A Capital Idea

Below is my column for the November, 2012 issue of the Sturbridge Times Magazine.   


Ah autumn in Nova Anglia.  It’s election time as presidential and congressional candidates tell us how they love us and wish to serve us, but not here.  No, they want to go to D.C. because life is good.

Washington is America’s richest city.  The capital and adjacent metro region beat out even Silicon Valley.   That should not be.  Silicon Valley is where the research is done for all the gadgets we cherish.  Washington only produces laws, lots of them.

Why should “crafting” legislation be such a big problem?  Because, they never stop.  According to the Wall Street Journal in 2011, there are so many laws, no one has any idea what the count is.  Ronald Gainer had the task at Justice to get the number.  He said, "You will have died and resurrected three times," and still not have the total.

So is this a problem?  In a democracy, certainly.  Don’t take my word for it.  The Roman orator, Tacitus, put it elegantly,

Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges

Roughly translated, it means a corrupt state has many laws.  It is understandable that a country with the oldest operating constitution will have passed innumerable bills.  That the actual number cannot be known is a scandal.


So what can be done to stop or at least arrest the pace of legislation? Fortunately, my fellow citizens, I’ve done the research and have come up with a solution.

 Several decades ago, upon separation from the serious work of defending my country, I embarked upon a trip across country with a friend in late spring.  We visited all the comrades who frivolously invited me to stop by once I got out.  Lacking the money to stay at motels when not sponging, we camped.  It was for the most part not unpleasant.

Then we came to Wyoming.  I have not spent a worse night. Getting up in the morning was hell.  We would have to leave the cold of the sleeping bags to dress and then go wash.  The late June day did warm up to just below tolerable. The Rockies had their own beauty but it was stark and bleak. Riding through was interesting to see but not enough to linger and there was no way a second night was going to be spent. 



My friends, the above-mentioned experience has moved me to propose to the nation that the capital must be moved to Wyoming.  The current seat of government is too nice. Our legislators need a harsh climate so few of them will wish to serve and those who do serve will not want to stay as long and pass laws.

Life will not be easy for publicity seeking solons up in the Cowboy State.  It is one thing to want to speak to the media and get face time when you are in a lovely tailored suit with perfectly coiffed hair.  Quite another when you are wearing a parka and a hat with ear flaps and your usually mellifluous voice is muffled because of the scarf covering your mouth.

It will be a more curmudgeonly type who seeks office under those conditions, and thus, more honest of speech.  Think about it, perky little Caitlin the correspondent asks Jake the retired math teacher with a face for radio but not the voice about the new education bill.  Jake gives the truth, "Listen girly, I'm not for giving one cent to the schools.  In my forty-five years in the classroom, I had about ten kids capable of doing real math, most of the rest wanted to sleep through class.  The school department mandated that I give the majority Cs when most of them deserved Ds."  She then asks, "Jake, don't you think your constituents will be offended by your comments." Jake, "If they don't like what I say, let ‘em vote for someone else. The food here is terrible, it's cold and I get stupid questions from reporters."



And speaking of cute little reporterettes and smooth, serious reporters, we would have less of them.  Duty in the new national capital would not be looked upon as the pinnacle of a career, but as punishment.  "Sorry folks, we won't be bringing you handsome, suave Brett up at the Senate building as he is too hungover again.  We do have some film from Lichtenstein History Month being celebrated at the Lichtenstein-American Community Center.”  Poor little Brett and Caitlin would be forever campaigning to be sent anywhere else other than, maybe, Pyongyang.

Now, I understand just physically moving the seat of government is not enough.  There will have to be limitations.  Generally speaking, I am not in favor of eminent domain, but in this case there is reason for an exception.  We find a town with a high school gym large enough to seat on those uncomfortable benches the House of Representatives.  The auditorium must be just big enough to accommodate the Senate. No more great architecture to inspire their imperial dreams.  If there is a medium size bank in town, that can serve as the President's office. A local district court should be all that is necessary for the Supremes (unfortunately, I don't mean the three chanteuses). 



Housing and building regulations will have to be strict.  We can have no vast mansions.  No, we shall build our masters what we do for the aging citizens of this republic.  They can live in senior citizen style housing equivalent to that which they subsidize across the country.  It will be Spartan, but if it is good enough for Grandma, it's good enough for John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi.  Anyway, they won't be spending much time there.  The most oft spoken word in our new capital will be adjournment. 



One other benefit to the big move will be we get to give back the District of Columbia to Virginia and Maryland.  Not that they might want it.  No more Marion Barrys.  No large federal metropolis to be supported by the rest of the country.  The Washington Post Style section with nothing to report.  Georgetown a ghost town. 



All right, I know my reverie can never come to pass.  I know that it is too much to hope that that place that started out as a swamp could return to being a swamp.  Well, I guess in a way it has always been a swamp.

Chinua Achebe’s memoir of war

This review was first published in the December, 2012 issue of the Sturbridge Times Magazine 

There Was A Country A Personal History Of Biafra

By Chinua Achebe

The Penguin Press, 2012

Hardcover, 258 pages

ISBN 978-1-59420-482-1

List: $27.95 Amazon: $16.63

In the late 1960s, for a very short span, there was an episode that gripped much of the world’s conscience.  A small bit of land holding millions of people was surrounded.  The populace was being starved to death.  By early 1970 the war that precipitated the catastrophe was all over.  Without any orders from an Orwellian ministry, for most of the world the struggle was consigned to the “Memory Hole.”

If one should ask today who remembers Biafra, it is doubtful one in ten living during the period could answer affirmatively.  Probably no one born after 1970 has ever heard of it.

I am part of the first TV generation and yield to no one in shortness of attention span.  Yet the war between the secessionist state of Biafra and Nigeria is etched in my mind.  How is it that an average American thinks often about what is now an obscure moment in time?

When the events in question were happening, I was a college student.  Well, in truth, not much of one.  I did my best not to over exert myself, but had a weakness for a good lecturer.  Justin Vojtek, professor of history, was an artist and in spite of the required effort I would be in his class.

The course would be a departure from the regular curriculum.  Colleges were beginning to take up African history.  The assigned reading included four novels by a man from the eastern region of Nigeria, Chinua Achebe.  He would be intimately involved in the events of the war.

Achebe was an Igbo.  Of all the various ethnic groups the British met as they patched together Nigeria, the Igbo were the most enthusiastic about taking up what the colonial regime offered.  This does not mean they forgot who and what they were, but they were changed by the experience.  The assigned novels reflected that change and its impact on his people.

Two of the novels, Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God concern themselves with how two important men are done in by geopolitical forces they do not understand.   Ezeulu is a priest in the traditional religion, an arrow of god.  He is steadfast in his service to his deity.  His interaction with the colonial administration upsets the schedule that will signal the harvest.  Despite his faithfulness, the people turn to Christianity, as it will offer a dispensation.

Things Fall Apart is the story of a strong man also done in by the arrival of the English.  Okonkwo is a man of status among his people.  He wishes to face the colonialists fairly and with honor.  The cold machine that is the new regime does not understand him and his people.  His dignity taken, he ends his life.

The third novel is the story of a young man of promise, Obi, who has obtained a smart university education and yet that does not prepare him for all the perils of the greater world.  Nor is he able to escape the problems of the old as he falls in love with an Osu or outcaste women.

The last book of the assigned quartet, A Man of the People, may be his most known work.  This is because of his famous “prediction” of the first coup d’état.  The book chronicles the corruption that led to the military takeover.  It did not foresee the breakup of the country.

There Was A Country is not only the story of Biafra, as one cannot tell that tale without consideration of all that preceded it.  He describes the colonial regime and the Igbo’s enthusiasm for learning and achievement.  Also, the independence struggle and his people’s part in it are chronicled.  The leadership of the men of his ethnic group was integral, if not the sine qua non.

Unfortunately, the Igbo success in the independence movement as well as business, education and the arts bred resentment.  The envy of the other ethnic groups led to pogroms and an exodus of his people from non–Igbo regions.  Achebe documents the resulting decline in relations leading to the declaration of a Biafran republic,

“And the war came,” as Lincoln put it in his second inaugural.  Whether or not he intended it, Achebe’s account has the flavor of horrible inevitability.  With international collusion, Nigeria had overwhelming force.  They surrounded Biafra and squeezed it to the end.  Yet, despite bombardment and blockade and starvation, the Igbo built a republic that functioned as complete state until the surrender.

Poignant is Achebe’s account of the life and death of Christopher Okigbo.  An accomplished poet, among other qualities, he set up a publishing house with Achebe.  When the war started, he enlisted and yet continued to work with the publishing business when time and duty permitted.  Made a major, Okigbo was always in the thick of battle.  Though not a callow youth when killed, neither was he an old man.  Still, Yeat’s line about the death of a young friend comes to mind, “What made us dream he could comb grey hair?”

The war ended, but the suffering continued for a time.  Eventually, the author rejoined the political process to no great success.  The final part of the book outlines the situation as it is.

As a reader, the conclusion I draw is my own.  The suppression of Biafra was one of the great crimes of the last century and that is saying something.  Nigeria and Africa are mired in corruption and the plethora of resources makes it worse.  Maybe the Igbo would not have made Port Harcourt a banking center or another Singapore.  Certainly, they would have managed the oil wealth more efficiently and with less corruption than the Nigerian state does now, to the benefit of the whole continent.

Achebe is a fine stylist and his treatment of the subject matter is valuable, yet I suspect this book will be soon forgotten by an incurious public.

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