Tripping Through the Capitol

If you’ve ever met me, you know I’m small enough to hide behind the furniture and go unseen as a hobbit in an elf world. Wanting a real scoop in these by-the-nanosecond news times, I figured I’d sneak in and go all fly-on-the-wall to get a bird’s eye view, then throw in another metaphor for some real literary heft.

So, I visited Capitol Hill to duck behind decor and take notes. It was awfully puzzling to find that some entranceways had been stripped of their normal barriers and replaced with swinging saloon doors, but I guess it was a nod to history in such a historic chamber?

Pressing on, I crouched behind desks and waited to hear some hot Hill goss. Instead, a flurry of bats flew out of the rafters. In my rush to hide from the mad bats and avoid becoming patient zero in the next pandemic, I bumped into my protective bulwark of furniture disguise, then realized I was interpreting fossilized Senators as cabinets.

Unable to find either signs of life or indeed any trace these sarcophagi had once been human, I pulled out my phone and called a moving company to get them hauled away. I figured I could replace them with 80’s-era Epcot animatronics and sell tickets to a far more functional and possibly educational demonstration of democracy in action.

Without warning, one of the installations started to snarl. A pair of bloodshot eyes and hairy ears attached to a face foaming at the mouth shot like a gravity-challenged water balloon in a ricochet around the room. Screaming, I jockeyed for position with random piles of paper tied in…bacon? and searched for a spare stapler to defend myself with. Tumbling into a wheeled office chair, I launched myself smack into a wall to see a furry ringed tail disappear out the doorway. Apparently, some rabid raccoon was hurling itself through the Capitol trailing snot and sticky gum wrappers.

Making tracks away from virus-maddened wildlife and sincerely regretting the current bans on both vaccines and germ theory, I was out of there. With so much more yet to explore of this cavernous structure, what else might I find? Turn a corner and it’s a turnup for the books!

Not that I did find any books left in the Library of Congress. The ban on literacy had gone hard there, what with that being so much of what a library used to be about. They did have a lot of beers on tap, though. Not that I couldn’t use a drink after this latest side gig misadventure, but who knows how long those kegs had been there. Or whether some fool had grown a sense of humor and gone all Guy Fawkes on them.

My suspicions proved justified, I tell you. Continuing along, I edged my way through a minefield of leftover ordnance and office supplies from whatever orgy of mismatched battle had been so abruptly abandoned. Pretty sure I’d step on something fatal, I half-hoped that’s what had already happened to the absent suckers who had left this place such a wreck.

Still alive against the odds of the littered leftovers of whatever death fest had been so wisely embraced by those in such exalted positions, I moved through rooms of billboards. Billboards? I expected statues or ornate wood panels or some stray filing folders. Instead, it was like walking through Times Square. Giant signs advertised Congressional representatives for sale from every angle. Some offered bonus packages of tunnel access to K Street, some gave boxes of ammo to the first 1000 buyers, while others hawked free flights to Wall Street or C-Suite positions at any given company of their choice. Getting closer to the banners, I noticed fine print at the bottom spewing legalese. Leave your government to lawyers and yeah, that is going to happen, I guess.

Undaunted by such drivel, I labored my way through what inexplicably passes as “language”; I’ll give you the layperson translation. In two-point font and only after opting in to have access at all, it turns out that all the bonus bennies are what their buyers owe to them but it’s a rotating circle so they’ll just swap places and trade favors in turn, but no one’s supposed to tell anyone with less than ten million in net worth or they break the blood oath and are kicked out of the club. What with the intricacy of the legalese, though, I couldn’t make out whether they were sacrificing chickens or constituents. Probably best to assume both.

Feeling especially vomitorious, I tiptoed to the spot where Tip used to speak. The House floor was littered with architectural plans for life-size meme coins, and judging by the notes, to be airlifted on gilded planes to whoever promises to be besties with His Much Holiness of Dear Leadership the Infinitely Exalted and All-Knowing Amazingest. I found myself confused as to whether the scribble on the drafts had been translated from Korean or Russian? It sounded familiar somehow.

Wishing I’d brought more than expired Tums to fortify myself on this journey, I figured I’d try lower levels and maybe encounter the maintenance department. Surely there’s a mop or a chainsaw around here somewhere. Turns out it was so tough to climb through that much upended rubble, I couldn’t even recognize where I was and ended up in the Lost and Found.

Barring myself bodily in the leftovers room with some rusted musket superglued to a tea crate as a doorstop, I figured what the heck. Going through the coat pockets for any spare change I could scrounge, thinking if I really found a whopper of a wallet I could maybe buy a Congressperson and finally be represented, I mostly just found Viagra vials, pornographic thank-you cards, and crumpled promissory notes for private islands with custom luxury bunkers.

Wow, seriously? Was there nothing left of all the things they’d told us about, the people and furniture and words and paper and…well, you know, functional, well-maintained architecture, even? Not so much as a whisper, nary a stray research article, an emergency medical kit, a fire extinguisher…nothing?

Then I had an idea. This would be just the place for a secret doorway or a hidden chamber, behind which might be treasure. An unassuming room that only some scholar would even entertain the existence of, based on reading ancient sources in five different languages, then LIDAR mapping the site. Like Indiana Jones-meets-drones stuff.

I rapped knuckles on walls, listening for hollow sounds, a change in pitch, an echo, anything. Who knows, things had gotten so weird in here that it was possible I’d stumble through some forgotten passageway and find some Founding Fathers--like Abigail Adams, stashed away for safety in a cave, preserved like the legend of some old knight guarding a life-giving chalice that was decidedly un-gilt. Some clever and committed soul would surely have hid a republic here, in this closet of lost things, hoping someone would successfully complete the quest one day and come to claim it for a life-giving purpose.

Flights of fancy gave way to despair as I surveyed what truly needed to be described as a “test pit” in my news-turned-thesis of the archaeology of American government. From the reek of urine and clutter of coprolites, seemed like at some point, it had been turned into an outhouse. Now, it’s not that all that isn’t informative, but it is sad evidence of the state of the plumbing.

I didn’t have any sort of team put together to deal with the extent of what had become a completely different project, so all I could do was snap photos with what they tell me is a “smartphone” but which I’d call a domineering tyrant, and log evidence, scribbling in the note pad I always kept for grocery lists.

I flipped crippled pages, stuffed into too many backpacks over the years and showing its age. I believed in doing the literacy part analog, for fear of my own safety if I put any facts or coherent thoughts into that nightmare of a device owned by Versailles donators infinitely ruining people’s knowledge of crafting mix tapes. Turning leaves, I looked for some clear section to notate for posterity about this entirely failed venture for a government update—the news being, I supposed, that there was no government left at all.

It seemed I’d mused and investigated about the issue before in my scratchings. “Must buy a democracy?” one paper-meets-pencil list began. “Not in stock at big box stores”, read another. Yes, yes, all those rich-world problems that are so insignificant because you can always just substitute certain ingredients. “Not with these tariffs”, said my notes.

Carefully cataloging what had become a 19th century sewer system requires a strong stomach, I tell you, and an ability to cry while writing in equal unrestrained free flow. And that’s just the smell of it! The layers of what had been used and discarded in this Lost and Found just got more grim and odiferous. The smell of plutocracy and cowardice is simply not survivable, I tell you.

This Lost and Found, where I’d hoped for help or potsherds of democracy or even just a stray snack was a midden from…well, not really a lost civilization. I’d never known the place as anything I’d describe as “civilized”, and that’s just based on my own experience of healthcare policy, which was always a strange name for something so unhealthy.

No, it was a burial of concepts here, and the people who believed them. The paper stacks tied in bacon, the billboards advertising corruption proudly, the pornographic cards kept so jovially in fond remembrance. So contradictory to the words they told us, the mythical and holy words of some pantheon who had handed something so perfect and infallible that it would last forever and was always of fairness and right and common good. Personally, I thought if they’d put the creators of Schoolhouse Rock videos in charge of the place, it would have gone better. I cruised through my grocery list notebook and realized it was not the first time I had thought that.

Well, I tell you, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or just pick up some charcoal from the char and scrawl “told you so” over what walls remained. I thought of other slogans, too, from “elect Kermit” (feeling very sure that frog would be a superior example of putting “humane” into “human” in a way humans clearly couldn’t) and the trending topic of “f—k around and find out”. It all seemed relevant. So much charcoal over the remains of this exalted place, so little time to graffiti the most basic concepts onto its destruction.

But the sun was threatening its disappearance, and I didn’t want to meet what wildlife used this mess as its nighttime lair. No desire on my part to hang with some vampire lobbyist using me for sustenance, you know? So it was time to make tracks.

Kicking a path clear out of the rubble, I busted right through some brittle leather bag that looked to be the age of the Magna Carta, spewing dust as it split in two. Oops. That was kind of symbolic, though, so I stopped to jot that down, not knowing whether it was comedy or pathos for a genre, but definitely knowing I was a nerd.

Waiting for better visibility as both the literal and metaphorical dust settled, it seemed as though the bag had not been empty. Fearing what horror had been carried by these thieves, I didn’t know if I could look at the contents. I was just going to sidle past, but I barked my shins on that tea crate with the musket glued to it that had been made into a doorstop. So help me god, I swore it had a disapproving expression on its not-face. Either my blood sugar was getting low, or I was close to a Pentagon Papers moment.

Fine. Sure. Okay. I’ll either die on the Hill like everything else, or break open a whole new way to see what’s happening. I mean, everything had gotten past the point of ludicrous and unacceptable, improbable, cruel, and stupid, self-defeating, tone-deaf, and chaotic, so…why not? What the hell was there to fear when everything was already gone, already wrecked, already stolen? “Let’s look!” I thought. I may also have given a thumbs up to the tea crate with the musket glued to it, just to let it know “message received” and we’re on the same side here. Or we were. Or maybe we could be, if…? Or something, I don’t know. Maybe just an emoji on social media since there wasn’t much else available?

Gloves off (since I hadn’t brought any), I rifled through the bag tatters. More paper, possibly parchment, clearly old. And badly damaged. Threadbare, frayed, torn—paper as thick as fabric and just as finely woven, but it had been through the wars, clearly. Barely legible, some of it.

I had room in my backpack, so I started loading these remains into it. Technically that made me a looter, but these obviously belonged in a museum and wouldn’t last long exposed here in the dank reek of contaminated leftovers. I justified the decision with thoughts of salvage and sharing and preserving, of bringing things into the light of day—all these noble premises I’d been taught while also watching every adult in the room say “it’s just business” as they sent me down the American ladder one more time to beg at the bottom. Maybe these papers contained answers to hypocrisy, and would therefore be most exciting news!

Well, beg, borrow, or steal, this beggar was making choices in a landscape of nothing much left besides travesty. “For Sesame Street”, I thought, knowing that you have to invite kids in young to know something, especially something better or important, or they will never know it at all. What there was left to know that might be any use, I was taking with me. And these papers looked like they might contain something besides an incomprehensible product manual from an online purchase missing pieces for assembly, so you had to get in touch with either the sales department or also the manufacturer and/or also maybe the retailer but it was all only going to happen through a series of ineffective chatbots leading in circles of programmed nowhere as a stall tactic and bulwark against any real customer service. So, yeah, in summary, these papers didn’t look like that.

Being as delicate as I could, I kept ferrying tiny piles carefully into my convertible carry mode; there is nothing so brilliant as convertible luggage that no one makes anymore, with backpack to wheeled bag to also a duffel one can clip a strap on and heft over a shoulder. Come to think of it, that type of luggage they used to make was always more multitasking and ready than this place ever was. When your bag is more capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time than your government, that is a statement, indeed. Now, I don’t mean to bore you but I have never had such a journey of sad metaphors presented to me as I did that day, so the luggage gets included. Found myself wishing I ever had been, given what I’d always been told about this place and what it could be. But, it’s just luggage for us beggars, if we can take it.

So I was busy taking things. Taking things back. Taking things for me and for whoever was interested. They’d taken everything else. My turn, I figured. But I was caught without breath when I stopped to read what was legible of the battered docs. They were tough to read, spots just smudged or gone with holes. I squinted. I was hallucinating, surely?

“The Dec.rat…f..In..Dependence”, the paper said. What?! No, this just wasn’t that, it couldn’t be, was it? It was all very…scrolly. So, maybe. Upon further investigation, it did smell like a ruffled shirt. (Insider tip: they sniff and taste a lot in the archeology trade for verification, making it an additionally hazardous occupation.) I read on.

“When…unanimous…dissolve…political…powers…separate...station…entitle”. Pretty accurate so far. “We…truths…dent…pursuit…powers…destructive.” Well, this thing was right on the money! “abolish…principles…Prudence…mankind…suffer.” Yeah, you can say that again. I might just have the real deal in my hands!

Right. Okay. Here in the basement? Practically buried? Stashed away out of sight in a leather bag from another age? It was not inconceivable, given the sad state of affairs that I had found the States in. But me making any type of headline-making success of myself was completely inconceivable, so I chalked this thing up as a forgery and wondered how that could go viral on the socials to make me enough grocery money for tomorrow. God knows fortunes were made on conspiracy there, so this might be my ticket to eating. Maybe more, like a roof. Sky might be the limit on having a car, too, if I could play this one right. And I could drive out of here, once and forever, and never look back—the real American dream here in 2025. The only one left to have, after all the others died. Hey—I had the luggage!

Wondering if there more such finds, I picked another beleaguered-looking parchment to wrestle with. “We…perfect…defence…blessings.” Uh, what group chat had this rando been included on accidentally? Or was this ol’ Dwight D.’s warning? I continued, confused.

“America…chosen…Classes.” Um, so, educational or social, because that would truly alter the meaning there, yikes. “Vacancies…Power…Expiration.” No clues there. “No Person…absence… Indictment…”. It indeed was that. Everything had been for a while. But did this here recipe have other ingredients? What kind of cookbook was this, anyway? I could indict this place for absence easily enough, wasn’t someone supposed to have something else available? I just carried on as best I could.

“Rules of Proceedings…Treason…Bills.” Damn, maybe the American cake had been baked long ago, because whenever this was from, it was so very now from what words I could decipher. “Money…foreign…Piracies.” Ah, okay, I finally understood. It was either a Letter of Marque or an old-timey first-version of crypto or possibly a treatise on campaign funding. Fascinating.

“No…Law shall be passed.” Wait, okay, it was a Congressional instruction manual! Whoa! So they were supposed to sit there and do nothing? That was like, legit in the books this long ago and like…supposed to be a job?

Well, I tell you, I found myself much deceived for all these years. I’d been told so many other things! Recognizing of course how damaged the documents were, I knew they needed further analysis under radar and microwaves and scans and all sorts of science-y stuff that likely was banned by now, so I’d have to high-tail it, docs in infamous luggage, to someplace that still had microscopes.

“Treaty, Alliance…Duty of Tonnage…Danger…Profit…” Yep, seemed accurate. “Compensation…Offences…public.” Okay, “public” was in lowercase?! Figures. “executed…inferior…Subjects…”. Hang on, hang on; what feudal fiefdom had someone purloined this maniac text from? Holy moly, it couldn’t possibly read like this, not originally? I needed manuscript resuscitators, and stat.

Shoving what remained from the busted old leather bag into my spontaneous spree of knowledge crime, I hustled to escape the maze of decay and make it to my next side gig in time. Who knew what wonders waited on the wires when I had time to check in with experts, should there be any left, and break the news of my epic journey with the last known artifacts of the place they called “America”! It would be great.