Capitol Building Quotes

As I descend the stairs, I can’t help brushing my fingers along the unblemished white marble walls. So cold and beautiful. Even in the Capitol, there’s nothing to match the magnificence of this old building. But there is no give to the surface - only my flesh yields, my warmth taken. Stone conquers people every time.

...if the Democrats suggested a plan to burn down the Capitol building, the Republicans would counter with a plan to do it over the course of three years.

When it comes to the Civil War, all of our popular understanding, our popular history and culture, our great films, the subtext of our arguments are in defiance of its painful truths. It is not a mistake that Gone with the Wind is one of the most read works of American literature or that The Birth of a Nation is the most revered touchstone of all American film. Both emerge from a need for palliatives and painkillers, an escape from the truth of those five short years in which 750,000 American soldiers were killed, more than all American soldiers killed in all other American wars combined, in a war declared for the cause of expanding "African slavery." That war was inaugurated not reluctantly, but lustily, by men who believed property in humans to be the cornerstone of civilization, to be an edict of God, and so delivered their own children to his maw. And when that war was done, the now-defeated God lived on, honored through the human sacrifice of lynching and racist pogroms. The history breaks the myth. And so the history is ignored, and fictions are weaved into our art and politics that dress villainy in martyrdom and transform banditry into chivalry, and so strong are these fictions that their emblem, the stars and bars, darkens front porches and state capitol buildings across the land to this day.

As I grew up, I knew that as a building (Fenway Park) was on the level of Mount Olympus, the Pyramid at Giza, the nation's capitol, the czar's Winter Palace, and the Louvre — except, of course, that is better than all those inconsequential places

I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.

I fantasize about killing people all the time. I think about how easy it would be. What if I just started showing up to Kitan rallies with an I-beam? Knock down the capitol building, force them to pass Universal Health Care, stuff aevery Ayn Rand fanatic into a big mason jar and hurl them into the sun. I could do it, you know. I really could. And then there's these people with their fucking sneers going 'You're a monster! You're a thug! You kill people!' No fucking shit I kill people!! I put holes in mountains! I break shit constantly without even trying! I saved the world on no less than seven fucking occasions, and guess what, super-accuracy is not one of my anomalies! Am I supposed to be impressed that you've never killed anybody? What a bold moral choice from a person who's terrified of violence and scared shitless of going to jail! It's like, have you ever had the option of murdering a bunch of people!? Okay, then why the fuck am I listening to your opinion on the matter!? Every day I don't kill a thousand fucking people, they should throw me a god-damned tickertape parade!

Radiation is all around us. It emanates from the sun and cosmic rays, bathing cities at high altitude in greater levels of background radiation than those at sea level. Underground deposits of thorium and uranium emit radiation, but so does masonry: stone, brick, and adobe all contain radioisotopes. The granite used to build the US Capitol is so radioactive that the building would fail federal safety codes regulating nuclear power plants. All living tissue is radioactive to some degree: human beings, like bananas, emit radiation because both contain small amounts of the radioisotope potassium 40; muscle contains more potassium 40 than other tissue, so men are generally more radioactive than women. Brazil nuts, with a thousand times the average concentration of radium of any organic product, are the world’s most radioactive food.

Anyone starting out to research for a doctorate degree should remember that hours of self centered work has the ability to be the spark for others to progress. All research is potentially useful to open doors or show others that door does not lead anywhere useful. Advancements happen by building on others research.

I drove on into Des Moines and it looked very large and handsome in the afternoon sunshine. The golden dome of the state capitol building gleamed. Every yard was dark with trees. People were out cutting the grass or riding bikes. I could see why strangers came in off the interstate looking for hamburgers and gasoline and stayed forever. There was just something about it that looked friendly and decent and nice. I could live here, I thought, and turned the car for home. It was the strangest thing, but for the first time in a long time I almost felt serene. Index The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created.

The FBL later estimated that over 2,000 people entered the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Five people died, 172 police officers were injured, and more than 500 were arrested. The cost of the camage to the historic Capitol building exceeded $2.7 million. It took President Trump 187 minutes to post a tweet telling his supporters to "go home.

The Capitol is not a building, it's a symbol of our democracy, and an assault on it is an assault on everything that we've achieved as a civilized people.

The granite used to build the US Capitol is so radioactive that the building would fail federal safety codes regulating nuclear power plants.

A Capitol-born citizen would have expected a building to be renamed for them. Sejanus’s father had only requested an education for his son.

In my time in Washington, no battle has consumed more energy than stopping Obamacare. On the evening of September 24, 2013, it began with a prayer. In my tiny “hideaway” office wedged into a dome in the Capitol Building, Senator Mike Lee and I bowed our heads, read from the Book of Psalms, and asked for the Lord’s guidance. I then walked to the floor of the U.S. Senate and announced, “I intend to speak in support of defunding Obamacare until I am no longer able to stand.”* I opened by noting that “all across this country, Americans are suffering because of Obamacare.” And yet politicians in Washington were not listening to the concerns of their constituents. They weren’t hearing the people with jobs lost or the people forced into part-time work. They had no answers for the people losing their health insurance, or the people who are struggling. With good reason, men and women across America believe that politicians get elected, go to Washington, and stop listening to them. This is the most common thing you hear from the man on the street, from Republicans, Democrats, Independents, and Libertarians: You’re not listening to me.

Look to society, and look to the crapshoot of the way any given set of parents’ genes line up. How was Raskolnikov created? How about the “patriots” who assaulted the Capitol Building? We live in our own private realities, and sometimes—too often—those private realities have nothing to do with the larger world around us. I speak from the point of view of a novelist, a profession to which only the delusional are called.

Hanging a banner from the front of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building that proclaimed it to be the “Native American Embassy,” hundreds of protesters hailing from seventy-five Indigenous nations entered the building to sit in. BIA personnel, at the time largely non-Indigenous, fled, and the capitol police chain-locked the doors announcing that the Indigenous protesters were illegally occupying the building. The protesters stayed for six days, enough time for them to read damning federal documents that revealed gross mismanagement of the federal trust responsibility, which they boxed up and took with them. The Trail of Broken Treaties solidified Indigenous alliances, and the “20-Point Position Paper,”14 the work mainly of Hank Adams, provided a template for the affinity of hundreds of Native organizations. Five years later, in 1977, the document would be presented to the United Nations, forming the basis for the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

They had to build up a rebel base in the Capitol, get some sort of underground organized in the districts,” he says. “Then they needed someone to set the whole thing in motion. They needed you.” “They needed Peeta, too, but they seem to have forgotten that,

Coriolanus moved back to his seat - she knew where to find him now - to listen and to savor their actual reunion, which was only a song away. His eyes teared up when she began the song from the zoo. "Down in the valley, valley so low, Late in the evening, hear the train blow. The train, love, hear the train blow. Late in the evening, hear the train blow." Coriolanus felt an elbow nudge his ribs and looked over to see Sejanus beaming at him. It was nice, after all, to have someone else who knew the significance of the song. Someone who knew what they'd been through. "Go build me a mansion, build it so high, So I can see my true love go by. See him go by, love, see him go by. So I can see my true love go by." That's me, Coriolanus wanted to tell people around him. I'm her true love. And I saved her life. "Go write me a letter, send it by mail. Bake it and stamp it to the Capitol jail. Capitol jail, love, to the Capitol jail. Bake it and stamp it to the Capitol jail." Should he say hello first? Or just kiss her? "Roses are red, love; violets are blue. Birds in the heavens know I love you." Kiss her. Definitely, just kiss her. "Know I love you, oh, know I love you, Birds in the heavens know I love you. "Good night, everybody. Hope we see you next week, and until then, keep singing your song," said Lucy Gray, and the whole Covey took one final blow.

At the “Capitol Crawl,” people using wheelchairs, leg braces, and canes made their way to the hundred steps in front of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C. Then they began to climb those stairs, leaving behind whatever gear couldn’t come with them, using their arms or whatever body parts they had available for mobility. Children as young as ten participated in what became a very public, strategic spectacle. That protest is considered by historians to have been the tipping point; the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990, guaranteeing curb cut changes at every city sidewalk corner and ramped entrances at all newly constructed buildings, among other new provisions.

While Ross and Cockburn were hastily burning the White House and Department buildings, anxious only to escape, and never sending more than two hundred soldiers beyond Capitol Square, the President, his Cabinet, his generals, and his army were performing movements at which even the American people, though outraged and exasperated beyond endurance, could not but laugh.

If you don’t know what side you’re on right now, if you don’t know who you’re actually fighting. I’ve told you before we are not fighting with the president of the United States. We are not fighting with the Democrats, we are fighting evil, and if you don’t believe me, yesterday in Austin the governor decided that he was going to call for a special session. So now all the protesters are there in front of Austin… standing there in front of the capitol building in Austin and people are singing Amazing Grace. The pro death people are chanting things like ‘Mary should have had an abortion,’ meaning Jesus should never have been born and “Hail Satan." When you can have a group of people chanting around a state capitol Hail Satan’ and nobody seems to care about that, I don’t recognize my country anymore. I am a man determined to be free.

As she sat in the House Committee anteroom waiting to testify, she looked out the window and was startled by the contrast between Capitol Hill’s marble government buildings, surrounded by manicured grounds, and the rows of tumbledown houses occupied by the city’s Negro population. The children were barefoot and dressed in rags. “They all looked rachitic and most seemed undernourished. All they had to play with was junk they found in the street.

The granite used to build the US Capitol is so radioactive that the building would fail federal safety codes regulating nuclear power plants. All living tissue is radioactive to some degree: human beings, like bananas, emit radiation because both contain small amounts of the radioisotope potassium 40; muscle contains more potassium 40 than other tissue, so men are generally more radioactive than women. Brazil nuts, with a thousand times the average concentration of radium of any organic product, are the world’s most radioactive food.

It is not a mistake that Gone with the Wind is one of the most read works of American literature or that The Birth of a Nation is the most revered touchstone of all American film. Both emerge from a need for palliatives and painkillers, an escape from the truth of those five short years in which 750,000 American soldiers were killed, more than all American soldiers killed in all other American wars combined, in a war declared for the cause of expanding “African slavery.” That war was inaugurated not reluctantly, but lustily, by men who believed property in humans to be the cornerstone of civilization, to be an edict of God, and so delivered their own children to his maw. And when that war was done, the now-defeated God lived on, honored through the human sacrifice of lynching and racist pogroms. The history breaks the myth. And so the history is ignored, and fictions are weaved into our art and politics that dress villainy in martyrdom and transform banditry into chivalry, and so strong are these fictions that their emblem, the stars and bars, darkens front porches and state capitol buildings across the land to this day.

9:12 P.M.—GROUND ZERO, WASHINGTON, D.C. Without warning, the capital of the United States was obliterated. At precisely 9:12 p.m. Eastern, in a millisecond of time, in a blinding flash of light, the White House simply ceased to exist, as did everything and everyone else for miles in every direction. No sooner had the first missile detonated in Lafayette Park than temperatures soared into the millions of degrees. The firestorm and blast wave that followed consumed everything in its path. Gone was the Treasury building, and with it the headquarters of the United States Secret Service. Gone was the FBI building, and the National Archives, and the Supreme Court, and the U.S. Capitol and all of its surrounding buildings. Wiped away was every monument, every museum, every restaurant, every hotel, every hospital, every library and landmark of any kind, every sign of civilization.

I understood slavery as bad and I had a vague sense that it had once been integral to the country and that the dispute over it had somehow contributed to the civil war. But even that partial sense ran contrary to the way the civil war was presented in the popular culture, as a violent misunderstanding, an honorable dual between wayward brothers instead of what it was. A spectacular chapter in a long war that was declared when the first Africans were brought chained to American shores. When it comes to the civil war, all of our popular understanding, our popular history and culture, our great films, the subtext of our arguments, are in defiance of its painful truths. It is not a mistake that Gone with the Wind is one of the most read works of American literature, or that The Birth of a Nation is the most revered touchstone of all American film. Both emerged from a need for palliatives and painkillers, an escape from the truth of those five short years in which seven hundred fifty thousand American soldiers were killed, more than all American soldiers kill in all other American wars combined, in a war declared for the cause of expanding African slavery. That war was inaugurated, not reluctantly, but lustily by men who believe property in humans to be the cornerstone of civilization, to be an edict of god, and so delivered their own children to his maw. And when that war was done the now defeated god lived on honored through the human sacrifice of lynching and racist programs. The history breaks the myth. And so, the history is ignored and fictions are weaved in to our art and politics that dress villainy in martyrdom, and transform banditry into chivalry. And so strong are these fictions that their emblem, the stars and bars, darkens front porches and state capitol buildings across the land to this day.

Holgrave, a daguerreotypist (the technology was brand new then, suggesting a cutting-edge man of the future), opines that we shall soon live to see the day “when no man shall build his house for posterity.” He instead imagines a country in which “each generation were allowed and expected to build its own houses,” a simple change that would ameliorate most of society’s ills. “I doubt whether even our public edifices,” he concludes, meaning capitols, courthouses, and other government buildings, “ought to be built of such permanent materials as stone or brick. It were better that they should crumble to ruin once in twenty years, or thereabouts, as a hint to the people to examine into and reform the institutions which they symbolize.” As the ill-gotten remnants of the past, the buildings that have borne witness to the sins of the fathers, the houses we inherit must be destroyed. If we want to truly be free of the past, we must first start by destroying our ancestral homes.

I have had so many Dwellings, Nat, that I know these Streets as well as a strowling Beggar: I was born in this Nest of Death and Contagion and now, as they say, I have learned to feather it. When first I was with Sir Chris. I found lodgings in Phenix Street off Hogg Lane, close by St Giles and Tottenham Fields, and then in later times I was lodged at the corner of Queen Street and Thames Street, next to the Blew Posts in Cheapside. (It is still there, said Nat stirring up from his Seat, I have passed it!) In the time before the Fire, Nat, most of the buildings in London were made of timber and plaister, and stones were so cheap that a man might have a cart-load of them for six-pence or seven-pence; but now, like the Aegyptians, we are all for Stone. (And Nat broke in, I am for Stone!) The common sort of People gawp at the prodigious Rate of Building and exclaim to each other London is now another City or that House was not there Yesterday or the Situacion of the Streets is quite Changd (I contemn them when they say such things! Nat adds). But this Capital City of the World of Affliction is still the Capitol of Darknesse, or the Dungeon of Man's Desires: still in the Centre are no proper Streets nor Houses but a Wilderness of dirty rotten Sheds, allways tumbling or takeing Fire, with winding crooked passages, lakes of Mire and rills of stinking Mud, as befits the smokey grove of Moloch. (I have heard of that Gentleman, says Nat all a quiver). It is true that in what we call the Out-parts there are numberless ranges of new Buildings: in my old Black-Eagle Street, Nat, tenements have been rais'd and where my Mother and Father stared without understanding at their Destroyer (Death! he cryed) new-built Chambers swarm with life. But what a Chaos and Confusion is there: meer fields of Grass give way to crooked Passages and quiet Lanes to smoking Factors, and these new Houses, commonly built by the London workmen, are often burning and frequently tumbling down (I saw one, says he, I saw one tumbling!). Thus London grows more Monstrous, Straggling and out of all Shape: in this Hive of Noise and Ignorance, Nat, we are tyed to the World as to a sensible Carcasse and as we cross the stinking Body we call out What News? or What's a clock? And thus do I pass my Days a stranger to mankind. I'll not be a Stander-by, but you will not see me pass among them in the World. (You will disquiet your self, Master, says Nat coming towards me). And what a World is it, of Tricking and Bartering, Buying and Selling, Borrowing and Lending, Paying and Receiving; when I walk among the Piss and Sir-reverence of the Streets I hear, Money makes the old Wife trot, Money makes the Mare to go (and Nat adds, What Words won't do, Gold will). What is their God but shineing Dirt and to sing its Devotions come the Westminster-Hall-whores, the Charing-cross whores, the Whitehall whores, the Channel-row whores, the Strand whores, the Fleet Street whores, the Temple-bar whores; and they are followed in the same Catch by the Riband weavers, the Silver-lace makers, the Upholsterers, the Cabinet-makers, Watermen, Carmen, Porters, Plaisterers, Lightemen, Footmen, Shopkeepers, Journey-men... and my Voice grew faint through the Curtain of my Pain.

Every building was just gone, and every soul as well. Across the Potomac River, the Pentagon shuddered violently from the blast wave and then began to partially collapse. What remained standing was utterly ablaze, as was every structure not flattened for as far as the eye could see. Howling, scorching winds soon began sweeping lethal radioactivity through the city’s northeast quadrant and into Maryland, surging through Prince George’s County and Anne Arundel County, as if they were following 295 to the north and Routes 50 and 214 to the east, through Capitol Heights and Lanham and Bowie toward Crofton and Annapolis. Soon more than five thousand square miles of Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia were contaminated with deadly levels of radioactivity. And the nightmare had only just begun. Moments after the first missile hit D.C., a second missile struck the CIA building at Langley directly, its superheated fireball and cataclysmic blast wave obliterating the nation’s premier intelligence headquarters in the tree-lined suburbs of northern Virginia and vaporizing every home and office building, every church and mall for mile after mile

It is our policy not to negotiate with terrorists." I stared at the phone, my eyes wide. I was speechless and very, very angry. "Are you still there?" The voice belonged to an unnamed official in the NSA. Perston‐Smythe introduced him as one of Cox's supervisors. "What the fuck do you mean by that?" "It is the policy of this government not to negotiate with terrorists." "Do you mean to tell me that you consider me a terrorist?" He sounded almost prim. "Certainly. You've taken a hostage." "Terrorists," I said, gritting my teeth, "attack the innocent to achieve their goals. If you're about to tell me that you consider Cox an innocent bystander, then this conversation is over." "Terrorists are—" "Oh, fuck it! You want a terrorist action so you can consider me a terrorist? There's no way you can keep me out of your nuclear arsenals. Where do you want the first one to go off? The Pentagon? The White House? The Capitol building? How about Moscow or Kiev? Wouldn't that be interesting? Do you think they'd launch?" His voice was a lot less prim. "You wouldn't do that." "Well, as a matter of fact, I wouldn't. BECAUSE I'M NOT A TERRORIST!" I slammed the phone down on the hook and jumped.

riots began occurring in the cities of one million or more people. It was started by people, backed by Evans, who claimed the rich and powerful financed Governor Massey’s win, and that the election results were all falsified by a vast right-wing conspiracy of power brokers. Some groups swarmed the various state capitol buildings and began to trash them, breaking statues, destroying offices, and even beating up some of the legislators and their staff. In other locations, cops attempted to stop the rioters, only to be accused of police brutality. Unionized workers brought production to a halt at factories, while others blocked a few ports to keep anything from coming in or going out. Evans was pleased with how everything was turning out so far.

Back in 1910, word of the rise of the skyscraper in New York had panicked congressmen, who promptly zoned height limits for buildings in the District of Columbia, so that no private building could ever overshadow the Capitol.

Records show that slaves who lived in the Washington, D.C., area made up a good portion of the labor pool that worked on the Capitol. More than four hundred slaves, or more than half of the documented workforce that constructed the Capitol, cleared trees from Jenkins Hill and dug up stumps for the wide avenues that radiate out into the city, according to research first publicized by NBC reporter Edward Hotaling in 2000. We now know that slaves baked the bricks used for the building’s foundation and walls, sawed lumber for the interior walls and floors, dug the trenches for the foundation, worked the Virginia quarries where the sandstone was cut, and laid the stones that hold up the Capitol to this day.

Today’s National Mall is a lush green oasis of museums, monuments, and buildings running through the center of the most powerful city in the world—a place where Americans feel welcome to celebrate and pay homage to their country’s history and future. But the Mall hasn’t always been so welcoming, especially to African Americans. In fact, it was the last place any black person wanted to be; before the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, the National Mall claimed some of the most infamous slave markets of Washington, D.C.

In one of the ornamented portions of the building, there is a figure of Justice; whereunto the Guide Book says, ‘the artist at first contemplated giving more of nudity, but he was warned that the public sentiment in this country would not admit of it, and in his caution he has gone, perhaps, into the opposite extreme.’ Poor Justice! she has been made to wear much stranger garments in America than those she pines in, in the Capitol. Let us hope that she has changed her dress-maker since they were fashioned, and that the public sentiment of the country did not cut out the clothes she hides her lovely figure in, just now.

Amber was shocked and amazed, in this day and age, people could still think like this. The crowd around her was screaming insults and threats, but she wanted them to shut up so she could hear what crazy thoughts were issuing from the mouths of the Ku Klux Klan members standing on the Baton Rouge Capitol Building steps. She’d read on Yahoo this was the first Klan rally in the Louisiana state capital since 1969. Only hours ago they’d won a court hearing about freedom of speech and were now allowed to talk for two hours, before a crowd of mostly hostile people.

Like much of America in the second half of the twentieth century, the Civil Rights movement in the Pacific Northwest was fought on many fronts – in the workplace, at school, in the courts, and on the steps of capitol buildings. But few struggles can match the one waged for open housing in Seattle and other large cities.

the Capitol, House, and Senate office buildings are secured. (Except for that one time when the Capitol wasn’t, but let’s not dwell on that.)

What are we talking about in 2001? A Tuesday morning with a crystalline sky. American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles crashes into the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. United Airlines Flight 175, also from Boston to Los Angeles, crashes into the South Tower at 9:03. American Airlines Flight 77 from Washington Dulles to Los Angeles hits the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m. And at 10:03 a.m., United Flight 93 from Newark to San Francisco crashes in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. There are 2,996 fatalities. The country is stunned and grief-stricken. We have been attacked on our own soil for the first time since the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941. A man in a navy-blue summer-weight suit launches himself from a 103rd-floor window. An El Salvadoran line chef running late for his prep shift at Windows on the World watches the sky turn to fire and the top of the building—six floors beneath the kitchen where he works—explode. Cantor Fitzgerald. President Bush in a bunker. The pregnant widow of a brave man who says, “Let’s roll.” The plane that went down in Pennsylvania was headed for the Capitol Building. The world says, America was attacked. America says, New York was attacked. New York says, Downtown was attacked. There’s a televised benefit concert, America: A Tribute to Heroes. The Goo Goo Dolls and Limp Bizkit sing “Wish You Were Here.” Voicemail messages from the dead. First responders running up the stairs while civilians run down. Flyers plastered across Manhattan: MISSING. The date—chosen by the terrorists because of the bluebird weather—has an eerie significance: 9/11. Though we will all come to call it Nine Eleven

The city is pearl gray. The overcast sky and the stone buildings emit the same cold elegance, but ahead of me, the Pantheon shimmers. Its massive dome and impressive columns rise up to crown the top of the neighborhood. Every time I see it, it's difficult to pull away. It's as if it were stolen from ancient Rome or, at the very least, Capitol Hill. Nothing I should be able to view from a classroom window.

Dear Diary, THERE WAS STILL ANOTHER DAY of the conference, so we stayed in DC. While Dad attended panels and lectures, George, Bess, and I finally took in the sights. It was hard to keep up with George at the National Air and Space Museum. She raced from one exhibit to the next. Bess led us more calmly through the National Portrait Gallery, giving us time to appreciate the paintings. When it was my turn, I picked visiting the Supreme Court. With all our talk about justice the night before, I wanted to see the highest court in the land—the place where nine people get to decide exactly what the law means. Walking up the marble steps gave me goose bumps. I’d heard the building referred to as the Temple of Justice before, and now I understand why. But then I remembered Walker was still behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit, and the goose bumps faded.

remember sitting silently still, wishing I could transport myself home. This very same feeling is triggered again, when I see a mob of white supremacists storm the Capitol building, unhinged with racist rage. American terrorists in normcore who’d attack a Sikh or Muslim, totally ignorant of how the turban or hijab are symbols of devotion, marking a person as a believer, as equal under a higher power. Beauty that evades the white supremacist. Back then, my parents told me: Don’t tell anyone your last name is Islam.

In order to understand how everything went to hell on January 6th, you have to understand that the District of Columbia has its own rules. The city was established as a federal district in 1790. In the years since then, Washington has gained a greater degree of autonomy and home rule, but it doesn’t operate like a normal state or city. A congressional committee reviews laws passed in the city and retains authority over its budget, and of course there’s still the thorny issue of taxation without representation in Congress. Local DC Metropolitan police officers often have to take a backseat to specialized federal police forces in the city’s many national parks and federal buildings, including the Capitol. There, the primary law enforcement agency is the US Capitol Police. According to a Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) directive issued in 2003, the department’s policy is to “extend assistance” to the Capitol police if it is required.

There’s more. As I said in the very first chapter, the breach of the Capitol area and building stopped short the Republican attempt on January 6th to call for an investigation into the myriad voter integrity issues. If there hadn’t been a riot, that’s what we would have done. I believe the riot was meant to happen to ensure that no investigation would take place. Given the amount of fraud uncovered, no wonder such a diversionary tactic seemed necessary (dare I say it) to the shadow conspirators.

agreed? I would later hear that Congress and staff spent the next month utterly terrified that a protester hid inside the building during the confusion, and in every supply closet, just beside the extra toner, a lunatic with a pitchfork was waiting to murder them. If you ask me, that mentality explains a lot of my government’s behavior over the next few months.

NOTE: I think he’s 100% right about the effect the Sea of People had on the police. It doesn’t matter if it was “one-point-two-five-million” or a hundred thousand. And it doesn’t matter if even only a tiny, tiny fraction of the crowd actually fought the police. The fact is there was a flood of people, as far as the eye could see, all flowing into one building ... I wouldn’t blame the police inside that building for being intimidated when they looked out and saw that. me: OK.

The crowd was now agitated, and in places where the police brutality was more concentrated, the crowd was enraged. Shell shocked and injured protesters were pulling back, a steady stream of them could be seen shuffling along, back to their hotels, or their cars, or wherever they decide to go to try to understand what they just witnessed, what they just experienced. The police stood again silent; protestors shouted at them, questioning their reasoning for the attack, insulting them and calling them traitors. I remember the men in tactical gear being suddenly more prevalent. They had radios and were moving up and down the line of protestors. They were trying to rally people to push through the police line. This was the first time I heard talk of entering the Capitol building.

deaths, I decided to leave. I never saw a point in entering the building. I never had any interest in, nor did I approve of damaging the grounds or the building in any way. I was there to protest, not riot, as were 99.99% of the people there. I thought the violence against the protestors was uncalled for and unprovoked. The attacks by the police was the actual provocation, and I doubt that the antagonists in the crowd would have found the support to enter the capitol if not for the anger incited by the deaths and injuries of peaceful Americans at the hands of their government.

a call went out over the radio that a fellow officer had collapsed. That officer was Brian Sicknick. EMTs administered CPR on the floor of the Capitol building, but the hospital listed him in critical condition upon his arrival. He suffered two strokes in succession in the aftermath of fighting to save the Capitol. Officer Sicknick died the following day, January 7, 2021. He was 42 years old.

with the first police officer that spoke with me, they said that I needed to turn around ‘cause it wasn’t safe after, ‘So, OK this is, know that’s safe for ya.’ So, but that was at the point that they were beginning to walk-walk-walk us down and walk us out, or push us out, as they’ve been doing so, uh, anyway ... NOTE: This gives us a glimpse of what the interactions with the police were like, from the protesters’ point of view. While there are well-documented cases of fights between the police and the stormers, there were also a lot of cases like this. To be clear, this doesn’t somehow excuse what the trespassers did, but it’s also not something the historical record should just ignore. Try to imagine it for a moment; imagine if you broke into a building and inside the police were calmly giving you advice about which areas were safe for you to break into next. For some people, that really happened.

one guy emerged from the MAGA crowd and stood between the battering ram and the door and started giving the speech of his life. He said he knew how angry they felt because he’d “been fired from every job he ever had, because he was a white guy,” but this wasn’t the way. He promised they could build a better future full of equality for all humans, and aliens too, but they had to back down and stop attacking the building. And that pocket of the crowd listened to him and they did back down. The man who showed me the video lamented that it was so dramatic it would surely go viral, but he couldn’t post it anywhere because everybody in it would wind up in jail. me: I think I saw that. Did you witness any, like, other altercations between the police and the protesters? Instant Replay: Other than what I saw up here? No, I mean, I saw that, saw them hitting that one girl with uh, uh, that billy club, whatever that thing is that they have.

goes on about how frightened he is because it looks like all the elections going forward might be rigged and he has no way of knowing if the results will ever be real ... As I said, I believe this guy gives us useful insight into the minds of the people who stormed the Capitol. Try to imagine how it felt to be this guy; not knowing if the election outcomes were real or rigged. He’s frustrated at probably justified accusations of unfair media coverage. On the other hand, he genuinely believes that the police were “the aggressors” after he twice broke into a building under their protection, so I can’t say I have much respect for his judgment. Mentally, this guy’s a mess. It’s like he can intuitively sense something unfair is happening, but he lacks the logical tools to differentiate between statements that have evidence and statements that don’t ... which puts him about even with most people these days.

Nobody here seems to remember about security cameras, but I do. Even as this confusing experience is unfolding in real time, I suspect that the people who set foot inside the building will be in a drastically different legal category. I don’t want to expose myself to that risk. I’ve pushed this pretty far already; this is where I draw the line. This isn’t just a crime, it’s a crime they’ll almost certainly get caught for.

A lot of MAGA people I talked to in the weeks after The Event claimed that the police must have opened all the doors for them and that it was all a setup. That was a popular theory on the internet. But it’s just not true. The Linebacker was shouting in a state of euphoria that he broke the doors open; I can’t imagine he was lying. The theories about the police opening all the doors are wrong because the initial opening of at least four doors was done by him and his teammates. And don’t forget about those flanking maneuvers! He described how the crowd repeatedly forced police to bunch in certain areas, then ran to other, less defended areas. Crowds don’t do that organically. Someone with at least decent tactical instincts was directing their behavior, someone whose goal was to get people inside the building itself. But who? Who would want the crowd to break into the building?

no one’s ever really stormed the U.S. Capitol Building before. You know, no one’s ever done that. So… NOTE: Nitpicking history teacher moment: the British Canadians stormed the U.S. Capitol in 1814, set it and most of the city’s landmarks on fire, but then retreated the next day when they were hit with a rainstorm and tornado.[75] True story. :-) me: It reminds me ... uh, tangent, it reminds me of how early in the French Revolution the common people stormed the French Palace, the Royal French Palace, and they didn’t really do anything then. They just kind of pushed their way in so they could yell at the royal family.[76] It wasn’t until a few years later that people started getting their heads chopped off. Wolf Patch: Yeah. me: So ... but that’s a tangent.

In the spirit of accuracy, I think it’s fair to note that Trump also sent out two tweets throughout the day telling the mob to stay “peaceful,”[116] and then when he told the mob to “go home,” they did, almost instantly. Trump’s supporters want to give him credit for that, but while I suppose it’s better than nothing, it’s not so great when you really think about it. If Trump had the power to stop them at any time, why the hell didn’t he call them off the moment they broke into the building? During his second impeachment, a member of Congress, a Republican no less, recounted a story that Trump was on the phone with one of them as they begged him to call off the mob, but even though he knew the building was overrun he just said, “I guess these people are more upset by the election than you are.

As I’ve mentioned before, unlike a better planned “march” there was no one on the ground who could make the mob stop, Trump was the only one on earth who could stop them, and instead of doing that, he spent his time trying to get concessions from Congress, as they fled the building and begged him for help. Surely THAT’s a crime, isn’t it?

When I look at this day I see a stupid mayor who passed up federal reinforcements for cheap political points, a stupid president who told a crowd the election was “stolen” then directed them to walk across the city with no recognizable supervision, a stupid crowd who believed getting inside the building would give them magic powers but hadn’t planned beyond that point, and stupid police who, despite some individual bravery, utterly failed to present a coordinated response to the obvious and predictable threats they faced. Stupid at every level. A Perfect Storm of Intersectional Stupidity.

There is little doubt in my mind that historians 100 years from now will point to that moment as a handy dividing line, after which America’s dysfunctional political system was beyond saving. I think I get why the MAGA mob was angry, and while parts of that were the disturbing fantasies of paranoid children, parts were valid concerns about our declining republic. But chasing Congress out of the building didn’t save our republic at all, it hastened our decline.

Wait a minute, there’s some police over there!! They’re just chillin’ too, as if this really is a regular day for them. Protesters are walking behind and in front of them. I think ... wait, are the protesters emerging from the building itself? I think they are! And the police aren’t arresting anyone, they’re not even yelling at people to leave. They’re ignoring the crowd and the crowd’s ignoring them. What the hell is going on?

Trump’s so close right now! If he could just shut up, he’d either get an answer to soothe his concerns or prove to the world that Raffensperger is covering up something suspicious. All he has to do is wait for an answer to the question that he already fucking asked ... but he can’t do it!!! Trump starts talking again. Lured away by the sweet sound of his own voice, he gets distracted talking about his angry feelings, he piles questions on top of each other, and seems to forget what point he was building towards, and so his one good point about the poll watchers has been safely buried under a heap of bad ones. It’s like he doesn’t understand the concept that no one can answer you if you don’t stop talking.

1776, when the Declaration of Independence was signed, there had already been several battles and many shots fired leading up to that moment. I find it amazing that people who claim to love America can know so little about American history. This fake version of the Revolution was relayed to me by multiple people and always in the context of telling me we should repeat it. I suspect, but I cannot prove, that this “no shots fired” version of 1776 was shared on online forums by people encouraging Trump supporters to break into the building. I think someone online was telling them, “Look! Just go down into the building and force them to resign. You can do it with no shots fired. That’s what George Washington did, so it’s OK for us to do it too.

So here we are in the Capitol of the United States of America on Capitol Hill, the acropolis of our nation. It is a building like no other in the land, wherein the highest aspirations of a free and open society have been written into law, generation after generation, where, time and again, brave and eloquent words have changed history, and where the best and some of the worst of human motivations have been plainly on display.

Look to society, and look to the crapshoot of the way any given set of parents’ genes line up. How was Raskolnikov created? How about the “patriots” who assaulted the Capitol Building? We live in our own private realities, and sometimes—too often—those private realities have nothing to do with the larger world around us. I speak from the point of view of a novelist, a profession to which only the delusional are called.

This layout—a domed temple facing an obelisk—is an ancient, alchemical blueprint that holds significant esoteric meaning. For those who may not know, the US Capitol building in Washington, DC, is historically based on a pagan Masonic temple theme.

It was later revealed, after the damage was done to the presidents reputation, that the Capitol incursion was already well underway before the president had finished delivering his speech where he said: I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.

When the government sponsors the prayer vigil as a way to commemorate a Christian Nationalist attack on the U.S. Capitol, it is especially insulting to our foundational principle of religious freedom. Instead, the government should use the occasion to remind people that it is the secular nature of our government that fortifies our democracy and frees us to come together as equals.

I guess the floors and doors and wars were somehow complicit in stealing the election." Harry Dunn in "Standing My Ground" after describing some of the 2 million dollars worth of damage done to the Capitol building on J6th.

Southern Louisiana is heaven, as long as you keep one eye closed and don’t dwell on the corruption that’s a way of life here. Louisiana is a state of mind, more like the Baths of Caracalla without the moral restraint. One of our politicians said we should put the Exxon flag on the capitol building. I don’t know one person who thought that unreasonable. Our politicians are modeled more on the leaders of Guatemala than on Thomas Jefferson. Dave Robicheaux said a love affair with Louisiana is like falling in love with the Great Whore of Babylon. I said, yeah, but what a party.

This compartmentalization of standards is toxic to the credibility of the Christian witness. Many evangelicals have come to view politics the way a suburban husband views Las Vegas—a self-contained escape, a place where the rules and expectations of his everyday life do not apply. The problem is, what happens in politics doesn’t stay in politics. Everyone can see what these folks are doing. Just as you might stop taking marital advice from your neighbor if you saw cell phone footage of him paying for prostitutes and cocaine in Vegas, you might stop taking spiritual guidance from your neighbor if you saw him chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” at the Capitol Building.

As an American, I acknowledge that this book is a reflection on the era associated with former president Donald Trump—especially with the shocking events after the November 2020 election, when avowed Christians, acting for explicitly Christian reasons, were at the forefront of those who sought to prevent the certification of Joe Biden as the 46th US president. Their dangerous attitudes were seen most strongly in those who violently breached the US capitol building on January 6, 2021.

Sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson later said that there should be a “consilience” between art and science. 79 Former NASA astronaut Mae Jemison took selected images with her on her first trip to space, including a poster of dancer and former artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Judith Jamison performing the dance Cry, and a Bundu statue from Sierra Leone, because, as she said, “the creativity that allowed us . . . to conceive and build and launch the space shuttle, springs from the same source as the imagination and analysis it took to carve a Bundu statue, or the ingenuity it took to design, choreograph, and stage ‘Cry.’ . . . That’s what we have to reconcile in our minds, how these things fit together.” 80 As a jazz musician once told me, musicians are mathematicians as well as artists. Morse’s story suggests that the argument started not because of the need to bring art and science together, but because they were once not so far apart. 81 When Frank Jewett Mather Jr. of The Nation stated that Morse “was an inventor superimposed upon an artist,” it was factually true. 82 Equally true is that Morse could become an inventor because he was an artist all the while. In one of the final paintings that laid him flat, the painting that failed to secure his last attempt at a commission, one he had worked fifteen years to achieve, Morse may have left a clue about his shift from art to invention, and the fact that the skills required for both are the same. He painted The House of Representatives (1822–23) as evidence of his suitability for a commission from Congress to complete a suite of paintings that still adorn the U.S. Capitol building. The painting has an odd compositional focus. In the center is a man screwing in an oil chandelier, preoccupied with currents. Morse was “rejected beyond hope of appeal” by the congressional commission led by John Quincy Adams. When he toured the picture for seven weeks—displayed in a coffee house in Salem, Massachusetts, and at exhibitions in New York, Boston, Middleton, and Hartford, Connecticut—it lost twenty dollars in the first two weeks. Compounded by a litany of embarrassing, near-soul-stealing artistic failures, he took to his bed for weeks, “more seriously depressed than ever.” This final rejection forced him to shift his energies to his telegraph invention. 83 By 1844 Morse went to the Capitol focused on a current that would occupy the work of Congress—obtaining a patent for the telegraph.

Why would the war god Huitzilopochtli choose a mosquito-infested swamp as the perfect building site for the capitol city of his empire? The map according to the heavens overlaying the earth discloses the reason for this particular location. The national symbol for Mexico—an eagle perched on a cactus, holding a snake in its talons—has its origin in the heavens. Directly below the Virgin in the heavens overshadowing Mexico is the sign of Corvus, an eagle holding the serpentine Hydra in its claws.

During the horrifying attacks against the United States by terrorists on September 11, 2001, the country experienced the reality of criminal violence en masse. We learned of the actions taken aboard a hijacked airplane by some of its passengers that caused the plane to crash into a field instead of, perhaps, the White House or Capitol building. Americans embraced the actions the passengers took to save those who would otherwise have died-actions that required the application of violent force. The passengers had to impose their wills upon the hijackers in order to thwart their mission. I was struck by the unanimity of that public response to violence. Perhaps it was the unbelievable scale of the devastation, or the catastrophic change in our view of our safety and security, that inspired such vast support for greater enforcement measures to combat threats against America.

All my life, I have binge-watched crime dramas and love movies with cops being the heroes, but this wasn’t a movie. This was real life and it was happening in real time. At the conclusion of the two-hour meeting, I wanted to tell the taxi driver not to take us back to the DNC but right to the Pentagon. This was a war, clearly, but waged on a different kind of battlefield. During that twelve-block ride up Capitol Hill, we didn’t say a thing. Henry looked left, Ray looked right, Tom was checking his phone, and I was in suspended disbelief looking straight up at the dome of the U.S. Capitol. As soon as we got back into the building, we sat numb and silent on the couches in Debbie’s office. I am not one to tremble, because I am my daddy’s girl and I do not scare easily.

IT WOULD BE ANOTHER MONTH BEFORE I NOTICED it, though. It wasn’t Betsy, exactly. It was the whole town. But it affected Betsy and my relationship. People in DC, for reasons I couldn’t figure out, were harder to get to know. I first noticed it when I made a joke and the group I was talking to looked at each other to see if it was okay to laugh. One of them kind of chuckled and changed the subject as though to help me save face, even though I didn’t want to save face, or need to, for that matter. The whole thing reminded me of having grown up in a legalistic religious environment. It was more than just jokes. It was as though people only wanted to eat at restaurants that had been approved of, listen to music other people thought was popular, or understandably, express a political opinion that appealed to a broad demographic. And there was almost no self-expression. There was no art in the subways, no poetry sprawled on buses, no local art more risky than paintings of flowers. And everybody’s wardrobe seemed to have been stolen from the Reagan White House. I’d done a little work in DC a few years before, so I had a friend in town. Over lunch I asked why people in DC were timid to express themselves. My friend had worked in the White House and answered my question by tilting his head toward the window. I turned and saw the Capitol dome towering high across the lawn. “Think about it, Don,” he said. “Every day fifty thousand people climb out of these buildings and crawl into your neighborhood. And every one of them works for somebody who is never allowed to express themselves. This is a town in which you get ahead by staying on script. You become whoever it is people want you to be or you’re out of a job.” Suddenly DC made sense.

A Rationale for Violence At first, I thought I was merely witnessing the shocked aftermath of a shocking election. The Left did not expect Trump to win. As late as October 20, 2016, the American Prospect published an article, “Trump No Longer Really Running for President,” the theme of which was that Trump’s “real political goal is to make it impossible for Hillary Clinton to govern.” The election result was, in the words of columnist David Brooks, “the greatest shock of our lifetimes.”25 Trump won against virtually insurmountable odds, which included the mainstream media openly campaigning for Hillary and a civil war within the GOP with the entire intellectual wing of the conservative movement refusing to support him. Initially I interpreted the Left’s violent upheaval as a stunned, heat-of-the-moment response to the biggest come-from-behind victory in U.S. political history. Then I saw two things that made me realize I was wrong. First, the violence did not go away. There were the violent “Not My President’s Day” rallies across the country in February; the violent March 4 disruptions of Trump rallies in California, Minnesota, Tennessee, and Florida; the April anti-Trump tax rallies, supposedly aimed at forcing Trump to release his tax returns; the July impeachment rallies, seeking to build momentum for Trump’s removal from office; and the multiple eruptions at Berkeley.26 In Portland, leftists threw rocks, lead balls, soda cans, glass bottles, and incendiary devices until police dispersed them with the announcement, “May Day is now considered a riot.” Earlier, at the Minnesota State Capitol, leftists threw smoke bombs into the pro-Trump crowd while others set off fireworks in the building, sending people scrambling in fear of a bomb attack. Among those arrested was Linwood Kaine, the son of Hillary’s vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine.27 More of this, undoubtedly, is in store from the Left over the next four years. What this showed is that the Left was engaging in premeditated violence, violence not as outbreak of passion but violence as a political strategy.

The individual most responsible for the triumph of the documentary style was probably Roy Stryker of the government’s Farm Security Administration (FSA), who sent a platoon of famous photographers out to record the lives of impoverished farmers and thus “introduce America to Americans.” Stryker was the son of a Kansas Populist, and, according to a recent study of his work, “agrarian populism” was the “first basic assumption” of the distinctive FSA style. Other agencies pursued the same aesthetic goal from different directions. Federal workers transcribed folklore, interviewed surviving ex-slaves, and recorded the music of the common man. Federally employed artists painted murals illustrating local legends and the daily work of ordinary people on the walls of public buildings. Unknowns contributed to this work, and great artists did too—Thomas Hart Benton, for example, painted a mural that was actually titled A Social History of the State of Missouri in the capitol building in Jefferson City.16 There was a mania for documentary books, photos of ordinary people in their homes and workplaces that were collected and narrated by some renowned prose stylist. James Agee wrote the most enduring of these, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, in cooperation with photographer Walker Evans, but there were many others. The novelist Erskine Caldwell and the photographer Margaret Bourke-White published You Have Seen Their Faces in 1937, while Richard Wright, fresh from the success of his novel Native Son, published Twelve Million Black Voices in 1941, with depictions of African American life chosen from the populist photographic output of the FSA.

Standing out from the (New York City) map's delicate tracery of gridirons representing streets are heavy lines, lines girdling the city or slashing across its expanses. These lines denote the major roads on which automobiles and trucks move, roads whose very location, moreover, does as much as any single factor to determine where and how a city's people live and work. With a single exception, the East River Drive, Robert Moses built every one of those roads. (...) Only one borough of New York City—the Bronx—is on the mainland of the United States, and bridges link the island boroughs that form metropolis. Since 1931, seven such bridges were built, immense structures, some of them anchored by towers as tall as seventy-story buildings, supported by cables made up of enough wire to drop a noose around the earth. (...) Robert Moses built every one of those bridges. (He also built) Lincoln Center, the world's most famous, costly and imposing cultural complex. Alongside another stands the New York Coliseum, the glowering exhibition tower whose name reveals Moses' preoccupation with achieving an immortality like that conferred on the Caesars of Rome. The eastern edge of Manhattan Island, heart of metropolis, was completely altered between 1945 and 1958. (...) Robert Moses was never a member of the Housing Authority and his relationship with it was only hinted at in the press. But between 1945 and 1958 no site for public housing was selected and no brick of a public housing project laid without his approval. And still further north along the East River stand the buildings of the United Nations headquarters. Moses cleared aside the obstacles to bringing to New York the closest thing to a world capitol the planet possesses, and he supervised its construction. When Robert Moses began building playgrounds in New York City, there were 119. When he stopped, there were 777. Under his direction, an army of men that at times during the Depression included 84,000 laborers. (...) For the seven years between 1946 and 1953, no public improvement of any type—not school or sewer, library or pier, hospital or catch basin—was built by any city agency, even those which Robert Moses did not directly control, unless Moses approved its design and location. To clear the land for these improvements, he evicted the city's people, not thousands of them or tens of thousands but hundreds of thousands, from their homes and tore the homes down. Neighborhoods were obliterated by his edict to make room for new neighborhoods reared at his command. “Out from the heart of New York, reaching beyond the limits of the city into its vast suburbs and thereby shaping them as well as the city, stretch long ribbons of concrete, closed, unlike the expressways, to trucks and all commercial traffic, and, unlike the expressways, bordered by lawns and trees. These are the parkways. There are 416 miles of them. Robert Moses built every mile. (He also built the St. Lawrence Dam,) one of the most colossal single works of man, a structure of steel and concrete as tall as a ten-story apartment house, an apartment house as long as eleven football fields, a structure vaster by far than any of the pyramids, or, in terms of bulk, of any six pyramids together. And at Niagara, Robert Moses built a series of dams, parks and parkways that make the St. Lawrence development look small. His power was measured in decades. On April 18, 1924, ten years after he had entered government, it was formally handed to him. For forty-four years thereafter (until 1968), he held power, a power so substantial that in the field s in which he chose to exercise it, it was not challenged seriously by any (of 6) Governors of New York State or by any Mayor of New York City.

buildings erected to face their respective counterparts and whose cornerstones—including the US Capitol dome—were dedicated during astrological alignments related to the zodiacal constellation Virgo (Isis) as required for the magic

Five years later, the legacy of Trump’s presidency and his promises can be addressed. There never was an infrastructure bill. Trump’s budgets consistently proposed cuts to the social programs he vowed not to touch. He did little to combat the opioid epidemic he promised to end, with deaths rising by the end of his tenure. The national debt Trump promised to erase has ballooned by almost $7.8 trillion. Trump’s failed effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with nothing remains the nadir of his public approval, surpassing even the days following his incitement of an armed attack on the Capitol building in an effort to overturn his 2020 election loss. Trump has the worst jobs record of any president since 1939, with more than three million lost. He is, in fact, the worst jobs president “god ever created,” despite inheriting an economy that had finally begun to boom in the later years of the Obama administration. The promises of better healthcare didn’t materialize, and the job and wage growth from the economy he inherited were crushed by the pandemic he refused to address. Those were not the promises Trump kept.

I realized that I get to report in the halls of Capitol Hill because of the work of disabled activists who literally crawled up the steps of that very building to help pass the ADA. When people see me as an inspiration because I ‘overcame’ my disability to graduate college and hold a job, I want to respond that the only things I overcame were the specific obstacles in front of me. I am a return on others’ investment in policy. In the same way, every autistic person who language is in classes or winds up in a group home or institution is not a reflection of poor upbringing but rather a failure in policy.” ~ Eric Garcia We’re Not Broken: Changing The Autism Conversation

The Monocle restaurant—a well-known watering hole for the denizens of Capitol Hill—was only a few blocks from the Dirksen Building and it was too nice a day to take a cab, so they walked.

It is not coincidence that, as Raymond Money puts it, “from the pyramids of Egypt, the rebuilding of Rome after Nero’s fire, to the creation of the great medieval cathedrals…all great public works have been somehow associated with autocratic power.” It was no accident that most of the world’s great roads —ancient and modern alike—had been associated with totalitarian regimes, that it took a great Khan to build the great roads of Asia, a Darius to build the Royal Road across Asia Minor, a Hitler and a Mussolini to build the Autobahnen and autostrade of Europe, that during the four hundred years in which Rome was a republic it built relatively few major roads, its broad highways beginning to march across the known earth only after the decrees calling for their construction began to be sent forth from the Capitol by a Caesar rather than a Senate. Whether or not it is true, as Money claims, that “pure democracy has neither the imagination, nor the energy, nor the disciplined mentality to create major improvement,” it is indisputably true that it is far easier for a totalitarian regime to take the probably unpopular decision to allocate a disproportionate share of its resources to such improvements, far easier for it to mobilize the men necessary to plan and build them; the great highways of antiquity awaited the formation of regimes capable of assigning to their construction great masses of men ( Rome’s were built in large part by the legions who were to tramp along them); at times, the great highways of the modern age seemed to be awaiting some force capable of assigning to their planning the hundreds of engineers, architects and technicians necessary to plan them. And most important, it is far easier for a totalitarian regime to ignore the wishes of its people, for its power does not derive from the people. Under such a regime it is not necessary for masses of people to be persuaded of an improvement’s worth; the persuasion of a single mind is sufficient.

The Scriptures talk a lot about the “head of the corner” or the “chief cornerstone.” God uses the illustration of cornerstones to draw our attention to the Cornerstone He has chosen to build His house. Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste. Isaiah 28:16 Typically, a cornerstone is the first stone to be set in place whenever a structure is built, and all other stones in the building are aligned to it. Cornerstones mark the beginning point of construction, unite walls at intersections, and determine the positioning of the building. They support and set the reference point for how an entire framework comes together. Cornerstones often represent “the nominal starting place in the construction of a monumental building, usually carved with the date and laid in place with appropriate ceremonies.”20 You may have seen the famous picture of George Washington laying the cornerstone of the U.S. Capitol building. These stones can be symbolic or ceremonial in nature, and many times, they are inscribed with information about the building’s importance and why it was built. Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole. This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. Acts 4:10-12 Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God; And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: Ephesians 2:19-21

for purposes of discussion, let’s just say it is time for the mainline church to start looking for the “next big thing” that will unite us in purpose and divide us in debate. What will it be? As I said, I have some ideas. Caring for the environment is on the top of the list. Responding to growing numbers of refugees and to other humanitarian crises is too. So is interfaith understanding. And I don’t think it will be too long until the church seriously begins to discuss economic inequalities. There are a lot of possibilities. I was thinking about that recently. I was sitting with other clergy from my denomination, talking about my views on why it’s important for progressive ministers to be able to talk about our faith, and about what Christ means to us. I was talking about discipleship, and why it matters for our progressive church, and about how we’ve lost so much of our theological heritage, and our language of faith. That’s when the question came, part curious, part suspect: “But what about social justice? Doesn’t that matter to you?” The person who asked that question didn’t know me. They didn’t know that for more than twenty now years I have been openly gay. They didn’t know about the times when anonymous, antigay hate letters showed up in my church’s mailbox during my last call, or about how I’d grown up in a place where being gay could literally get you blown up, or about how my wife, Heidi, and I had needed to file separate federal tax returns even after we were married. They also didn’t know about the times my faith had compelled me to take action. I could have told them about how a group of us had stood in the New York State Capitol building for the better part of a week as right-wing Christians rallying against equal marriage had yelled at us that we were going to hell. I’ve gone a few rounds in the social justice arena.

Had United Flight 93 taken off on schedule, instead of forty-one minutes late, and the passengers hadn’t had time to learn of the other attacks and storm the cockpit, the plane might very well have successfully continued to Washington and hit the Capitol at about the same time as American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon. “With hundreds dead and perhaps hundreds of others in burn units in hospitals, Congress would likely have been without a quorum, without a building, without the ability to function,” American Enterprise Institute scholar Norm Ornstein worried.

He shook his head. “No, they never went. He checked and it turns out the Kavach plans are still considered active material and are still on file at Public Works.” “Fantastic,” said Xela. “So we can go see them.” Nate shook his head. “Nope. That’s where it ends. They’re sealed records.” Tim’s eyebrows went up. “Sealed?” “Yep. The same way they seal plans for things like the Federal Building or parts of the state capitol or embassies. The guy emailed me to explain why he couldn’t tell me anything. He even said he has to make a note in the file that I asked about them because of some Patriot Act thing.

In 1925, Gerardo Machado defeated the conservative Mario García Menocal by an overwhelming majority, becoming Cuba's 5th president. A colleague of Alfredo Zayas, he was also a popular Liberal Party member, and a General during the Cuban War of Independence. General Machado was best known for rustling cattle from the Spanish Imperial Army’s livestock herd, with the good intention of feeding the poor during the revolution. This brazen act of kindness won him a great deal of support among the people. As President, he undertook many popular public projects, including the construction of a highway running the entire length of Cuba. During the beginning of his career as president, he had the National Capitol, as well as other government buildings, constructed in Havana. At first, he did much to modernize and industrialize the mostly agrarian nation. Benito Mussolini and his march on Rome impressed Machado. He admired Mussolini for demanding that liberal King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy elevate the Fascists to power, instead of the Socialists. Although Mussolini originally started his political career as a Socialist, with power and wealth he became a staunch anti-communist. When he was elected as the 27th Prime Minister, he turned Italy into a Totalitarian State. Machado’s ambitions and admiration of Mussolini caused him to emulate the dictator and to misread the importance of his own office. Becoming a “legend in his own mind,” he overreached and started down a slope that led to his administration’s failure and earned him the hatred of the Cuban people. From the very beginning, he fought with the labor leaders and anarchists for control of the labor unions, which represented the workers in the sugar industry. This brought him into a serious conflict with the plantation owners who were mostly wealthy Cuban families and Americans. Keeping the cost of labor down became a priority for the Sugar Barons, and Machado used patriotism as a tool to keep the workers in line. His dictatorial, arrogant ways created unrest within the labor force, as well as with the politically active university students.

An eccentric feature of the new gun laws is that people entering the state capitol can skip the long lines of tourists waiting to pass through metal detectors if they show the guards a license-to-carry permit. In other words, the people most likely to bring weapons into the building aren't scanned at all. Many of the people who breeze through are lawmakers or staffers who actually do tote concealed weapons into the offices and onto the floor of the legislature. But some lobbyists and reporters have also obtained gun licenses just to skirt the lines. I'm one of those people.

inspiring vista: the impressive grandeur of the three main House office buildings, set on the incline of Independence Avenue and looming above their white marble massiveness, the golden dome of the Capitol.

Some people stay away from the chimp enclosure at a zoo to avoid seeing animals throwing feces at each other. Some people stay away from the Capitol Building in Washington, DC . . . and for the same reason.