There's a tidy little piece in the NYT today about the massive security preparations that are making D.C. into a lockdown city:
As the capital prepared to celebrate President Bush's inauguration, the city appeared on Tuesday more like a place under siege. Hour by hour the city of grand buildings and marble statues seemed to disappear behind curtains of steel security fences and concrete barriers.
The article's (web) title has a delicious double entendre if you read it with squinted eyes: "Capital Weaves a Steel Cocoon for a Big Party".
Turning the nation's capital into an armed garrison is bad enough, sending all the wrong signals about what our society is becoming. The crowning insult to these lavish celebrations, though, is this: their leitmotiv will be "a tribute to those who have served". Reportedly, President Bush doesn't want a top-heavy presence from the military; he said "It's my party. I want junior people, and I don't want them overwhelmed by the brass."
This is life during wartime, but not as we used to envision it. We're not being asked to pay higher taxes, or limit our consumption of goods, or even to think much about it. The war rages on, young men and women continue to get killed, and the President celebrates by holding a lavish ball wrapped behind barbed wire. This inauguration shows the brutal contradiction in American life more than most recent events. The rich and connected -- the controllers of the capital that wraps the GOP in its cocoon of steel -- get a huge party, at taxpayer expense, while the poor and isolated die. And -- for one day only -- those out on the front lines get trotted out in front of the cameras to illustrate the leader's compassion for them.
Shameful.