Life As No Exit From The DMV - Kafka, Big Brother, And The Nightmare Of Government

John Michael Phillips stood inside the Half Street DC Inspection Station watching his car make its way slowly up the line - exhaust, brakes, lights, alignment, door locks, and windshield.  He like every one of the residents peering through the scratched, graffitied plexiglass, dreaded 'The Big Red', the 'failed sticker' which would oblige him to come back, submit his car to a repeat inspection, and Go Green for another year. 

 

A return visit to the Inspection Station however, was no easy matter.  The long, deliberate, excruciating process, few inspection bays, and an indifferent, bullying crew meant a two hour wait just to get into the station. 

At each station, three overalled men poked around the car, kicking the tires, flashing the lights, opening the hood, and revving the engine.  It was a boring, repetitive, mind-dulling job in a poorly-ventilated, dark, miserable place.  Even at this level of government the only recompense was authority.  The inspectors knew how much District residents hated coming down there, feared The Big Red, shuddered in the soulless, echoing vacuum of the hangar, and prayed for passage.  

Failing them in a joking camaraderie of chance, one out of three, one out of five on a nice day, was all they had.  It was a poor arrogation of power, something more than the projects, a spliff and a malt liquor on Saturday, and parttime pimping on the side. 

An elderly woman standing next to Phillips turned to him and said, 'Is it always like this?'.  She was recently widowed and this was her first time to the Inspection Station.  'My husband took care of the cars', she said as her car inched forward on the pulleyed incline for chassis inspection.  It was a vision of hell, a dark underworldly place with ungodly screeches and groans, masked figures in the shadows, horns blowing, and a miasma of blue exhaust giving them a a hellish cast. 

There was indeed no worse experience for a DC resident except perhaps for the DMV office itself - circumambulating lines, surly, bitchy clerks, endless rounds of duplication, triple stamps, identity checks, and toadying. One irritable moment and your claim would be rejected to be refiled; and you would have to come town again, stand in the shuffling, interminable lines, and put up with abuse, pissiness, and bored, aggressive indifference. 

When anyone inclined to reflect on the nature of government, its purpose, and its relationship to the citizens it serves, visited the Inspection Station and saw a Dore vision out of Dante's hell, he couldn't help but seeing the miserable place as a microcosm or metaphor for all government.  It and the post office were reminders of exactly who ruled and how.  Both were desperate reminders of the bottom of the barrel, the scrapings, the leavings, the gunk and goo that accumulates as residue. 

No one at the Inspection Station got their job through a civil service exam but through a cousin or brother-in-law higher up who got his job from an uncle appointed by an aide to the Ward Representative who got elected thanks to walkin' around money, no-show jobs, and generous contractor emoluments. 

John Michael was one of those who did reflect on all this and who had watched the system tank under successively corrupt municipal governments; and then a few years back, the District revised its vehicle inspection program - now inspection was required only once every two years and mirabile dictu, cars would only be inspected for emissions.  Someone somewhere ran the numbers and found that the checks on tires, brakes, lights, and alignment had absolutely no correlation with accidents, mortality or morbidity.  The DMV would keep the staff, stagger their hours while maintaining their salaries, and reduce the inspection time to fifteen minutes instead of two hours. 

The whole previous rigamarole was completely unnecessary, an arrogation of government authority, a needless burden on residents, and the perpetuation of government over the people, never by or for them. 

The individual DC tax burden is penitential, and the rewards are almost nil.  Every year the City Council votes for more diversity, more accessibility, more compassion; and millions of dollars worth of contractor fraud are assembled.  New sidewalks where the old ones were perfectly good, hundreds of non-existent Minnesota Somali-style 'Learing' Centers, empty job training workshops, boarded up  methadone clinics. 

Most of the revenue came from wealthy, white Ward 3, funneled through the Council to all-black, poor, endemically dysfunctional Wards 7 and 8.  John Michael remembered Mayor-for-Life Marion Barry who told the residents of Ward 3 angry that not one snowplow had been seen on their streets after one of Washington's usual snowstorms, 'It'll melt'. 

To add insult to injury when the mayoral election rolled around that November and Barry won with almost 90 percent of the black vote, he told Ward 3 all of which had voted against him, 'Get over it'. 

Barry was finally removed from office having been caught in a drug sting by the FBI ('The bitch set me up'), but not after he had turned the city into a corrupt, get it while you can jamboree.  He was the Idi Amin of DC. 

Yet despite all this there were still voters in DC who were solidly and resolutely for the expansion of government which was after all, the caretaker of the people, the assurance agent for mitigating misfortune, for providing solace and compassion, for assuring a diverse, inclusive, and equitable society.

Trips to the DMV and the Inspection Station did nothing to dampen their enthusiasm.  The redundant sidewalks and bike lanes to nowhere were not examples of government overreach and corruption, but positive signs of social progress. 

Mary Louise Hammond was one of these aficionados.  Even the worst examples of municipal disservice and electoral manipulation were dismissed out of hand.  God forbid that the nation fall completely into the hands of Donald Trump; and with that she festooned her lawn with Hate Has No Home Here, Democracy Matters, and BLM signs, marched on the Mall on No Kings Day and prepared to reprise her role of COVID vigilante when the next iteration arrived. 

It was this way up and down the political phylogenetic ladder.  As Ronald Reagan put it almost fifty years ago, 'Government is not the solution.  Government is the problem'; and videos of Milton Friedman warning not of the concentration of wealth but of the concentration of government power are more and more visible on social media. The scandals of power are endemic from municipalities to Congress, a never ending scam, a persistent use of unlimited power for personal ends. 

Mary Louise saw her money sucked away by the DC government in income tax, sales tax, property tax and a raft of a hundred other ways of filling its coffers; and yet she overlooked this unconscionable drain and insisted that government, ipso facto, was a good thing, that every barrel of apples had a few rotten ones, and that that was no excuse to throw the baby out with the bathwater. 

Liberalism dies hard because it is based on ideals not reality.  The progressive overlooks what is staring him in the face because the future beckons - a future which is rosy, verdant, peaceful and prosperous. Mary Louise will be a progressive till the day she dies and will have orations of progress said over her grave. Meanwhile John Michael Phillips has moved to Florida.