When the first United States Congress met in 1789, travel to the meeting place in New York City took anywhere from a week to over a month depending on which of the original 13 colonies you hailed from. They had to meet in person because… Skype hadn’t been invented yet. Anyone elected to the original congress knew they would be braving a perilous journey to a far-off city and would live there while congress is in session.
Fast forward 230 years. We can now travel across the country in the time it takes to eat a sandwich and watch a movie. We can meet with business partners in 5 different countries simultaneously over the internet with a snap of a finger. We can vote for our favorite singer to win a Teen Choice Award on our smartphones. We can collaborate with a kid from Mumbai to make a silly video on TikTok.
And still, our esteemed representatives in congress feel it necessary to congregate in a corrupt cesspool called Washington DC nine months out of the year in order to vote and debate on important issues. Why?
We’ve all seen the depressing videos of representatives giving impassioned speeches to a chamber of exactly zero people. I assume everyone else rushing to meet the next donor, lobbyist, or CNN anchor. They don’t even have a PowerPoint projector in this place for some dumb reason. They print out massive full-color posters, which I’m sure cost a ton. They place them on an easel while some poor intern changes the pictures on cue. It’s a sad sight.
What if Representatives were forced to live in their districts all year round? What if they conducted debates and votes over the internet? We don’t need Jedi Council style holograms. Just a bunch of webcams and a secure connection. Imagine what that would do for the quality of our representation. No more lifetime DC swamp dwellers. No more easy lobbyist steak dinners with hundreds of power brokers in Washington.
As for the Capitol building itself, I don’t really care. The thing has become a symbol of corruption to me. Tear the thing down and build a Costco.
…Ok, ok- I appreciate history, let’s not tear it down. Let’s make it a nice museum where people can visit and remember a time when noble public servants met honestly to represent their people.
Just don’t let any congressmen step one foot in that place again unless they’re wearing a tourist badge.
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I talk about this idea more in-depth in Episode 5 of the podcast. Check it out!
