USA: An ungrateful nation

     "Interesting you brought up the Melian Dialogue, which is more aptly applied to the Democrats and their desire to wield raw power. D.C. should not be a state. It was clearly the intention of the founders for the district to be separate for very good non-racist reasons."

             Kevin: in a comment on yesterday's post.

Kevin proves my point.

Asking for equal treatment makes District of Columbia people the bad guys.

Today's Guest Post, the third on the issue of District of Columbia statehood, notes that opponents of giving residents of the District full representation in Congress attack the motives of those seeking representation. Kevin likens them to the powerful Athenians thuggishly demanding do-or-die tribute from a weak victim, the people in the island city of Melos. Mitch McConnell called it socialism.

Frank Albert and wife Marie-Therese

Take a moment and consider. The central and most sacred ideas of the American republic are that individuals are are valued and entitled to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;" that "governments derive their just power by the consent of the governed;" that all of us are "created equal;" and that "we, the people" agreed to create a government for ourselves. Those ideas are who we are as a people. In this country of our sacred ideals, there are no second class citizens. We all play by the same rules. We are all in it together, equally, and that is why it is fair.

Residents of the District are not asking for special anything. They are asking for the right to be treated like every other American as regards representation, which is only fair because they are treated like every other American as regards duties. They are not asking it out of a position of power--as suggested by Kevin--but out of weakness.  

Frank Albert's Guest Post is mostly an autobiographical journey that reflects his frustration and sense of insult that his long service to America might be dismissed in a casual insult by Mitch McConnell. Frank Albert served his country in the foreign service. I include here a photo of him in the gracious black-tie image Americans have of the high life of diplomats. How easy and pleasant. In reality, most people most of the time in the various branches of the foreign service--Frank Albert included--are working in the field in difficult, sometimes-dangerous places, far away from family and home. He doesn't have photos of that work.

The results of the work of Albert and people like him show up in the disputes over trade that were avoided, in the diseases we don't know how to pronounce because they did not spread here, and countries we know nothing about because we did not fight a war there. Frank Albert isn't asking Mitch McConnell for something special or for a perfunctory "thank you for your service." He is asking to be treated like every other American.

Guest Post by Frank Albert.

Many people’s lives are like rocks rolling down a hill. They start slowly, pick up momentum and then slow down. My life has been like that. I like where I’ve landed—and plan to remain here—but I’ve also lost something along the way. I now live in Washington D.C. where I am not allowed to have a voting representative in either chamber of the federal government’s highest law-making body, the United States Congress. Okay, I could move to neighboring state. Practically, however, I’m too old and my belongings here—physical and personal—are too heavy and too precious. Besides, I don’t really want to change locations again. I’ve done that too many times already.

To explain. I was born at Sacred Heart hospital in Medford in June 1940 and taken by my mother and father to their small house in west Medford. I subsequently attended and graduated from the Washington grade school, Hedrick junior high and Medford senior high. High school diploma in hand in summer 1958, I picked pears and loaded hay bales on to trucks, saved my money, bought an old car, drove it to Eugene and enrolled at the University of Oregon (UO) in September of the same year.

Four years later, a Duck for life, I graduated from the UO. I loved the university, my family and my friends, but I wanted to see other places and meet people regularly who didn’t look like me. So I joined the Peace Corps and was sent to Thailand to teach English and math to students preparing to be secondary school teachers in their country’s public schools. Whether my students learned more from me or me from them over the two ensuing years is a moot point.

However, the experience bumped my life trajectory into another lane. After returning to the United States and attending graduate school for a year in Washington D.C.I joined the United States Information Agency (USIA), later serving overseas and in Washington with USIA, the Department of State and the United Nations. My assignments in Southeast Asia, the Pacific, western and northern Europe and Africa were all different but often centered around one theme: the benefits of democracy, support for the rule of law and respect for human rights.

Now retired in Washington D.C. I live in the only political and geographical entity within the United States whose citizens bear the responsibilities of citizenship, including taxation and selective service registration, without sharing in the full rights and privileges of citizenship. The other 706,000 residents and I pay more in taxes than our counterparts in 22 states. We also provide more money per capita to the federal government than any state does. We also have a larger population than Wyoming or Vermont and nearly as many citizens as North Dakota. Yet we don’t have anyone to represent and vote for us in Congress.

After the U. S. House of Representatives passed a District statehood bill on June 27, 2020—the first time a chamber of Congress had ever passed such legislation--Washington’s Mayor, Muriel Bowser, said the unprecedented January 6 assault on the Capitol added to the urgency of the cause, pointing out that residents in her city had “risked their lives to defend a Congress that affords them no voting rights.”

Those opposed to correcting that merely shrugged. Last year, Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark) conceded that Wyoming may have a smaller population than D.C. but it has a greater right to statehood because it’s a “well-rounded, working-class state” with workers in mining, logging and construction. And the former Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) once called the Democrats’ campaign for statehood “full-bore socialism.” A guy who grew up in west Medford, bucked hay bales and picked pears, a socialist?? Well, if you say so Senator.