Feehery: Progressive DC government turning city into a dystopia

When Bob Dylan sang “everybody must get stoned” in his iconic song “Rainy Day Woman #12 & #35,” he meant it as a protest.  

Sadly, in Washington, D.C., these days, it seems that everybody is actually just getting stoned.  

My office sits about six blocks from the Capitol, and on my block, there are three different pot dispensaries. You walk in this federal city, and the not-so-sweet acrid smell of marijuana is inescapable. Even when I drive on Interstate 695, going in either direction, I can catch a cloud of smoke so powerful, it could get me high if I decided to breathe it in. 

The smell of pot only adds to the sense that Washington, D.C., is becoming a modern-day dystopia. Not three blocks away from my house stands a homeless encampment, where strung-out malcontents hang out in nicely appointed tents provided by some left-wing progressive organization. My neighbors talk about the daily carjackings, coatjackings and shoejackings that happen routinely in our Capitol Hill neighborhood. A couple weeks ago, a group of teens pulled up to a middle school on the Hill in a stolen SUV, got out with guns drawn and robbed a bunch of students of their possessions.  How that didn’t make national news is amazing to me.  

D.C.’s magnificent Union Station has turned into a way station for the city’s drug addicts and mentally ill. It used to be a nice place to shop and dine. Now it is a place where you hope you won’t get shot and die.  

I don’t think of myself as a prude. I trend libertarian, and I think the war on drugs was largely a failure. But whatever we are doing in Washington, D.C., these days when it comes to crime control and keeping dangerous substances out of the hands of children isn’t working.  

Earlier this month, the House of Representatives passed bipartisan legislation that would scrap the D.C. City Council’s efforts to make it easier for carjackers to escape any kind of punishment; the Senate is expected to follow suit sometime soon. The House passed its legislation on the same day that Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) was assaulted in her apartment building on the Hill. She only escaped because she threw hot coffee on the perpetrator. She ended up voting for the legislation.  

It’s not clear if hot coffee is now the defensive weapon of choice among Hill denizens, but one thing is certain: Innocent civilians need something to protect them from the thugs who are now terrorizing this city. It probably won’t be the cops, who are underfunded, understaffed and underappreciated.  

Charles Allen, the mastermind of the get-out-of-jail-free-card law that Congress will soon vote to overturn, also was a lead proponent of defunding the police in 2020. He is a white, far-left progressive who wants to make D.C. a utopia for liberal governance, kind of like San Francisco. His latest idea is to give everybody whose income falls below a certain level a monthly check. How it helps make Washington great again is a little harder to figure out.  

I lived in Washington, D.C., during the 1990s, when the crack wars raged, when Marion Barry governed and when the nation’s capital became a global embarrassment. Back then, as Congress took over the city, racial tensions were front and center, because it was the white Republicans who were telling the Black Democrats how to run their city. 

This time around, it’s not race but ideology that is driving the conflict between the Congress and the D.C. City Council. The crazy left-wing ideology of white progressives like Allen is killing this city and many of its residents. It is time for Congress to step in and say “enough is enough.” Most D.C. residents, whether they be Black or white, Asian or Hispanic, gay or straight, want safe streets and a stop to the rampant crime. D.C. doesn’t have to be a utopia, but it sure shouldn’t be a dystopia. 

Feehery is a partner at EFB Advocacy and blogs at thefeeherytheory.com. He served as spokesman to former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), as communications director to former House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and as a speechwriter to former House Minority Leader Bob Michel (R-Ill.).