Mike Chowla
Washington DC:

Washington DC

I was unsure how I'd feel about visiting Washington DC after the 2016 election. I'd made the plans to visit before the election and after the election I was feeling that the national government no longer represented me or my state. After my trip, I realized why California feels so separate from the rest of the nation. The museums, monuments and seats of government are steeped in a national mythology that mostly ends at the Civil War when California had a very small population and had just become a state. There are a pieces of the national mythology that extend beyond 1865 but for the most part, the important historical events that are commemorated at the national capital are from the Revolution through the Civil War.

My feeling is California has largely benefited from being so separate. California is focused on the future and most of the rest of the nation has more investment in the past and is thus subject to the toxic impulse of nostalgia.

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