"I love Washington — it’s my favorite city. It’s the most beautiful city I’ve ever been to," Rollins said last week. "I just love the trees, and the smell of the air. ... It still smells the same, when you walk from Calvert to Wisconsin."

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His latest tour has taken him all over the world. But it lands back home in Washington for a show at the Lincoln Theatre on election night, after polls on the East Coast have closed.

The Post asked Rollins about the long presidential election cycle, his relationship with his audience, and his home town. This Q&A has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Did you choose Washington on Election Day intentionally?

Yeah. I thought it would interesting to be with what few people show up so they can all distractedly look at their cellphones throughout the show, and we can all walk into this next administration together.

I was curious about that: Are you going to be encouraging checking results throughout?

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I don’t think I can stop them, and, you know, I’m not a politeness monitor. So I’m going to say, look, you’re going to do it, I’m going to stand up here and talk. And so let’s just all agree to get along.

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I read earlier this year that you had come out in support of Bernie Sanders. How are you approaching the election now?

I liked his ideas about campaign finance reform and putting the knuckles into Wall Street, and I like his ideas on education. I just knew that it would be a hard to impossible sell to the American people. When you say “socialism,” there’s a lot of people, they just pull back from that word without hearing someone out. What I think Mr. Sanders was offering Americans was a cold water flat with a five-floor stair hike to get up to. When you’re 19, and you have that great summer when you’re living with all your friends in that crazy house where nothing works, and it was awesome, but by September, it sucks and you want some central heating and some convenience. What Bernie Sanders was offering was a little too spartan and a little bit too changeful for him to be able to edge out a hardcore political operative like Hillary Clinton.

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And so, looking at this election, it’s been depressing. And usually I look at these elections with a great deal of scrutiny and interest. This time around, Donald Trump, and the things he says, and the lowering of the bar of conversation. The debates were appalling, just pathetic. Because you might not be the biggest fan of Hillary Clinton, but she really does know the issues. She wanted to have a debate on the issues, but there was one person on that stage who didn’t, who did everything he could do to avoid it. It was pretty damn obvious. And when I see that, I’m not exactly out; I’m not out of here. I’m going to vote. But I’m kind of done with American democracy the way we’re doing it now. We had eight years of a guy who was elected twice by a solid majority, and America had eight years to support Barrack Obama and the things he wanted to do, and I think a lot of Americans congratulated themselves when he became president and they went back to the hammock. “Well, we elected a black guy.” And they thought the work was over, when the work had just begun.

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So this whole thing has turned into a political “WWE Smackdown,” because of Donald Trump. It’s been such a turnoff. Election Day for me will be like putting the bullet in the dog’s head after it’s been hit by the car, to put it out of its misery.

So with your shows in the last year and a half, has politics figured more into what you’re talking about?

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A little, but I realize who I’m talking to. With my audience, I’m talking to adults. I’m not trying to sway them. The Bernie Sanders people reached out to me multiple times to get on stage with Bernie and do all this stuff with Bernie. The Sanders people were on me like a cheap suit, like, “Hey, we dig you, and you dig Bernie, so …” And I’m like, nope. Because I vote. Young people write me, and ask who they should vote for. And I’m like, “Son, I don’t tell anyone who to vote for. I just hope you vote.”

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And I don’t think Trump jokes are funny. If anything, I like to poke a little fun at Hillary Clinton as she tries to not act like a freaking replicant from “Blade Runner 2” when she speaks. I find her amazingly robotic, and I could never connect with her, although I think she’s a good person. But I’ve been leaving the politics out, [except to say] this country is yours, and it’s never been more yours than right now. And the individual being extraordinary, now is the time. Because the government is not around. You are truly on your own, which is not the end of the world — it’s the beginning of something.

It seems like you have a wide base of fans, people of all stripes. Have any of them taken offense to anything you’ve said this year? The reason I ask, is because you see confrontations at rallies, and then there was the Amy Schumer incident in Florida, where she made remarks about Donald Trump; fans booed and walked out.

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That was interesting to me, because if I had 200 people walk out of my gig, that would be about two-thirds of the audience, so I’d be kinda screwed. So I’m amazed that she does shows where they need a huge screen next to her, she does places so big. That’ll never happen to me. I’m okay with that. I’m never going to be in front of 16,000 people with what I have to say.

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But during the Bush Administration and during the Iraq War, about every 10 shows, someone would stand up and let loose some vitriolic sailor-speak stream and go storming out. But no, because basically, I preach to the perverted, people who agree with me. You’re not going to pay $35 [to see me] if you love Donald Trump because you’re probably not going to get what you want, because I speak in full sentences and use a lot of polysyllabic words. It might befuddle you.

Also — and this is my contention — I don’t say anything controversial. I’m not trying to shock anyone. I don’t advocate for the shooting of cops. Or murder. Or anarchic overthrow of government. I’m not into any of that.

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Did you see this coming? Were you able to predict this polarization, the vitriol — the movement, for lack of a better word?

Yeah, I did. And I’m not Nostradamus, I think it was pretty obvious. Anyone who pays attention to the news and who cares, saw this coming.

The reason I ask: A lot of people put themselves in a bubble, but you’re around the country, on the air, talking to people. You’re around the world.

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An interesting way to assess America is to leave it and look at it from 5,000 miles away.

What I saw in the first four years of the Bush administration, the country was already somewhat polarized, people were drawing lines in the sand. By the time second four years started, people are drawing lines in the concrete. And then you get a black president … that’s when I started noticing, like, wow, we’ve got a lot of racists in this country. ... You’ve got a lot of angry Americans, and they weren’t served well by their education system.

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When I saw Donald Trump talking during the [2012] election, people really liked him, and I watched him on CNN — because I was on tour, on this damn bus — and people go, “I like Donald Trump!” [Note: Rollins is using an accent here.] And I’m like, I bet you do. Because he sells it very well, he sells that anger and turns it around. What you have now is a very wounded, very angry America, where if you wave a white flag to negotiate in the middle, I don’t think people — Congress being an example — I don’t think people even want to show up for that. Like, how come it’s been so many months and we don’t have a ninth supreme court judge?

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We have become so polarized that you can’t have an NPR-type rational conversation that lasts longer than eight seconds without someone barging in and saying “shut up,” or “you’re nasty” or “you’re a communist.” The art of negotiation is over. … and I don’t know how that gets better. Because there’s only one thing American excels at better than racism, and that’s misogyny. We kick ass in misogyny. And people love to hate Hillary Clinton — like, in the womb, people hated Hillary Clinton.

When you come to D.C., is this still home for you?

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It’s not coming home, in that I have that idea of it. My home has been vans, hotels, tour buses, hydrofoils, trains, camel, whatever, for many years. I love Washington — it’s my favorite city. It’s the most beautiful city I’ve ever been to. I just love the trees, and the smell of the air. So when I come back, the idea of home is the faces of the people I grew up with who I still visit. I’m best friends with Ian MacKaye, and his amazing family, and some of the MacKayes have kids now, so I hang out with the kids, and they’re amazing.

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And so what I enjoy about Washington is the familiarity, the kind of inner joy I get from walking on familiar streets. And just how it still smells the same, when you walk from Calvert to Wisconsin, which was kind of my old nexus when I was growing up in Glover Park, and how much joy I get just walking down to Wisconsin and Hall, where the Starbucks is, getting a cup of coffee and sitting and looking at my old street that I used to bike down, skateboard down and then take my car down. And that familiarity, at 55 years of age, it resonates. I’ve gone through a lot and seen a lot, but to look at those sidewalks and go, wow, that’s the sidewalk I walked up to go to the train station to audition to be in Black Flag, which is kind of the reason I’m on the road today, because I got in that band. But to still walk up and down that sidewalk once or twice a year is relevant to me. And not in a way that I wish I was 20 again, I’m very happy at my age. But that is a sense of home.

Are there still restaurants or places you like to visit?

Oh hell yeah! My last straight job I ever had was at a Häagen-Dazs, which is now the Avocado Cafe at Wisconsin and O streets, across from the CVS. The owner knows me and he’s very kind to me, because he knows I used to work there. He used to have a photo of me on the wall, but someone jumped over the counter, grabbed it and ran out.