Can We Really 'Drain the Swamp'?

We recently celebrated the federal holiday known as Presidents Day, formerly Washington’s birthday. Until Future President Trump, if re-inaugurated, playing nicely with Speaker Johnson and Leader Schumer renames the Washington Monument “Trump Tower 2.0” … George Washington will remain our preeminent political icon.

George, who never chopped down the cherry tree nor threw a silver dollar across the Potomac, still has important lessons to teach us today. One has to do with “draining the swamp.”

As reported in The New Yorker, on October 17, 2016, then-President Donald Trump stated that “’It is time to drain the swamp in Washington, D.C.’ A day later, he repeated the phrase in a tweet, adding the hashtag #draintheswamp for good measure. It was late in the campaign for a new slogan, but soon audiences were chanting it.”

Donald Trump likely will not be the last to proclaim “drain the swamp.” Neither was he the first.

That was George Washington himself.

And it almost bankrupted him.

Per Yale University’s Michael A. Blaakman at Mountvernon.org:

“In 1763… twelve leading Virginians — including George Washington — formed the Dismal Swamp Company with the goal of ‘draining Improving and Saving the Land.’ Washington was appointed one of three managers responsible for securing title, surveying, assembling a labor force of sixty enslaved workers, and making the operation self-sustaining and profitable. … During the 1760s and 70s, enslaved people dug ditches and produced shingles from the swamp’s cedar trees, but the Company failed either to drain the swamp or to grow hemp for export.”

Despite several attempts to resuscitate it, the venture failed, eventually going on to enjoy modest success about a decade after Washington’s death. Not from draining the swamp.

From lumbering it.

And therein lies an important lesson for any ambitious modern day swamp drainer, including Donald Trump if re-elected (if Vice President Harris, who Mr. Trump cannot reasonably contest having the power to do so, does not invalidate Trump’s electoral victory). Food for thought!

There’s a lesson for us here. Swamps cannot be drained.

That said, they can be transformed from fetid quagmires into fresh, vibrant wetlands. Per the Florida Museum:

“In 2000, The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan was authorized, making it the largest hydrologic restoration project ever undertaken in the United States. …
“Only 50% of the historic Everglades remain today and over 70% of its water flow has been lost. The disruption of the Everglades’ natural hydrology by flood control projects, urban development, and agricultural use has cut off the supply of fresh water to the remaining wetlands causing impacts to water quality, quantity, timing, and distribution. The lack of water and increased development has also led to detrimental habitat loss and degradation and an increase in invasive species.
“According to The South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Task Force, there are three main goals for Everglades restoration:
1. Restore the quality, quantity, timing, and distribution of water
2. Restore, preserve, and protect natural habitats and species
3. Foster compatibility of the built & natural systems
“By working towards these goals, the natural hydrologic conditions and native biodiversity of the Everglades will slowly be able to recover.”

That’s one way.

There’s another: deepen the swamp!

The District of Columbia was built on swampland. Hence the cleverness of the meme “drain the swamp.”

Per the Washington Post:

“What excavators unearthed at the site of the African American museum in 2012 was not only the long-forgotten topography of the nation’s capital, but a subterranean geology that, two centuries later, determines the city’s vulnerability to catastrophic flooding as climate change intensifies storms, rainfall and sea-level rise.
“At risk are the national treasures housed inside the Federal Triangle, the low-lying area between the White House and the Capitol, home to 39 critical government facilities, $14 billion in property and irreplaceable artifacts of America’s history.
“Personal treasures and the homes and businesses of Washingtonians living atop historical, buried streams across the city, are regularly inundated with raw sewage and filthy water.”

Turns out that climate change might be the best ally of those hostile to the Deep State. As climate change advances why not just let the capital disappear into its native swampland?

My dear MAGAs, consider letting climate change sink the Deep State even deeper, encouraging The Creature from the Black Lagoon to swallow D.C. … rather than attempting the impossible dream of “draining the swamp.”

Then what? Maybe relocate the national capital to … Mar-A-Lago?

Unless, of course, Vice President Harris respectfully adopts the Trump Doctrine and invalidates the 2024 election results, thereby returning Joe “Dark Brandon” Biden to office.

Then … relocate the seat of government to Joe Biden’s birthplace, Scranton, Pennsylvania, there to join the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company in that locus of competence and integrity! And, by George!

In the immortal words of Marilyn Monroe:

Happy Birthday, Mr. President!