QUOTE
Welcome to Washington
Most of the people who have come to Washington from elsewhere all possess the same attribute--hope. They all want to change the UCAS, and change the world. And so when I say that they hope to change the world, I mean it. But it doesn't last. It burns inside, and turns to ambition, greed, and contempt. People who come from the rest of the UCAS have had their own shares of survival stories. And it seems that for as long as I've lived here, the UCASans who come don't see themselves as living through history--they endure it. Unfortunately, they mostly wish the world would make sense to them again--even when the world that makes sense is something that they are too young to have experienced. That is the irony of this transient class of Washingtonian. They're young. They're passionate. They're smart. And they're ambitious. But life here makes them hardened.
On the flipside, most of the people who are from the city do not lack that particular attribute, but it's been reduced and severely redirected. They know that these transient visitors see themselves as above them; better than them; and they know that those people bring biases and resentments that have helped keep them a kept city for centuries. Slavery is alive and well within the District of Columbia. Hundreds of thousands of people--SINners, mind you--live with only a fraction of the rights that vaunted identifier supposedly ensures. The SINless in the Barrens are treated as barely human. Because of its historical focus as a global capital, a great number of the significant global events of the last century have directly affected or even been centered on the DeeCee Sprawl. So while many people carry the resentment and scars from VITAS, two Matrix crashes, the Night of Rage, Compensation riots, Dunkelzahn's assassination, the Awakening, and a military coup, the locals also have outsiders to contend with. Unlike most other cities covered, Washington is not progressive; is not enlightened; is not friendly. Because the people don't live through something like a shedim army trying to conquer the sprawl using the corpses of the thousands of veterans interred in Arlington without feeling like the world is out to get them.
In other sprawls, people have said, "That negative stuff didn't happen here. They didn't lynch mages here; didn't lynch metas; didn't lynch technomancers. They didn't react with fear and hatred. Not here. That was elsewhere."
Welcome to Elsewhere.
The United States was socially conservative among the industrialized nations. The UCAS is out of its fucking mind. The standard reaction to sea-changes in the world is to react with fear and hatred. Internationally, and even domestically the UCAS has adopted a"fuck the world" attitude. Fifteen years ago, Dunkelzahn campaigned on a platform of hope and change. For a moment, people bought into it. He was elected. And then he was almost immediately murdered. And Washington exploded. Since then, people elsewhere may have loved his successor, but here--No one did. They didn't make this city one bit better. They were overthrown, and the city didn't change much. Now there are more foreign occupiers and corpcops with guns than even government cops and agents. It's literally easier to carry a badge and a gun than to become a barber in Washington as long as you're not from Washington. How else would you expect the people of Washington to react? "Fuck the world."
Now they have a President who is nakedly on their side.
Most of the people who have come to Washington from elsewhere all possess the same attribute--hope. They all want to change the UCAS, and change the world. And so when I say that they hope to change the world, I mean it. But it doesn't last. It burns inside, and turns to ambition, greed, and contempt. People who come from the rest of the UCAS have had their own shares of survival stories. And it seems that for as long as I've lived here, the UCASans who come don't see themselves as living through history--they endure it. Unfortunately, they mostly wish the world would make sense to them again--even when the world that makes sense is something that they are too young to have experienced. That is the irony of this transient class of Washingtonian. They're young. They're passionate. They're smart. And they're ambitious. But life here makes them hardened.
On the flipside, most of the people who are from the city do not lack that particular attribute, but it's been reduced and severely redirected. They know that these transient visitors see themselves as above them; better than them; and they know that those people bring biases and resentments that have helped keep them a kept city for centuries. Slavery is alive and well within the District of Columbia. Hundreds of thousands of people--SINners, mind you--live with only a fraction of the rights that vaunted identifier supposedly ensures. The SINless in the Barrens are treated as barely human. Because of its historical focus as a global capital, a great number of the significant global events of the last century have directly affected or even been centered on the DeeCee Sprawl. So while many people carry the resentment and scars from VITAS, two Matrix crashes, the Night of Rage, Compensation riots, Dunkelzahn's assassination, the Awakening, and a military coup, the locals also have outsiders to contend with. Unlike most other cities covered, Washington is not progressive; is not enlightened; is not friendly. Because the people don't live through something like a shedim army trying to conquer the sprawl using the corpses of the thousands of veterans interred in Arlington without feeling like the world is out to get them.
In other sprawls, people have said, "That negative stuff didn't happen here. They didn't lynch mages here; didn't lynch metas; didn't lynch technomancers. They didn't react with fear and hatred. Not here. That was elsewhere."
Welcome to Elsewhere.
The United States was socially conservative among the industrialized nations. The UCAS is out of its fucking mind. The standard reaction to sea-changes in the world is to react with fear and hatred. Internationally, and even domestically the UCAS has adopted a"fuck the world" attitude. Fifteen years ago, Dunkelzahn campaigned on a platform of hope and change. For a moment, people bought into it. He was elected. And then he was almost immediately murdered. And Washington exploded. Since then, people elsewhere may have loved his successor, but here--No one did. They didn't make this city one bit better. They were overthrown, and the city didn't change much. Now there are more foreign occupiers and corpcops with guns than even government cops and agents. It's literally easier to carry a badge and a gun than to become a barber in Washington as long as you're not from Washington. How else would you expect the people of Washington to react? "Fuck the world."
Now they have a President who is nakedly on their side.
