Travelogue: The Imperial Capital

Guest Post by The Zman

I have been out of pocket, as they say in the South, for the last few days. A project in the Imperial Capital has required me to commute from my estates in the ghetto to the capital each morning. Early days and long nights, with the addition of a vicious commute, has made the past week feel like a stay in prison. I’m just now getting my bearings about what has happened in the world the last few days. I am happy to report that the counter-revolutionary traitors have been rooted out and the city is prepared for the ascension of our new ruler next month.

Those of you in the provinces can never fully appreciate the scale of the Empire until you spend some time driving around the capital. Government, at least the Federal government, is an abstraction. You bump up against it when you file taxes or go to the post office. Otherwise, the Empire is just the background noise of the universe. When you spend time in the capital, you see it face to face. It is not an abstraction or background noise. It is the dominating feature of life in these parts, warping all the normal functioning of society.

-----------------------------------------------------
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal

-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)

It’s why anyone talking about reducing the size of government is either lying, crazy or terribly uninformed. Reducing the size of the Federal government means reducing the size of the Imperial Capital. Fairfax County, on the Virginia side of the Potomac, has over a million souls. The District is roughly 600,000. Start adding up the populations attached to the capital and you get to five million. Expand out to include the entire Baltimore – Washington area – the two cities are slowly merging into a megalopolis – you get close to ten million people.

That’s a lot of people with a reason to keep things as they are and maybe expand on them. Reducing the size of government is like saying we will reduce the size of Los Angeles or Manhattan. This sort of thing can only happen if the city falls on hard times or is sacked by invaders. It took decades to blight Detroit and they worked really hard at it. Their people are low-IQ morons. the Federal government is stocked with smart and clever people who know how to keep the party going. Any and all attempts to reduce the flow of cash into the city will be thwarted.

Another aspect of the Imperial Capital is that it is much more international than the rest of the country. Lots of smart people from other nations come to Washington to work on projects, lobby Imperial officials and otherwise benefit from proximity to the Imperial Capital. I’ve spent the week with people from all over, none of whom had a reason to be in the capital area, beyond economics. They left the provinces to make their fortune in the capital and they did. They get to live in big house and dine at nice restaurants, thanks to the generosity of you, the sans-culotte.

The result of this is the people inside the capital are blinkered. They simply have no idea what is going on in the countryside. it is why they are horrified by the Trump election. Donald Trump is their black swan. The people inside were sure that such a result was an impossibility. Imagine if you came home and found Big Foot riding a unicorn around your neighborhood. There’s simply no way for the people living in the capital to understand why they should accept limits. There can be no argument to convince them that the state must be reduced.

Throw in the fact that 7 of the 10 richest counties on earth are attached to the Imperial Capital and it is not hard to understand why the people living here love government. Even the chattering classes, who hold no official position, live like royals compared to the people in the provinces.Jonah Goldberg, for example, lives in a seven figure home, in one of the more exclusive neighborhoods in the area. He got rich making armpit noises and singing the praises of the managerial state, but mostly the latter. He’s not going back to the former without a fight.

That leaves two possibilities. One is the city is sacked by angry peasants or foreign invaders. The other is we run out of money. That last one is the most likely answer. The proposed tax cuts and reforms from Trump are getting an icy response from Washington, but the private sector is tapped out. They need a jump start to begin growing again. Eventually, we will reach a point where a choice must be made. Either the peasants sacrifice to keep the Imperial Capital stocked with cash or the ruling class tightens its belt. I would not bet on the latter.

My advise. Go long on pitchforks.

12
Leave a Reply

avatar
  Subscribe  
Notify of
Cartersville Critter
Cartersville Critter

MGM just opened an unbelievable hotel/casino just over the river in Arlington. It is a Zeus-like tribute to vulgar ostentation that defies belief.

There is an underground, high security mall in DC built to provide an escape hole for all of the 2 legged rats in the event they blunder us into nuclear war. I’m not expecting an invite-any of you?

Let’s compare the government to the Catholic church;

The Popes at the top like the Bush and Clinton crime families have more money than they could spend in 10 lifetimes.

The Cardinals like McCain and Feinstein spent their entire careers in “public service” (a term I despise) and are both worth $100+m

Search out the Bishops in the House to see how many are multi millionaires (and for shits and giggles see how many have criminal records)

Finally the Priests- the rank and file gov’t workers earn on average $78k/yr or almost twice the amount the average flyover sucker earns at $40k (ask them how many paid Patriot’s or Columbus days they ever got)?

What we have is an ancient Roman Imperium-for as long as we put up with it or until it collapses of it’s own weight dragging us down with it.

Greg in NC
Greg in NC

“Imperial Capital”, how perfectly fitting! Its collapse is in progress as they have run out of enough money and rely on debt and printing. Their last ditch effort will be to confiscate all retirement money and that may result in the city being sacked by the angry peasants.

Ralph Meima

Your description made me laugh – a horrified laugh of ironic recognition. I am a native Washingtonian, born just off of Pennsylvania Avenue in the early 1960s. My parents grew up in the DC suburbs – kids of professionals attracted to DC during the big expansion of government during the New Deal. My dad was a bureaucrat, and my mother a government contractor later on.

I mostly grew up in DC, living in a neighborhood near the homes of Diane Rehm, General Haig, and assorted Watergate and Irangate notables . But DC back in the 60s and 70s wasn’t the DC we know today. It has metamorphosed from National Capital into Imperial Capital with all the stupendous and terrible glory this involves. I haven’t lived in DC since the mid-1980s. But I go back several times a year to visit family – most of them still live there, making a living off of the Bureauplex – and as our family van leaves I-95 and merges onto the Beltway, westbound, I say to my children in a dramatic tone, “We are now arriving in the Imperial Capital. Look on its works, ye mighty, and despair!”

They don’t get the literary reference, but they know what I am talking about. We live in a small town in Vermont, in a drafty old house with decades’ worth of deferred maintenance. We have one car, and a non-flat-screen TV. They go to public schools. We shop at dollar stores and thrift shops. Everything is on-sale, hand-me-down, community-free-dinner. Compared to a lot of people here, though, we’re doing great: no heroin addictions, no need to avail ourselves of the food bank, own our own house, even have a rental property (er, slum) around the corner, and even enough money to visit the fam in DC regularly!

Arriving in Bethesda, just over the DC line, I feel like a Gaulish peasant arriving in the heart of Rome around, say, 50 AD. Everything is $50K-per-year private schools (scores of them), country clubs and swish marinas all over, new Lexis and Range Rovers filling the streets, 7-figure houses that cost $150K in VT, and more high-end retail shopping at Friendship Heights (Wisconsin Ave. and Western Ave., on the DC line) than in all of Northern New England. Not a dollar store to be seen. Restaurants galore. Many languages being spoken by the denizens of the tributaries that flock to the Imperial Capital under the auspices of the World Bank, IMF, Inter-American Development Bank, global media, many universities, etc. Mind-blowing, teeming strips of corporate and retail development extend in all directions: Rockville, Gaithersburg, PG County, Fairfax Co., the Reston/Dulles area and Route 7 toward Leesburg, Route 50 toward Annapolis, etc.

And surrounding the ‘Plex – up into the Blue Ridge Mountains and down toward the Chesapeake Bay – is a region of horse country, high-end inns, arts festivals, marinas, country resorts, and the manses, estates, manors, villas, and seigneuries where the residents of the Imperial Capital take their pleasures.

It wasn’t always like this. I remember Friendship Heights in the mid-60s, before the Metro was built, where there were primarily a big field where Christmas tree and fireworks stands used to set up, a Howard Johnson’s, a car wash, and a liquor store. That was when people in that area who deemed themselves “middle class” actually were middle class. All that has changed. The DC area is the nexus of a global empire the likes of which has never before been seen, with the resources, economy, built environment, talents, educations, institutions, ambitions, and egos it requires. Along with all the corruption and intrigue, it is in many ways a charming, exciting, cultural, educational “City of Light”, where young people with ambition and a good degree go to succeed. The museums are fabulous. But it has now expanded and overheated to the point where life in the Imperial Capital is now on an entirely different planet than most of the USA. Someday in the distant future, when political power moves somewhere else, it will be called the Old Capital – like Nara, and the jungle-covered ruins of Tikal and Angkor Wat – and people will visit, walk around, buy a lemonade from a wizened old vendor, and marvel at the glory that was DC.

(If you want to see more of a possible future where DC’s role starts to dramatically change, see my fiction series, “Inter States”: http://www.foundershousepublishing.com/2015/07/new-release-inter-states-fossil-nation.html and http://www.foundershousepublishing.com/2016/06/inter-states-emergent-disorder.html)

Suzanna

Ralph Meima,
what the hell, say I,…I ordered the first of your books, it got great reviews.

Thank you for the insight. My husband worked in DC a long while ago.
He lived with his aunt and uncle in Virginia…had a motorcycle. When
the road was snowy he caught a ride with the General that lived next
door.
DC is a hen house pecking order, down to the very last hen, (roosters
are another story)and explicit. Most of the workers are just anonymous
cogs hoping to catch a free lunch. Those at the top will kill to secure
their place and keep their status and power. It must be a soulless hell
hole. Imagine the plight of the welfare class.
Also imagine the fear that Trump will tip an apple cart or two. It would require
dynamite under every chair (figuratively speaking) to evict the inhabitants.
We will all be destitute b4 any of them give up and leave.

Zman, thanks for the mental tour.

Ralph Meima

Thanks, Suzanna. Please let me know what you think. Critical reviews welcome.

unit472
unit472

True. I spent my youth split between San Francisco where Mom lived and D.C. where my Dad lived. Georgetown and the far parts of NW D.C. were affluent in the mid 60’s but you could still buy a townhouse in Georgetown for $50,000. By comparison a new home in Fairfax might be $35,000 to $40,000.

Fairfax was almost all white and the public schools were excellent. My dad bought a house in Fairfax so he could join country club. The D.C./Montgomery ones were too expensive or too toney to have him I guess and he liked to golf. I switched from the last white high school in DC ( Woodrow Wilson which as 90% white ( with the blacks who were allowed to attend carefully screened) to an all white high school in Fairfax this was 1967. The only Spanish speaking people I knew were the Navarro’s, friends of my father and they were from Spain. Minority in Fairfax meant Catholic kids who attended the parochial schools and wore uniforms!

Today Fairfax is a grotesque, over built mess of third world savages from every corner of the planet and the cheaper neighborhoods full of hideous Mexican and Central American mestizos. Northwest D.C. and Georgetown haven’t changed that much though the price of admission sure has. Want a townhouse in Georgetown today you’d better bring a million plus.

Francis Marion

Funny, I always thought of living in western Canada as being in Gaul. But if that’s Vermont then where the hell am I? Germania???? Feeling a little lost all of a sudden….

underfire
underfire

Another perceptive, well written article by ZMan.

I’ve come to watch for, and read, his columns.

Angus
Angus

If people wish to lose their freedoms allow the government to grow. If we wish to encorage losers then believe that the government must grow.

Put a Constitutional amendment (s) in place that:
-limits government spending to a per centage of the GNP
-require all tax, fees, or charges to be approved by popular vote
-require a balanced budget without borrowing. Failure to do so requires all politicians who voted for an unbalanced budget to be removed from the government.
-Install term limits, no more than 4 years in office.
-Limit any welfare payments to three years.
-Depot all non citizens who are public charges.

ed_209

America is being bled dry, 550 billion dollar per year trade deficit, plus this year they estimate a 2 trillion dollar deficit. The controlling brainless greedy morons in D.C. are printing money at a rate of a trillion a year to cover the deficit. US petro dollar is the basis for most of world currencies (reserve status), printing money is frowned upon, imports exceeding exports (trade deficit) not good. Unless Trump and company turn this ship around suspect we are going over the cliff, paper money will become worthless (US dollar), a new reserve currency or basket of currencies will be created, backed by gold or silver. Stock up on food, water, guns, ammo, if you can afford it gold and silver, just in case its best to be prepared. Word is Italian banks will fail in 2017 and strange things are happening in gold and silver markets (large purchases).

SSS

Good column by The ZMan and excellent comments by some who have been there.

I lived in a DC suburb, Reston VA, for 20 years and saw exactly what you all saw over those many years. The Imperial Capital sucked in the entire state of Maryland decades ago, and it now has Virginia. It can be shattered by moving the bureaucrats to flyover America. You’ll have a different perspective of America if you work for the feds and live in North Dakota.

Worth a shot. Trump, the Congress, and computers can make it happen.

Ned Ludd
Ned Ludd

I prefer Mordor on the Potomac. Even driving by on the few ocassions necessary anymore leave me feeling dirty and in need of a shower.

Discover more from The Burning Platform

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading