DC Internships

A couple of weeks ago, as the sun shone warm on my shoulders and I almost toppled over because the wind wasn’t blowing, our nation’s Capitol almost collapsed.

For my 14-year-old daughter, this chaos was normal. I had to explain that rioters storming the Capitol had never happened before.

Violence is not our national identity.

While I was in college, I enjoyed two internships in Washington, D.C.

This was before September 11, before the Tea Party and even before Monica Lewinsky.

George Bush was vice president and both sides found compromises.

But when I crossed beltway, I left the melting pot of American values and found myself in a foreign culture where money creates power and power makes money.

My first internship was with the Organization for Working Women, a small lobby group that worked for equitable pay.

Back then, a job with duties and responsibilities typically filled by a woman paid 65 cents for every dollar earned by a man in a similar, comparable job.

Now, that equity difference is 79 percent.

We’ve come a long way, baby.

Not.

I worked there on Mondays and Thursdays, and never once saw a staffer visit the Hill. They spent a lot of time on the phone.

I spent the rest of my week at American University, learning how to effect policy change.

My classes taught the art of playing mind games.

About a year later, the working women’s organization ran out of funding and merged with another lobby group.

My second internship was with the National Cattlemen’s Association, before the packers joined and it became the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.

The NCA was powerful, with a huge presence on the Hill.

I rode the subway downtown every day and quickly learned the essence of the city.

The essence of the city was to use acquaintances until they are no longer beneficial.

At the time, the dairy industry wanted to change the definition of milk so that casein, which comprises about 80 percent of the protein in cow’s milk, would no longer be calculated in the upcoming dairy buyout. If this passed, beef producers were afraid the market would be flooded with dairy cows so cattle prices would plummet.

I sat in on conferences, watching grown men grin and grab one another’s elbows as they shook hands.

Next, they asked about wives, girlfriends and kids.

Then came negotiations for support later if only the dairy industry would give up on casein.

Potential blackmail hid behind smiles.

The bill passed anyway.

Each and every Monday, we had an office meeting where we would strategize about how to convince members – ranchers who were struggling to pay their mortgage – that we were strong enough to win the battle so their money had been effectively spent, but the war was huge so we needed more of their money.

The essence of the bellybutton of the policy world was to suck cash from members in the country and give it to friends – or pay your own unjustifiable wage.

We were directed to say anything to keep the money flowing in, as long as it had some element of truth.

I learned the art of the spin.

It made me sick.

Since then, the cesspool has deepened.

So as I juxtaposed the peaceful sunny north-central Montana day with the outrage, fear, frustration and vendettas emanating from the world’s most powerful place, I thought about the underlying culture of that place.

The mind games that people play beckon that kind of behavior.

It’s up to those of us who live outside of that cesspool to insist our American ideals survive.

It’s up to us to remind those who represent us of who we really are.