Washington As the New St. Petersburg

Not St Petersburg, Florida. St. Petersburg, Russia.  Because like the Russian city, Washington was built on a fetid swamp with the sole intention of being a national capital.  But like its Russian antecedent, Washington, D.C. is fated to be a national capital no more.

I say this in part because I beleive that the United States is destined to split into separate countries, and as a secessionist, I am rooting for this outcome.  It is unlikely to be a capital city for whatever post-Union country assumes possession of it, because Trump has already rendered it tarnished beyond recognition.  Not only is he still trying to turn the White House into a Middle Atlantic Mar-a-Lago, with the ballroom and all that, he has had the floor of the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial a painted deep indigo blue, which absorbs daytime heart and causes algae to bloom.  When Trump had hydrogen peroxide poured into the water to fight the algae blooms, the paint came off, leaving a gunky blue and green mess.

And the triumphal arch for the western end of the Arlington Memorial Bridge is yet to come.

Washington should obviously lose its status as a national capital, given all of this.  Even if a future Democratic President theoretically tried to undo the damage - damage that possibly includes the UFC giant claw remaining in place on the White House South Lawn - the memory of the desecration would still linger.  And a Middle Atlantic republic that forms out of the states from the 36°30′ north line between Virginia and North Carolina to the farthest reaches of upstate new York will likely declare New York City to be its capital to take advantage of its large population and metropolitan area as well as its central location in the seven states that form the Middle Atlantic region. 

Therefore, Washington will likely become what St. Petersburg is today - a politically irrelevant and unimportant town with beautiful old government buildings that have long since outlived their purposes and have been repurposed for other uses.  I have addressed this topic in earlier posts; this post updates those ideas in light of Trump's recent attempts to beautify a city that didn't need much beautification in the first place.  

The various memorials and monuments will take on new meanings.  Presidential memorials honoring Presidents from different regions of the former United States will have their fates decided on a case-by-case basis.  The Jefferson Memorial, given Thomas Jefferson's inappropriate (to say the least) relationship with a female slave, will likely have its statue of Jefferson and its Jefferson quotes removed, becoming a mere granite gazebo.  The Lincoln Memorial might be enclosed possibly expanded to become a sculpture museum like the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia. 

The Capitol itself could become a grand new art museum, much in the way that Louvre in Paris was converted into an art museum after having been a royal palace.  It seems that the current Capitol building is actually too small for the number of House of Representatives members need to represent everyone in America adequately.  Therefore, as a government building, the Capitol is already antiquated.  And it would be too big for a successor state to the U.S. What is now called the National Gallery of Art would appreciate all the extra space.

The Supreme Court - the scene of many recent crimes against the common good - has a building that's actually much larger than it appears at the front.  Given that the Kennedy Center is an ugly piece of modernist Third Reich-inspired crap, the best solution would be to turn the Supreme Court building into a performing arts complex.  Given the current composition of the Court and its cavalier overturning of precedent, there are enough drama queens performing there already anyway. 

And the White House?  Uh, yeah, given how Trump has desecrated the executive mansion, the whole damn thing ought to be razed and have an apartment complex built on it.  

But the earth will have to be salted, given Trump's chronic inability to changed his Depends.

I had originally proposed expanding Lafayette park on the site of the White House, but you can;t plant flowers in salted earth. 

The Library of Congress?  It'll just be a library like any other, only it will have every book over written.  We can rename it the Robert Klein Library, after the stand-up comedian who parodied late-night television ads with his stand-up skit "Every Record Ever Recorded" (and the Library of Congress has every record ever recorded, too!)

Plus if you act now, you get an ice crusher.

("My name is Conrad Jarvis, and I’ve been dead for six years, but this idea is so brilliant, I had to come back to tell you about it.")

Almost any other remaining government building can be turned into a hotel.

And Washington's name?  Well, George Washington was the Father of Our Country, but without a country for Washington to be the father of, we can simply name it what it was when it was a little Maryland village absorbed into the District of Columbia - Georgetown.

And yes, it should be returned to Maryland.  What's it going to be a federal district of? 

Over time, Georgetown Maryland, the city formerly known as Washington, D.C., will become a splendid tourist attraction for its grand buildings and boulevards, the city being reimagined in its new role as a center of culture and historic preservation and, like St, Petersburg, it can still function as a naval hub thanks to its Navy yard.  It may even become more important as its own city than as a national capital entombed in a federal district where the locals have no representation in the national government.  But its role as a center of global power is pretty much gone, and it will in that respect be a shadow of its former self.

As for what to do with the Pentagon . . . I'd rather not let myself think about it.