While A Virus Spreads, DC Washes Its Hands

“I’m sure there are many people in Washington who have envisaged their capital destroyed by a nuclear missile, a fate for which it seems almost expressly designed,” wrote the British travel writer Jan Morris in 1975, wandering the city’s post-Watergate cocktail set, “but I suspect there are few politicians who see their ambitions, their successes, and their professional sorrows merely as transient contributions to decay.”

You suspect they would now, as the modern world approaches an unprecedented crisis set to worsen every gap and inequity across our economy and our politics. But in the first weekend it became apparent this was no passing phase, DC seemed to operate as frivolous and decadent as always. Brunch and drinks marched along, while beer gardens lit their string lights. Crowds wandered past the Capitol, snapping selfies with cherry trees and holding hands, apparently immune to calls from public health experts to begin social distancing.

As Morris notes, DC is ready-made to serve as the backdrop of a disaster. Swaths of the city are designed to make a small portion of its residents feel important, while the many marble columns and statues are only comparable to ruins you saw once in a textbook. Concrete and glass office buildings are sunken into city streets, like alien homeships landed then abandoned. Its partying residents only fuel…