WASHINGTON: THE SEWER WE KEEP PRETENDING IS A SWAMP

no doubt in my mind

Let’s quit dancing around it: DC really is a sewer. There’s no doubt in my mind, and apparently none in Representative Tim Burchett’s (R-TN) either. We dress it up by calling it a swamp, but that’s giving Washington far too much credit.

As Burchett put it – perfectly, brutally:

“Everybody talks about this place being a dadgum swamp. It’s not a swamp. A swamp is something cool God created. It filters water; animal life lives and flourishes around it. This is a sewer. This is created by man, and it needs to stop.”

That quote comes straight from William Layman’s Scuttlebutt Substack, and it ought to be engraved on a brass plate and screwed into every congressional office door. Because Burchett is right: Washington isn’t natural, restorative, or life-giving. It’s engineered filth.

But here’s where we hit the philosophical snag.

A sewer, by definition, is a place where you send refuse so it can’t hurt you.
You flush, it disappears, and life goes on.

If that’s the standard, then Washington isn’t a sewer at all.

It’s the opposite.
It’s the place where we send all the refuse precisely so it can hurt us – more effectively, more permanently, and with taxpayer-funded enthusiasm.

So what does that make Washington?
A sewer by metaphor, maybe. But functionally?
More like a high-pressure waste pump connected directly to the heart of the country.

We’ll have to think about that.

BUT HERE’S THE TRUTH WE HATE ADMITTING: STATE CAPITOLS AREN’T MUCH BETTER

It’s easy to point at DC and shout “sewer!” But spend enough time watching your own state legislature and you realize something uncomfortable:

Washington isn’t an outlier. It’s simply the biggest example of the same disease.

From California to the Carolinas, the script is the same:
campaign as a reformer → get elected → become part of the plumbing system you promised to repair.

And nowhere is that clearer than Little Rock, Arkansas.

LITTLE ROCK: A SMALLER SEWER WITH MARBLE FLOORS

If Washington is a sewer on a national scale, Little Rock is its younger cousin, built to a smaller budget but running the same operating system.

Spend a legislative session in the Arkansas State Capitol and you quickly realize:

• The speeches are conservative; the votes are consultant-approved.

• The committees are for “study,” not solutions.

• The money flows where the lobbyists point—not where the voters talk.

• Accountability is something discussed in church, not practiced in government.

  

Local activists put it bluntly, and they’ve been saying it for years:

“If you want to see how Arkansas politics really works, don’t watch the session—watch the hallways.”

Walk the building after hours and you’ll see exactly what they mean.
The power brokers don’t leave.
Only the citizens do.

Little Rock is not unique. Nashville, Baton Rouge, Tallahassee, Frankfort, Austin—they all run the same machine, just with different wallpaper and different vowels.

Why?
Because state capitals are where politicians practice, and Washington is where they go pro.

SO WHAT DO WE CALL WASHINGTON? WHAT DO WE CALL LITTLE ROCK?

Washington isn’t a swamp – God made those.
Washington isn’t a sewer – sewers protect people from waste.

Washington is the place where waste gains power.
And Little Rock, like so many state capitals, is the place where that waste is trained, groomed, and lacquered into acceptability.

Maybe someday we’ll settle on a word for a system where corruption is the feature, incompetence is the lubricant, and arrogance is the scent that lingers in every hallway.

Until then, this will do:

DC is the sewer we built, the sewer we feed, and the sewer we obediently pretend is “public service.”
And Little Rock is its practice field.

But if there’s any hope at all, it starts with finally admitting what we’re standing in – and deciding we’re done being ankle-deep in it.

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