- Oct. 28, 2019
- 3 min read
Updated: Oct. 29, 2019
The partisan Washington Nationals crowd was not pleased when President Trump was shown on the ballpark’s video screen during Game 5 of the World Series between the hometown Nationals and visiting Houston Astros, as fans greeted him with a crescendo of boos in the third inning of the ballgame.
In addition, fans mockingly yelled “lock him up,” a chant Trump supporters began in 2016 against his opponent, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
— Fox News, October 28, 2019
THE TAKE
It wasn’t the likes of Pelosi, Schiff, Schumer, Comey, and Clapper booing Trump at Game 5 of the World Series last night. It was thousands of fans who you’ll never know by name. They’re as much a part of The Swamp as are the rogues who are household names.
When we think of DC as The Swamp, we tend to assign its swampiness to members of Congress – and high officials in the federal government – Deep Staters at the FBI and CIA. There’s the Fourth Estate, too – or the mainstream media, which serve more as propagandists for the leftist Democratic Party. Many are DC lifers – along with establishment Republicans, who have ample skin in the game.
The Swamp isn’t just the elite, though. It encompasses all of metro DC.
Hundreds of thousands of DC’s denizens make their livings off big government. Many make excellent livings, as a matter of fact, along with gold-plated benefits. Many federal government workers are degreed professionals who are part of two-income federal employees’ households. That means by household they’re affluent. Very affluent.
Their kids go to excellent schools – public and private, in upscale communities, like the City of McLean and Fairfax and Loudoun counties, Virginia and Bethesda and Chevy Chase, Maryland. Their homes are pricey. Real estate always appreciates in DC metro.
The big takeaway: DC federal employees are getting rich off your tax dollars.
From the Washington Business Journal, July 18, 2017:
Five of the 10 wealthiest counties in the U.S. are located in the D.C. metro area, according to Forbes’ 2017 rankings.
The Washington suburbs dominate the list because their median household incomes are some of the highest in the country, according to 2015 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, the most recent data available.
The nearby city of Falls Church, Fairfax and Arlington counties in Virginia and Howard County in Maryland also lead the nation based on wealth.
It isn’t just those who make their livelihoods directly from the federal government who booed Trump and chanted, “Lock him up.” Hundreds of thousands of others make incomes indirectly from government, off your hard-earned money. Government contractors abound in the DC area. Then there are local governments, like DC itself, which proliferates incompetence and corruption, but that depends on Uncle Sam to power their fortunes.
Then there are area businesses, providing products and services. They’re as caught up in the need for a leviathan Uncle Sam as is everyone else.
Booing Trump was merely an expression of DC metro’s citizens’ self-interest. They’re tied strongly to the interests and fortunes of the establishment.
Government produces nothing of real value. The food on your table, the clothes on your back, the house you live in, and the car or truck you drive wasn’t manufactured in Washington, DC.
Uncle Sam makes laws, regs, and taxes – much of which are useless, needlessly interfering, and outright damaging. It’s created vast bureaucracies to administer and oversee its handiwork. This is a long way from the founders’ vision of a smaller national government and true federalism – meaning emphasis on state and local governments. The national government was intended to have an important but highly limited role in our lives.
A century ago, the “progressives” decided that Americans weren’t capable of running their own affairs. Uncle Sam had to be made bigger and ever-expansive to manage our lives.
Whatever the progressives’ intentions, what their worldview permitted was to give Democrats, in particular, a chance to turn their old “spoils system” into a growing enterprise, attracting and ensnaring millions of Americans in well-compensated government dependency.
Those millions in DC and surroundings – and others by extension around the country – have as much to lose by Trump upending the establishment as the elites themselves.
That’s why thousands in the crowd booed at Nationals Park. That’s why those DC denizens want Trump in the slammer. Justice has nothing to do with it. Follow the money and the bennies.
What do you think? Weigh in!