“Just Don’t Listen to the News”

The Accidental Realtor by Victoria Hall

Can I still live here, in this city I have loved and defended for two decades, when the news no longer arrives through a screen but outside my window, on my street, and at my front door?

As I sat at my favorite local coffee shop “Jacobs” on 8th ST NE, 2 blocks from my home of 20 years, a record in my adult life, as I’d always been a bit of a gypsy, always on the move, ready and open for the next adventure, the next chapter, the next story, the next relationship, fearlessly and yes sometimes blindly running from my hometown of Baltimore, MD to Pompano Beach, FL to Atlanta, GA. And now home to roost in our Nation’s Capital.

Having landed in a town that was constantly morphing and in a profession where I could simply change offices, change brokerages, change clients, and satisfy my gypsy blood as it coursed thru my life in a different kind of way, other than moving my residence. Then there were the geographic cures after two divorces. I had not been a lucky swan when it came to love, or one who mates for life, but more of a female primate who moves on every four years.

I had however been lucky in my real estate profession and investments, up until now. And had always touted to my clients that DC was a rock-solid market because we had the EDS (colleges), the MEDS (many world-renowned hospitals) & the FEDS (secure Federal Government jobs). In the current vitriolic political environment and the advent of DODG slashing 75,000 jobs, all of that has changed.

So, as I sat awaiting my breakfast sandwich order, two women with baby carriages, carrying their precious cargo of two toddlers, three-armed, army fatigue-wearing, National Guardsman walked in with guns in their holsters. The baby’s heads resting inches away. A horrifying and apt image of what was happening in our city, in our country, and yes to our Democracy in its entirety.

Ironically, it was the morning before gladiators would fight violently, lawlessly, on a hellish, metallic stage—part “Darth Vader,” part “Mad Max,” part colosseum. Billed as the UFC Freedom 250 to mark the 250th anniversary of our country’s birth and not coincidentally the 80th birthday of he who shall remain nameless in this piece.

The event promised a bloody fight with no rules or regulations or constraints, inside a doom’s day looking structure built to hold 4,300 paying spectators, along with the military of course. It was being held illegally on the once-bucolic, not for profit White House Lawn, a designated public park space previously reserved for public events such as the annual Easter Egg Hunt or a horseshoe tournament.

All of this was set against the backdrop, of an ugly massive construction site hole where the historic East Wing or the “First Ladies” section of the White House once stood.

Taken together, the fight cage, the military staging, and the crater where the East Wing once stood felt less like separate events than one single spectacle: power performing itself while the city beneath it tried to go on living.

Both images perfectly, dramatically, reflecting the corruption, the Caligula- like, debauchery, the hideous destruction that the current administration is wielding, spreading, infecting every cell, every corpuscle of our country’s life blood.

Add a recalcitrant, obstructionist, do-nothing Congress, that comfortably continues to give the current ruler – as there is nothing presidential about him – cart blanch, without interference, greedily collecting their pay checks, health care benefits for life, abdicating all responsibility, oh yes and shutting down the government wilily nilly, denying hard working Federal Employees and their families many paychecks.

I first moved back ironically to DC in 2001 or the year of the 9/11 attacks, and then on January 6th, 2021 sat at my home 12 blocks from the Capital and watched in real time, what looked like a marauding band of mindless criminal zombies, who would beat up and cause the death of Capital police, and some to have permanent brain injuries, defacing the Capital, defecating on Congressional members desks, building a noose to hang the current Vice President for treason and all of this, for not over turning the legal election results in his favor.

Then over a thousand insurrectionists convicted, now pardoned by the most corrupt administration since 1920, before the crash of 1930. But I digress. These are not abstract images to me. They are the backdrop to the practical question I now ask while driving through the city’s construction congestion and stalled projects—too much, too late, without enough approval or oversight: do I stay or do I go?

Another apt visual for the city’s devastation came a few months ago, when a sewage pipe break pumped more than 250 million gallons of raw sewage into the highly recreational Potomac River, which surrounds DC. The president’s solution was to blame both the Maryland and Virginia governors, even though the break occurred on DC land, while stalling the release of existing funds that could have helped stop the environmental disaster sooner.

Everywhere I go in the city these days, I frequently see groups of 3-6, of the 2,500- armed National Guardsman—untrained for policing and of little use here—stroll casually through the city, costing we American taxpayers $600 per guard each day, or $1.5 million daily. Rumor has it that number may soon double to 5,000 guards, bringing the cost to $3 million a day. And we are all in a constant state of “Fright, flight or fight!” about what madness is coming next.

And don’t even get me started on the illegally masked, violent, without search warrants, in another time in the US known as, “The Klu Klux Clan”, or in Germany during WWII, Hitler’s “Brown Shirts” today known as ICE.

Their threatening presence wreaks havoc city-wide. For example, one morning when my home cleaning service providers were an hour late, even though all 4 of them are legal citizens, they had received an ICE alert on their phones, causing them to have to drive all around the city from NW to NE rather than threw the city to avoid arrests because of their brown skin.

Now I’m not saying our city doesn’t have any problems; every city does. And I’ve in fact been the victim of some crime incidences myself. As I arrived home one sunny warm Saturday afternoon last month three National Guardsman stood on the corner and so I approached and said, “Hi guys! What’s going on?” “Oh nothing,” they replied sheepishly. “Exactly!” I said in a friendly way, not wanting to become the next Renee Good.

And so, I continued, “See that corner over there? Well, a few years ago, my Hyundai Tucson SUV (my first attempt at choosing a more economical car after years of driving luxury vehicles) was broken into after I had had the Hyundai recommended, free, anti-theft software installed. Then, a year later, likely the same thieves found a workaround, and from my third-floor bedroom window, I watched in horror and helpless as they stole that same SUV at 3:30 a.m., right in front of my house.”

Not being one to drive home a point, I continued, “Then, on Easter morning last year, a visiting friend from Virginia found a bullet lodged in his driver’s-side door of his new Jeep Cherokee, after my neighbor reported seeing three men running down the street shooting at one another the night before. We had taken an Uber to a concert earlier that previous evening, leaving his car parked once again in front of my house.” “So, my point is NONE OF THESE CRIMES HAPPENED ON A SUNNY WEEKEND AFTERNOON!” “And are you familiar with the unfortunate frequent crime incidences two blocks north of here on H Street NE?” As I pointed down my 10th street corridor. All three of them shaking their heads in unison, “Yep we sure are,” one replied. And so, I raised both of my hands into the air and said, “Exactly.”

That is the point I try to make when friends who don’t live here ask, “Well aren’t you happy, since you’ve been a victim, that something is being done?” I respond politely by saying, “Unfortunately, it is my experience that this current administration knows how to do three things: hurt people, break things, and, if there is a problem, make it worse.”

For example, when I drive past official government DC police parking lots filled with unused white official SUVs, I’m reminded that the current administration’s, wrong solution to DC’s crime problem is not to rehire the 500 local, trained, police officers we’ve been short of, nor to release our own tax dollars for better use.

Adding insult to injury, the message on so many DC license plates echo our ongoing frustration: “TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION!” Because all 750,000 of us that pay federal taxes without voting representation in Congress—are not a recognized state-paying more than residents of 21 states with much smaller populations.

So, the issue is not whether DC has problems. It does. The issue is whether spectacle is being substituted for service, whether armed presence is being mistaken for safety, and whether those of us who live here are being asked to accept theater in place of government.

Some friends who don’t live here say, “I just don’t watch or listen to the news anymore.” I understand the impulse. But I don’t need to watch the news; I only need to listen to the rattling windows of my 120-year-old Victorian home between 1:30 and 4:30 a.m., as military helicopters fly far too low over my once-peaceful Capitol Hill neighborhood, and to the almost hourly police sirens that now punctuate morning, noon and night.

And recently there is a strange, city-wide nefarious sounding massive engine-like hum of God-knows-what that permeates the sky starting at about 4 a.m. and ending at 6 a.m. And as I drive across town trying to go 3-5 miles from NE to NW, once a nice leisurely, beautiful, jaunt, and look at the ugly fencing, construction sites with signs that boast falsely, “We are making DC Safe & Beautiful”, I laugh and think “Oh really, this is not my experience?!”

That is why I cannot simply tune it out. The news is not something happening somewhere else. It is overhead, underground, fenced off, under construction, idling at corners, and humming before dawn.

For all of the above-mentioned reasons, I can’t seem to get the 1966 Buffalo Springfield song, written by Steven Sills, out of my head, “Something’s Happening Here, what it is ain’t exactly clear, there’s a man with a gun over there telling me I got to beware! So children STOP, HEY, WHAT’S THAT SOUND everybody look what’s going down!”