This photo was back in the day — in 2019. I grew up in the Washington DC area and lived in the city as an adult in the 1980s, loving it. In 2019 I had the honor of an invitation via Rob Arlett to a private tour of the White House (including the Oval Office) and an exclusive invitation to a gathering with then-President Trump and the Australian Prime Minister. It was a glorious couple of days, but I do remember thinking at the time that I might look back on it precisely as I do now: Darkness could lie ahead. I never dreamed how true that would be, given the subsequent events of just a few months later, starting in the spring of 2020.

I haven’t set foot in D.C. since fall 2019 and don’t expect ever to return. What a beautiful place it was in the 1980s and in the decades beyond that it got even better, perhaps peaking in 2019, during the Trump years; then starting in 2020 it all went to hell. And now it’s occupied by a gang of thugs and a leering, decrepit puppet jeering and dancing on the philosophical graves of the great patriots who came before them.

I will freeze frame this experience for good, in hopes that some way, somehow, better days for our once glorious nation lie ahead!

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason