Some business trips are right out of the marketing pitch that Hollywood uses. You fly to New York City. You see clients. You get wined and dined or see some show or game with vendors. You present for your firm and win the business! Others involve you driving to Haverhill, Massachusetts and scrounging for a decent place to get a lunch. No entertainment. Little fun. Business moves on.

A recent trip to Washington D.C. allowed me to slot the city in the hierarchy. It is not a glamorous city. It is not a crummy business trip. It’s like any of our generic mid-sized American cities except with a massive government presence. The buildings we erected to set up a capitol look gorgeous still like the wonderful stone of the Supreme Court. The layout is artificial, deliberate and likely a Masonic conspiracy, but a walk on the Mall is lovely if few are there.

I had not been in years so the changes in D.C. were more cultural. Far more large, dark SUVs with tinted windows shuttling people around than before. The suburbs are full of overpriced real estate combined with masses of condos and apartment complexes that house the many immigrants we have sucked into the capitol’s metro area. The hijabs are everywhere. Not just immigrants but the AWFLs, too. I could overhear the conversations with a university name drop or see the girls night out dinner crew and check the ring fingers. All the single ladies! It has been said Washington is Hollywood for ugly people, and this is true. Gentrification is a rising factor with areas cleaned up and new construction going in to capture those high rents. These people all have enjoyed the last two decades of bloated federal budgets. The self-importance is thick and getting thicker there. It is taking on the role of imperial capitol far better than when it was a city of northern charm and southern efficiency.

Whatever charm it had left is gone. I went to the National Archives. As a child, I had gone, enjoyed what I saw but then asked the little old lady at the desk if I could see President Nixon’s resignation letter. Five minutes later she brought out a three ring binder and there it was. I did not even see a desk with a little old lady waiting to retrieve what anyone wanted. Plenty of overweight black security guards on their phones. The National Archives have been Disneyfied. There are audio/video pieces and the big documents are on display with of course additional bits to explain how women and minorities mattered, too.

The blatant me too nature to newer museums is striking when contrasted with the Smithsonians and old monuments. There was the Newseum, which was recently sold and will close. It was a museum that covered how big events were covered by the news. It was an ego stroke by the media. Lot of symbolism in its closure. I passed by the Holocaust Museum, which we have for whatever reason. The black museum and MLK statute are both eyesores in different ways. The actual black museum looks awful, and then there is Asian MLK. He looks Asian because the Chinese donated a cool $25 million to make the fundraising whole on the condition a Chinese artist create the statue. More unintentional symbolism.

This feeds into the city becoming more of an imperial capitol. Different groups come to the capitol and pay respects for their new gods and remember the new sacrifices or catastrophes that fit the imperial mythology. It is a new D.C. for a new America. On to the links…

There will be No Invasion of Iran – This article lays it out for you. Seems neocons have accepted what State Department officials were emailing Clinton about years ago, an invasion is not feasible. Eli Lake, slimy neocon that he is, is using the memos of David Wurmser, a Bolton acolyte, to explain the new strategy. This is a sales pitch. It is to the punditocracy and the elite. The memos explicitly say that a ground invasion is not necessary or even good. What they want to do is create instability for the mullahs, forcing a regime crisis. Internal chaos will force them from power and make them focus inward rather than outward against Adelson’s dear Israel or MbS’ KSA. Maybe a civil war that creates an opportunity for a faction to ask for outside assistance to restore order. No one is ever stopping Iran from getting a bomb unless that outside force controls their regime.

New Age of Enlightenment – This essay covers the wonderful effects of the Internet on accumulating, processing and sorting information for better handling of the world around us. It also covers how old orders have been destroyed one after another with the expansion of the Internet. Many truths here including the great line, “Content is king”.

The Enemy Is an Idea – Anton takes on the idea of the international liberal order. This moment is their legitimacy crisis. They may just shake this off or they may crumble entirely. To borrow from the prior link, it is an old order just waiting to crumble.

Totalitarian Surveillance With One Picture – One company has figured how to use a picture to destroy anonymity if you take just one walk down the street and are captured by one camera. This firm is selling services to law enforcement. Will we get fantastic application of this tech to take out bad guys *or* will we get a free for all of crooks and psychos allowed into the public realm because well, we have this great tech that could keep us safe? We know the answer with progs in charge.

College Educated Voters are Ruining Politics – The Atlantic runs a curious piece chastising the educated voter for the American political situation of current year America. This piece dumps on college educated whites, especially those hobbyist men, and lays out the bioleninism mechanism that makes minorities more involved with the guts of politics. There is a lot of prog talk but the message is there. “Marginalized” groups need to get dirty and do real activism, while whites are comfortable and can just talk theory.

The 1619 children eat their lib academic parents – Kronos overthrew Uranus, but he was then overthrown by Zeus. So it goes with the left’s academics and activists. The battle over the historical reality to the 1619 project continues, with real life consequences since schools are now incorporating it into their curriculum. The Times and the new activists do not care. What matters is winning and power, not reality. I 100% disagree that the project was started with good intentions, but that seems boilerplate ass-covering by the writer before he attacks their project.

Disillusioned camwhores – These women could work, could get married for some hedging of bets and could consider the consequences of the contracts they sign, but they just want the cheap and easy money. The profiles are not of drug addicts selling their bodies for another hit. These are everyday women who have lost sight of what is right and wrong, have zero shame in a society that encourages them, and will always have a journalist to whine to when facing the results.