I thought I’d never find myself even halfway agreeing with Charles Barkley.  Much of what he says is so self-serving and childish that it doesn’t merit a response.  However, after admitting that he took money from agents in college, he then proposed that college athletes be given small stipends to prevent being unduly influenced.  Barkley’s argument confronts the elephant in the room.    

Vince Gray’s election on Tuesday night as mayor of Washington, DC, was met with a curiously nonchalant response among city residents.  No one seemed much inclined to celebrate.  A city that is famously buttoned-up and all business, all the time, was precisely that.  The prior mayor, Adrian Fenty, was widely seen as a temperamental prima donna, but this election was less a vote about specific District issues as it was a referendum on his leadership.  The results, a decided victory for Gray, were a backlash among many towards Fenty’s perceived stance in favor of more affluent parts of town, particularly those in the Northwest quadrant of the District.  This is far from an uncommon phenomenon.    

Since I moved to Washington, DC, I have obtained piece by piece of a massive jigsaw puzzle.  No one bothered to explain the rules, or what the picture is supposed to look like when you’re finished with it, but that’s just not how things work here.  Because I don’t believe that truth ought to be granted on a need-to-know basis, I have written about what I’ve uncovered.  Perhaps enough of us will chip away at the Sphinx long enough to find the answers to the riddles it holds close to the vest.  What follows is another one recently explained.

Across the board frustration at Washington, DC, will characterize this November’s elections.  The question on the minds of many is why, despite the promises to the contrary, nothing gets done and the situation gets worse and worse with every passing year.  To answer this question, one first needs to examine Washington culture in detail.  To begin, it is insular, frequently secretive, and suspicious of outsiders.  Capitol Hill dictates a more or less common mindset among everyone who lives here.  And, in all fairness, one really needs to get involved on the inside to totally understand its riddles.  I firmly believe that reform is possible, but, on the difficult matter of a solution, the analogy I always use is that of the Gordian Knot of Greek mythology.  This was an impossibly entwined knot that was eventually undone by a bold stroke of the sword, rather than through a probably hopeless desire to devote hour upon hour in the hopes of eventually untying it.    

On this Labor Day, the fullest definition of economic equality and fair wages is on my mind.  While on the subject, I’d like to pursue a related issue that has lately been front and center.  While we continue to debate the role of marriage and what it means to us today, I thought I’d contribute a different strain of discourse to the already deeply rutted road.  Most prevailing trains of thought opposing same-sex marriage tend to see it in only one of its many incarnations over the eons.  Opponents of marriage equality take a rose-colored glasses interpretation of an earlier era that probably never really existed.  Imagination can be deceptive.  The sacred institution was only as sacred as each individual couple regarded it.  These arguments presume that the impetus and motives of marriage were basically the same across the board and throughout the centuries.

Whether we’re even conscious of it, we need and desire a means of discernment.  We seek a measuring stick with which to compare our own individual perspectives with something close to objectivity.  We desire something firm and deeply grounded when the world around us is always changing.  Increasingly, Americans view science as the final and ultimate say.  To qualify my remarks, I don’t caustically dismiss scientific progress out of hand in favor of religious belief.  I do know that science is never static, and that it is a field which is constantly evolving as surely as are all living beings.  To place complete, unwavering faith in science is to overlook the continual process of human discovery.

I appreciate the opportunity now laid before the American people to have a long overdue discussion on race.  Prior opportunities like these have come and gone but, pardon my skepticism, I still don’t think many of us are willing to commit to it.  Doing so would explode a variety of myths, particularly ones held by those who enjoy patting themselves on the back for a job well done.  Jobs this complex cannot be undone by one movement alone.

Those currently in opposition to the construction of a mosque near Ground Zero don’t seem to want to understand the whole picture.  They will not even entertain anything other than views stepped in prejudice and fear, seeing an enemy in the face of every person of Middle Eastern descent.  While in stuck in this merry-go-round that passes for substantive discourse, they are trusted supporters of a system that sees the sum of its parts as more important than the whole.  Today’s believers in preemptive prejudice take stock in reductionism, a theory that justifies bigotry nicely.  Indeed, their system of belief relies more on personal bias and illogical rationales rather than outward truth.  The spread and growth of this, its own near-religion upsets me more than that of the genuine terrorists themselves.

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable:  “Two men went to the Temple to pray. One was a Pharisee, and the other was a despised tax collector.  The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men–robbers, evildoers, adulterers–or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week, and I give a tenth of my entire income.’

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’  “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Generation after generation of politicians running as Washington outsiders have railed against the established system.  Lambasting corruption and inherent evil has been an effective populist message for a long while.  We saw it from one party in 2006 and 2008 and now, in 2010, we observe it in another.  Every generation appears to have been sold the same basic message. But after each wave of reformers finds the going perilous and true change difficult, we engage in an equally long-running tradition, that of demanding why.  Why is this institution so resistant to change and so stubbornly ingrained?  Where does one even begin?