The Washington D.C. War Zone on Inauguration Eve

Hope and Terror from Inside the Nation's Capitol

As soon as I found a place to park in a garage below D.C., a man walked up to me and said the world was about to end. He was surprisingly calm about it.

“How much time do we have?” I asked, wondering if we’d at least make it through the night and escape the city before tomorrow’s second inauguration of Donald J. Trump.

“Soon,” he said.

I asked him if he had any specifics. Unfortunately, he did not.

I surveyed the parking garage. We were at least three stories below ground. The place was a giant cement box. This garage would make for a good doomsday bunker if we needed a place to wait for the apocalypse to blow over.

Before I ran back up to the surface, the garage prophet warned, “They close this place at 7pm. Once they pull the door down, you’re stuck in here till Tuesday—because the Inauguration’s tomorrow. There’s no getting out.”

Then he pointed to a sign on one of the pylons. He was right. This only gave more credence to his prediction.

That only gave us just two hours, and I had to meet my wife, Nancy, at a party that would probably go on to an ungodly hour. I refused to be more of a hostage to D.C. than I already was.

The military presence above ground didn’t help subdue the doomsday vibe. In anticipation of Trump’s Inauguration, the city had been transformed into a war zone. It simultaneously felt like a funeral and a birthday party. The military blocked many roads with Humvees, National Guardsmen, and cement walls.

The streets were filled with anxiety. The people who had come to celebrate Trump seemed to carry a strange mix of joy and fear—worried that something bad was going to happen. Seeing Trump survive two assassination attempts last year likely had something to do with it—not to mention the relentless lawfare. There were also those in the streets who seemed scared of a second Trump term. Then the blizzard began. The city turned into a surveillance-state snow globe. A man ran past me with a trombone in his hand. It was hard to tell whether he was running from something or racing to get somewhere.

I finally parked in Alexandria, VA and caught an Uber with two young women in ball gowns who were going to the same party. Without any prompting from me, they said they sensed dread in the city.

One of the women told me she had an “apocalypse plan.” The other said she felt like a giant bomb might drop out of the sky tonight. At least we were all dressed well for something apocalyptic.

She and her friend agreed that, no matter what happened, they knew where their car was parked, and the plan was to get to it so they could escape.

Our Uber driver said he’d driven through many inaugurations before, but this one seemed the craziest. There’s always a military presence, he said, but this time it felt different. The blizzard didn’t help.

The party we were heading to was beyond the National Guard’s roadblock. The Uber got us as close as possible, and we walked about fifteen minutes through the ice and snow. I think I saw directed energy weapons fixed to the top of the Humvees. They can shoot a frequency at you that’ll make your blood feel like it’s boiling. Supposedly, they used these weapons against protesters during the summer 2020 riots, when arsonists set St. John’s Church on fire right here in D.C.

There were people selling unofficial Trump merch along the empty streets. There were people carrying cardboard cutouts of Trump and Vance. There were anti-Trump protestors sipping Starbucks and sashaying through crosswalks with homemade signs and macrame nooses tucked beneath their arms.

The man who brought the photobooth to the party arrived just as we did. I watched him set it up and take a photo of himself to make sure the contraption worked. The flash of the bulb captured him: this man with broccoli-shaped hair in a black disco-ball jacket. It could have been an image from a David Lynch film. (Lynch passed away four days ago, and tomorrow would have been his 79th birthday. All through 2024, I kept telling people we were trapped inside a season of Twin Peaks, with all the evil, murder, and mystery.)"

The dread that we felt outside became a low hum below the surface of the party.

The party was meant to honor “influencers” who helped get Trump elected for a second term. But it also became a strange collision of Alt Media and Mass Media. The Alt Media personalities were being recognized for their efforts during the Trump campaign, while the Mass Media figures were there to report on it. Writers from Rolling Stone, Politico, The Washington Post, Reuters, Vanity Fair, and others stood around the mezzanine like vultures, as their Alt Media counterparts declared the death of each of these big media behemoths

I find it ghastly to celebrate politicians. Even the ones I vote for. These people work for us and they almost always fail us.

I do, however, enjoy seeing the massive tectonic shift in the media landscape. I enjoy seeing the popular, and the electorate, and the informational loss rubbed in the faces of Mass Media.

At the same time, this means that the Alt Media space needs to sharpen their ability to discern authenticity. That authenticity was a stark contrast to the totally fake, totally plastic, blatantly deceitful Mass Media space. Now that Alt Media’s preferred administration is in the White House, I pray that those with dissenting voices are not pacified to attempt to maintain a seat at the “winning” table. It is our duty to call out politicians, especially the ones that we help elect.

Sometime after midnight, Nancy and I began our escape from D.C. The city was an even tighter labyrinth of military roadblocks. Our Uber couldn’t find a way out of the labyrinth back to Alexandria. We tried every street until we finally spotted an opening in one of the temporary war zone walls and sped toward it before the city closed in on us.

On one hand, you’re glad the city is taking the incoming President’s safety seriously. On the other, you’re realizing that the lack of transparency on how to navigate this city seems to mirror the very ethics of D.C. Ethics might be much too strong a word considering we’re talking about a morally bankrupt district of sleaze. But this walled-off city mirrors the darkness, the secrecy, its meandering legalese. The very nature of Washington, D.C. is an acknowledgment that it doesn’t care about the American citizen. A President can, of course, come into office and make change. But the establishment is so deeply rooted in this pit of hell that no President seems able to clean the mess beyond the surface. But I am happy to be proven wrong.

For example, on Inauguration Day, President Joe Biden preemptively pardoned mass murderer Anthony Fauci as well as establishment criminals like Liz Cheney and Biden’s own family. Everything the establishment warned Trump would do, they themselves did.

President Trump’s Inauguration speech signaled his intention to undo an era of blatant ugliness and nihilism, and I pray that America triumphs over the darkness.

The 2025 Inauguration happened to take place on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. One thing Trump and MLK have in common is that the government unlawfully spied on them. As a matter of fact, we all have that in common.

I’d like to think President Trump has learned his lesson from all the backstabbing establishment liars. As much as I think one of his greatest flaws is his need to be liked, even by his enemies, it seems like he’s clearly entering this second term with a new armor and vision. There’s a new seriousness to him. Even Melania’s Inauguration outfit signals severity. It’s strong and somber. I don’t need to remind you what this country’s gone through over the last five years and why we have every right to mourn and rejoice.

If you look at the history of Presidential photos you’ll see an evolution of a smile.

The first smile slowly emerged on our third President, Thomas Jefferson’s, face. Martin Van Buren brought back a slight smile. Then the smile is mostly gone until Herbert Hoover’s faint smile. Harry S. Truman might be the first portrait to display what most would call an indisputable smile—this being the man who dropped the atom bomb. His successor, Eisenhower, the man who coined the term “the military industrial complex” also seems pleased in his portrait. JFK’s is appropriately mournful. LBJ and Nixon both look like they fetishize power over people. Ford and Carter are smirking. Reagan is smiling wide enough to show visible teeth. George H.W. Bush is smiling thinly like someone who knows where all the extraterrestrials are from his days as CIA director. Bill Clinton is posing awkwardly trying to convince everyone Monica Lewinsky isn’t below the desk he’s touching in the portrait. Bush Jr. is looking into the distance slightly confused. Obama has his hands in his pockets hiding, I assume, the remote controls he used to drone-bomb the Middle East into oblivion. Trump 1.0 exhibits the biggest smile of them all, until you see Biden’s, which looks like a mortician’s masterpiece of dead skin pinned back to expose eerily white false teeth.

Trump’s new portrait, however, is perhaps the most severe of them all. It stares into the soul of the citizen and the enemy. It is the hi-res remake of his mug shot, and I hope he sustains this sense of resolve and vengeance that the people who elected him deserve to see played out.

For now, there is a brief window of hope. The directed energy weapons and the bombs and the lawfare have been suspended for at least a few hours--or so we can pretend. Though if you're still trapped in D.C., you can put your ear to the ground, and you'll probably hear the swamp creatures crawling below D.C., actively plotting their next move.