A Cesspool is a filthy, disgusting, or morally corrupt place. Perfect description of Washington, DC. Jacob Dreizin is a US Army vet and has written the following, which provides an excellent report on the current conditions in DC.
From Jacob Dreizin:
Some folks wanted to know who I am before forwarding my work, make sure I’m not a lunatic—fair enough! I am 43 years old, a U.S. Army veteran, two Masters degrees, Deplorable, a GOP “donor” (into the five figures since 2017, won’t give another cent until the party gets its head out of the sand), an immigrant, married to an immigrant, a father of three, living with my wonderful family in northern Virginia, 18 miles from Washington, DC. Naturally, I have to keep this newsletter far apart from my day-job. In line with that, I don’t have a Twitter or Facebook or any other social media account or web presence, besides some pieces I got published on various blogs. But I got tired of dealing with editors who usually don’t respond. Now, doing it my way. Thanks for reading!
You wouldn’t know it from (lack of) news coverage, but Washington, DC, our nation’s capital, has become a dump, a real disaster zone. Few know that DC had the toughest virus rules in the country. By law, you had to (maybe still do) wear a mask outside at all times. Between the suburb dwellers working from home, the virus closures, the BLM riots, and the Inauguration “army show” and road closures—when the only doors open for a week in three square miles of downtown were McDonalds, 7-11, and a few coffee shops—they killed the city.
Two-thirds of ground-floor “storefront” businesses downtown—restaurants, cafes, banks, the odd financial advisor or asset manager—have closed, most of them permanently. Even the Starbucks near the World Bank has closed. When Starbucks checks out, you have a problem.
Starbucks.
I spent 15 minutes recently at the Hilton on 16th Street and did not see a single customer, only two employees doing nothing. The hotel restaurant and almost everything but the elevator lobby were roped off. Closer to the White House, the damage to city property from last year’s BLM riots has not been repaired. The city is short on taxes and evidently tapped out. It has no money but what it can get through Federal bailouts.
Family members worked around the corner from St. John’s church.
Circumstances had me driving into DC around 45 times between March and June 2020.
I saw the change, the boarded up windows not only on 16th St. but all the way up Wisconsin Ave. to Chevy Chase, where high-end retailers, banks, and smaller trendy restaurants boarded up. Guards slept in sleeping bags in front of Friendship Library in Tenleytown; Target a few doors up was boarded.
I was at Lafayette Park & saw the crowds the day before the church was burned. I was relieved to see it was undamaged, tho if I recall it had been graffitied. The next day, part of it was burned. The Episcopal bishop condemned Trump for condemning those who defiled the church but she did not condemn the defilers.
A utility building on the edge of the park, across from the church was covered with the vilest graffiti.
I saw workers boarding up windows. I took photos of workers repairing damaged windows and doorways, and removing graffiti from stone buildings.
I saw workers take down BLM banners from flagpoles where American flags had been torn down; at the foot of Whitehurst Freeway, or at K Street — I forget — I took photos of a homeless encampment where a giant American Flag was used as a tent. Gates and statues at the foot of the hill up to Georgetown University were vandalized.
In mid-July Jamie Raskin, my congressman, appeared on TV and said “the protests were peaceful.” The next day I arranged to sell my house. After 17 years of creating a comfortable home, I could not allow myself to be represented by someone so obviously deceitful.
I had been regretting my action: DC had been the source of much enrichment and information and I liked living nearby. Until reading Jacob Dreizen’s eyewitness testimony, news reports that the Capitol was surrounded by fences and barbed wire was an abstraction. The state of DC is a tragedy of immense proportions. It’s hard to know how the situation can be reversed.
Dr Jill needs to rethink her claimed FLOTUS project: re-uniting illegal families at the borders, and free community college for everyone. Instead she needs to channel Lady Bird Johnson and clean up her own backyard. Shocking, but not a surprising report. Lived there in the 1970’s after the civil rights riots and during Watergate – DH at the time worked for OMB – these blocks you show were my turf too.
At least the public monuments were in good order and the NW was still desirable back then, during the Mayor Marion Berry days, but much of the rest city was a total cess pit. I remember coming in on the airport bus from the Baltimore-Wash thinking no city I had seen around the world at that time looked as burned out and desperate as many of the blocks right around out nation’s capital.
How could this be our welcome to America for visitors? There is a difference between poverty and impoverishment seen around the world. Wash DC was impoverished. Wash DC had a spiritual malaise.
This in the 1970’s included Kalorama Circle in the shadow of the WH and Capitol Hill in the shadow of Congress and the Supreme Court at that time (1970’s) – some of these neighborhoods sound like they have made a comeback since then, but life in much of the district at that time was full of crime and dereliction. You never wanted to make the wrong turn “around the block” off one of the main city diagonals and get lost, nor stop your car down at red lights, if you could keep going and keep moving.
I never understood how Wash DC could be the face of our Nation. But I also did not understand the entropy of long-time Democrat rule at that time either. Since then, all Democrat- run cities in California evidence the same decline and human decrepitude. Raid the treasury and hire the relatives – the recipe for third world status continues to hold true in these cities in this our “wealthiest and freest” nation on earth.
An American paradox. We are free to both build and free to destroy – all by individual choice. Not every0ne makes good decisions when handed the gifts of freedom. ACLU steps in slaps your hands and shuts down any attempts to have it any other way.
I went to college in DC 55 years ago.
It was a crime-infested disaster zone then.
Whole sections (SE,SW) were “no go” for white people.
Sounds like it found a way to actually get worse.
And this was before they had an elected Mayor and city government.
TV
I remember that period well. I was stationed here in language school in 1964. It was pretty awful, but it got better in SW with massive re-development. SE never improved but you could not really see it from the roads that ran along the river past Bolling AFB, etc. Now they have a leftist elected city government which demonstrates the lack of wisdom that went into granting of Home Rule for DC. That combined with the Pelosian fantasy of hordes of White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis about to hurt her precious self and you have a recipe for disaster.
It is time to move our capital out of the swamp it was built on. If not done, then the best I can see happening there is something like the setting of Robocop – and it’s starting to resemble that movie quite a bit.
I have been twice, and was never impressed in the first place. Malaysia, Indonesia, Moscow – even Kazakhstan are cleaner and more appealing. The rest of the world is far from impressed by the shithole we have today. Our capital makes it much easier to sell communism than capitalism.