bullies and hypocrites

These past seven months in Washington, DC have been amazingly enriching. Amazing new friends, free museums, a challenging but interesting job, inspiring co-workers and new acquaintances, a great array of dining options, a delightfully nerdy environment perfect for a policy wonk and news addict like myself, and, of great importance: a wonderful (though very intense and incestuous) ultimate community.


However, there are a few things about this city that makes me want to move away as soon as possible: the hypocrisy and the bullying. Here are some examples:

• Environmentalists who take 30-minute showers and drive two blocks to the grocery store.


• Advocates for the impoverished who seem to think that they deserve an award for donating $10 to a local food bank.


• Senior staff at supposedly progressive organizations that treat their junior staff like indentured servants because they can.


• Meetings where we discuss supports for low-income workers but everyone at the table is from upper middle-class families and wearing pearls and carry Longchamp bags.


• Self-identified non-racists and proponents of diversity who get nervous and scared around people from certain racial/ethnic groups.


• People who pronounce mature as "muh-toor" and negotiation as "nego-cee-ation"

Okay, last one in the list? I kid. I KIDDING...though it does bother me. But seriously. I simultaneously love our nation's capital and want to run away screaming with nothing but a backpack containing cleats, a frisbee, my gifted copy of Middlesex, my journal, a picture of my family, and a few plaid shirts.
Oh, and polar bear. But he probably wouldn't fit in my backpack, so I would have to hold him in my arms, which would seriously restrict my ability to run as quickly and as dramatically away from this place as I would sometimes like to do.

The initial rage that I was feeling when I started writing this post has subsided. But maybe you get the gist of it all. Essentially - the one place where I would expect the idealists and do-gooders to convene, our nation's capital, is the the first place that I've been where I've been made to feel as though my idealism and hopes for the future have been stomped on. If anything, this stint in our nation's capital has taught me that it doesn't matter what you think or try to do, this is just how it is. Whoever's got the most money, whoever was brought up in the most comfortable of settings, whoever can yell the loudest, whoever sticks best to the latest trends...those are the people that our country repeatedly puts up on a pedestal to change things. And that's why nothing's changed.