Thinking the Unthinkable

[NB: There is a summary of this post at the bottom, if you would prefer to skip the elaborative preamble below. I think this proposal is important enough that even the attentionally deficient should be able to read it without prejudice against their distractability.]


So in the last post, I alluded, obliquely, to certain circumstances we could imagine that would actually, realistically, be worse than the defaming of our nation's reputation and the wounding to our national soul. While it has been alleged that waterboarding was successful in eliciting information about a plot for a spectacular 9/11 copycat attack in Los Angeles, as alarming as this is, it is not the disaster situation we all know is possible but almost never mention.

That situation, the most alarming, would be the obliteration of a major American city through means which I will, deferentially, not mention in this post. Obviously, the destruction of New York or Washington, DC would be the most damaging to our country- with all due respect to Los Angeles, Boston, Wichita, and the rest, these two cities represent the densest concentrations of wealth and power in the United States, indeed the world, and were they to instantly disappear from the planet, the repercussions would be everything an anarchic jihadist would long for.

For the purpose of offering a constructive solution, or prophylaxis for this situation, let me take Washington, DC primarily.

Whatever we may think of our elected representatives, and the teeming masses of bureaucrats, technocrats, lawyers, lobbyists, secretaries, generals, judges, journalists, diplomats, and dignitaries that inhabit - some would say infest - our nation's capital, they nonetheless are the ones who run the country and, by extension, the world. They have the experience, expertise, exposure, and awareness of the mechanics of governing that even the most highly educated of the rest of us do not. This is a statement, on which even the most hardened Idaho Libertarian could agree.

The instantaneous "disappearance" of the capital city would leave our nation without 95% of our federal elected officials in the blink of an eye. The results would literally be catastrophic, bordering on cataclysmic. The top shelf of the executive line of succession from the President to the Vice-President, Pro-Tem, Speaker, Secretaries of State, Defense, etc., would all be within the radius of destruction. Likely the Joint Chiefs of Staff would be as well. The power vacuum left without a Washington, DC would be unimaginable, and the chaos that ensued could prove to be insurmountable.

It has become custom, over the years, for a member of the line of succession to be absent from the annual State of the Union address in the event that some wacko planted a bomb in the Capitol and dispatched the top of the chain. Unfortunately, that scenario is proving more and more quaint as we begin to imagine scenarios using more and more powerful explosives.

Now it is possible that I am overstating the magnitude of this kind of catastrophe. Perhaps there are already plans in place to "back-up" the government in the case of some sort of unimaginable disaster. But, while I hate to be this cynical, since Washington works almost entirely on the principle of self-interest and self-preservation, since most of its residents would be dead in such a scenario, it is hard to imagine them envisioning, much less implementing, plans that would only have value once they were dead.

Before I present what I believe to be an excellent solution for this morass-in-waiting, I should like to say that the country we know now, despite our lip-service to our ideals, is very much different from the one our radical forefathers founded over 200 years ago. That country, indeed that world, was largely agrarian, extremely diffuse, with power and wealth highly decentralized and concentrated in land rather than money. The government, with no standing army and limited power and reach was far less powerful and far less centralized than it is today. The Daniel Boone lifestyle was a reality for more people than it is today, and the concept of self-reliance, self-self-defense was much more active in the psyche than it has become under today's police-and-nanny state.

Among the many things this country lost when the Civil War was won was this kind of diffuse, agrarian power structure. The Civil War was a victory, among other things, for industrialization, modernization, and centralized power and wealth. The "big cities" of the time were industrial cities, and for the making of products, concentration of wealth and labor were required.

As we move into the digital age and the post-industrial age, America's wealth and labor will hopefully grow more diffused, bridging the decentralization of the ante-bellum U.S. with the high levels of wealth and paid employment of the late 19th and 20th centuries. In other words, much of the modern economy can be run from anywhere in the world. Airstrikes and surgeries can now be performed remotely, via computer technology, thus obviating the need for gross centralization in big cities. Traders can get all of their information online and require fewer and fewer trips to the office. Theoretically, this could mean the Wall Street tycoons could still maintain their empires while living 8 months out of the year in Jackson Hole.

For business, this will hopefully be a good thing, as the concentrated wealth of the great cities can be spread around into the various local communities around the country. It is my contention that for government, this model should be adopted a well- and for reasons of national security, it should be adopted as quickly as possible.

There is no longer a logistical reason for the primary elected officials to be concentrated in Washington, DC. The nation's capital was founded in that nasty swamp as a compromise between the northern and southern power centers of the time (Virginia/Carolina and Boston/New York). There were no states west of the Mississippi, and so Washington was the political as well as the geographical center of the country.

But that is no longer true. A more accurate symbolic location of the Capital would be Lincoln, Nebraska, or thereabouts. But this is not the point. The point is that the center of the country should be everywhere within the country. There is no longer a reason, due to technological advances, to have the White House and the Capitol in the same city or the same state. Ditto for the State Department and the Pentagon. More interestingly, through conferencing software, Congressmen and Senators could stay at home in their districts and state capitals.

Modern businesses do not store all of their documents in one geographic location, for fear of fire, theft, or terrorism. The Internet is "everywhere" at once, backed up in different locations for the same reasons. Government, whose resources could be described as being even more valuable, should follow the same model of dispersing its members both for the sake of getting closer to the country as a whole and also for mitigation of risk in the event of a targeted catastrophe.

Putting all of your eggs in one basked is never a good idea. In investing, we describe this as diversifying your portfolio, spreading around the risk. Washington was built and incubated during a time when that risk was relatively small, a stray musket, a home made explosive, or, at worst, some kind of arsonist. But the threats today encompass real estate margins that exceed what any city planner could have envisioned a century ago, and we need to adjust our reality to that reality.

After 9/11, Don Rumsfeld determined that either "they" would have to change or "we" would have to change, which, he declared, was impossible. So there exists on the right much insistence that we "preserve our way of life" whatever that means. But of course, we, as a nation, have changed enormously since 9/11, and with the current financial downturn, we will find our way of life changing even more.

Perhaps some on the right would accuse this plan of admitting failure prematurely and of being a sign of weakness to our enemies. The truth is we have already shown weakness to our enemies by botching a war and a half, selling out our values, and relying on military drones to do our dirty work for us. Jihad has never been more emboldened than it has become based on our actions to avoid appearing weak. This diffusion of government power would be an intelligent, forward looking venture that would significantly hamper our enemies' ability to do us harm.

Virtual communication software will become more and more a part of our lives, particularly as China and India become real global players. It will simply become impractical to travel 24 hours in an airplane for frequent business meetings in Asia. America could take the lead in secure global conferencing and networking technology by starting with our own government.

Is it really so hard to imagine a congressional session being conducted over large monitors in Senators' home offices in the nation's capitals? Could not each member be given individual screens for private meetings with colleagues for arm twisting and bargaining sessions? Scheduling would be more efficient, travel time would be reduced, and the immediate needs of the local districts could be addressed more convincingly. And obviously campaigning would be a lot easier as well.

Local economies would flourish as lobbyists, lawyers, and other bureaucrats moved into regional offices. And the wealth of the country as well as the culture of the country would be more interlinked. Global teleconferencing would be advanced as a technology, and most importantly, national security would be enhanced as the national economy grew. All in all, not such a bad way to change our way of life. It is, after all, no longer the 19th century.

-Summary-

So just to be clear (due to the touchy nature of this subject, I have been even more circuitous in my discursions than usual) - what I am proposing is a decentralization of our main centers of power in Washington with a relocation of those centers throughout the country. While the White House and Executive could remain in DC, the Supreme Court, State Department, Defense Department, Agriculture, Labor, etc. could be relocated to secure sites around the country. [e.g. Agriculture in Kansas, Defense in Kentucky, Labor in Ohio, Energy in Colorado, State in New York, etc.] Congressmen and Senators would set up base primarily in their home districts and state capitals.

Meetings between relevant parties - including sessions of Congress - would become mostly virtual, through secure conferencing technology - hard wire, backed up by cellular and satellite transmissions. Handhelds would be in use for private meetings between lawmakers, etc. over longer distances. The infrastructure in Washington would remain for use as desired by national leaders, but it would no longer be the sustained, concentrated geographical power center that it is today.

The benefits of this adjustment would be manifold. First of all, it would significantly reduce the damage from a potential large-scale terrorist attack using non-conventional means. It would bring state and local representatives into closer contact with their constituencies. The remoteness of representatives has been a major complaint from local regions- particularly from states in the far West where travel time and expense can be excessive. This program would bring Delaware and Oregon into balance in terms of ease of representation.

The program would also create jobs and revitalize economies throughout the country. Larger bureaucracies would be built around local government centers. Lobbyists would be forced to travel to various locales to make their cases, thus supporting regional hotels, restaurants, car services, etc. (of course lobbyists could also be granted selective access to virtual meetings, based on the disclosable discretion of the individual lawmakers). Long defunct state capitals would receive a surge in development and economic vitality.

And finally, the program would reestablish America's place at the forefront of technological innovation as we remodel democracy for the 21st century. If we envision a future in which all of the world's nations operate in sync with one another in real time, this "virtual" government infrastructure would prove the foundation for the global model. And America would be at its leading edge.

I believe that these proposals are worth considering- especially as we seem intent on developing infrastructure as a means of dealing with the financial downturn. Why not invest in infrastructure that has certain, long term benefits for the entire country rather than make-work projects of dubious national benefit? Surely national security, economic expansion, technological advancement, and increased regional representation are things all Americans could get behind.