The power and the glory

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. compose my own Tale of Two Cities. Though not in the Dickensian sense of angst, brooding, and ennui.
For the former and the current capitals of the United States are a twin, happy celebration of the best, nay, of the very essence, of America: freedom, democracy, prosperity.
In Philadelphia were conceived three of the most important, most valuable documents ever crafted by the human mind: the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation and the United States Constitution birthing a country out of a gaggle that were the thirteen colonies.
In the epoch of socio-political history, the three crown jewels of the American Republic do stand side-by-side with Plato’s Republic, the Magna Carta, the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the Social Contract, Das Kapital, and the Communist Manifesto. For their sheer depth and breadth of influence, and the intensity of their impact to humankind.
Indeed, America’s remaining the sole world power today is an unimpeachable testament to this.
Philadelphia makes the animus of the American Republic. Even a non-American visitor – like me – easily perceives, no, strongly senses this. A tour of the sites around the Independence Mall is akin to a religious pilgrimage. In this wise, and for the traveling pilgrim, local or foreign, a renewal of faith in America and in everything that it has always stood for.
Cracked as it had always been, the Liberty Bell is no mute witness but still tolls in the mind the true, the good and the free, the very core values of the Founding Fathers.
At Independence Hall one is touched by the spirits, if not moved by the greatness of Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison and America’s greatest genius, Franklin.
Washington, in the highest moral ground, given that the general steadfastly refused the kingship proffered to him by an adoring American people after the triumph of the revolution against Mother England. Ah, were the other George W. as morally grounded in the elections of 2000 and in the Middle East question.
Washington, D.C. makes the corpus of America, governance – therefore, power – in residence there: at the Capitol, the White House, the Supreme Court. The Washington Post too, earning its right to power in the Watergate case that drove Nixon to oblivion.
In Washington, even the monuments are shibboleths of power and all that it entails. The memorials to the won wars: World War II, with its arches and pillars reminiscent of the very symbols of the defeated causes of Fascism and Nazism; the Korean War and its intrepid company of battle-tested, noble warriors. Even the Vietnam Memorial with its casualty-etched black granite bespeak of the indomitable American spirit, especially with the monument to three GIs in resolute pursuit of the American cause.
And what better representation of power than the Washington Monument: an obelisk that stabs the very sky, a phallic symbol in full erection. Pun unintended here, dummy.
Philadelphia and Washington D.C.: the grandeur of the past, the glory of the present. There lies the greatness of this country. Now, if only Iraq, Iran, North Korea and the Hezbollah subscribed to Pax Americana….