Tet offensive was a disaster from the perspective of an attack on Americans, but it was a major success in the demoralization of the citizens of the US. Fourth Generation Warfare appears to rely heavily on demoralizing the enemy, since most forth gen "armies" cannot afford to actually fight the enemy directly.

March 23, 2007: Four days in the nation's capital

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