It’s amusing, in a way. Sad in another.
Over there at The New York Times, longtime Washington journalist Sally Quinn has headlined: “It’s No Longer So Much Fun to Be MAGA in Washington.”
Ms. Quinn writes:
The worst part about living in Donald Trump’s Washington has been seeing just how much fun he and all the MAGA vandals he brought to power have been having sacking and pillaging the place. This while the rest of us longtime Washingtonians who abided by norms, shared values and even bipartisanship were filled first with shock, then a feeling of helplessness, and hopelessness. It could border on passivity. What could be done?
A year ago, I wrote a guest essay for Times Opinion about how scared many of us were in Washington: “Nobody feels safe. Nobody feels protected. This is a city where people seek and, if it all goes well for them, wield power. But today in Washington, those who hold — or once held — the most power are often the most scared. It is not something they are used to feeling.”
While some time ago, I moved home to Pennsylvania to take care of aging parents, in fact I lived in Washington for almost three decades. Working successively for a congressman, senator, a president (Reagan), and a Cabinet secretary (Secretary Jack Kemp at HUD in the Bush 41 era). Then, with the Clinton arrival, it was time to leave government but stay in town to start a whole new career writing in the media. Then, as mentioned, the time arrived to depart for home.
I mention this because Ms. Quinn writes in detail about today’s Trump era in Washington. Saying, as noted above…
“….about how scared many of us were in Washington: ‘Nobody feels safe. Nobody feels protected. This is a city where people seek and, if it all goes well for them, wield power. But today in Washington, those who hold — or once held — the most power are often the most scared. It is not something they are used to feeling.”
In fact, this particular writing of a longtime Washington denizen’s feelings about living today in Washington is, one suspects without her being aware of it, a crystal clear example of exactly what went wrong with Washington that resulted in Donald Trump’s election in the first place.
The obvious needs to be said. America is a big country. A seriously big country. Its 50 states are composed of various, quite different regions. On the surface they may all seem to be the same to a foreign observer. Yet in fact, as most Americans understand, New York is not California, which is not Montana, which is not Georgia, which is not Massachusetts and New England.
But there is one seriously unifying aspect to these 50 states. That would be the sense of alienation they all have come to feel for Washington, D.C., and the sense that radiates from the capital that the country’s be-all and end-all is seen by Washington’s denizens as theirs to do with as they wish.
Ms. Quinn’s column epitomizes that sense of Washington’s permanent power brokers that they are somehow, in their world of power elites, deserving of their place and have a right to be running the rest of the country and telling everybody else what to do. Whether the rest of the country likes it or not.
Not to mention the sense that pervades the country that Washington’s power-broker insiders look down their noses at the rest of the country. Believing that they have a God-given right to run the country and that Americans must do what their elite betters in Washington demand of them.
The hard fact here is that this attitude coming out of Washington is one of the reasons why — exactly why — Donald Trump was elected to the White House in the first place. And with a 100 percent dependability, the arrival of non-Washington Americans in the nation’s capital — the MAGA supporters — has stirred the inevitable resentment of a culture clash. A culture clash between those who have been, in the fashion of snobby elites, long ruling the Washington roost and those who are new or relatively new arrivals. New arrivals, in this case, associated with President Trump. Arrivals that Ms. Quinn airily dismisses as “MAGA vandals.”
Make no mistake. The real source of Ms. Quinn’s resentment and Establishment blues is nothing more or less than one example of the resentment of Washington insiders at the arrival in the capital of America’s outlanders. Men and women who have spent their lives outside Washington and living around this very big country, living their lives, raising families, building businesses, and more.
Which is another way of saying, Washington is all about the power. That’s it.
It is safe to say the MAGA world and their leader get it. And they are going to make the most of their time in Washington until, as always happens in the American system, another election arrives, and they may well have to depart from the various positions of capital power.
But safe to say, the MAGA world is making the most of their moment in the capital’s halls of power. And no matter the results of future elections, this battle between Washington elites and average Americans will go on. Even with — or in spite of — the disapproval of Washington elites.
And as said on occasion in this space: Buckle in.
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