The Social World

Tag: Washington D.C.

  • The devil over Washington

    The devil over Washington

    It is difficult to romanticize the political theater of Washington, DC, when you live so close to it. The absurdity feels routine after a while. You grow desensitized to the Machiavellian scheming, the name-calling, the ceremonial outrage. News outlets blast cinematic plot twists to the American public while quieter forces go unnoticed.

    With September growing late and the humdrum heat and headlines of Washington refusing to break, I turned to film in an attempt to re-enchant myself with the city in which I live. I rewatched two movies which capture its deeper moods. In spite of their tonal differences, both struck me in their portrayal of life just apart from the curtain – Washington not as the center of power, but as a place shadowed by it.

    The Exorcist, released months before the peak of the Watergate scandal in 1973, sees the city as tragic. Burn After Reading, released just before Obama’s first presidential victory in 2008, sees it as farcical. Both movies concern themselves with dramas beyond political life, and together they reveal something essential about the nature of evil and the psyche of Washington today.

    In Burn After Reading, the Coen brothers turn their lens just outside the political core of Washington, looking at the lives of pompous bureaucrats and some gym employees who try to blackmail them. The satire is merciless, holding its characters in no great affection: they’re all too dim-witted to understand the machinery of power, too incompetent to ever truly wield it. The characters barely register meaning or evil at all. Their lives, in effect, are expendable, their frantic attempts to claw their way into power impotent, the evil they mire themselves in banal. The devil over Washington is set loose, free to work under the guise of everyday stupidity, as the authorities shrug and turn a blind eye.

    The devil over Washington is set loose, free to work under the guise of everyday stupidity

    The Exorcist, by contrast, casts Washington not as a city that is too self-serious, but as a city that is not serious enough. In spite of its setting, its backdrop is not political but spiritual – the worldly Jesuits of Georgetown cross paths with actresses and diplomats, while the political class hardly intrudes. Instead, the press of rational, intellectual life in Washington is represented by the medical community as they subject the disturbed young Regan to test after invasive test. Only when every avenue is exhausted do the doctors, almost embarrassed, recommend an exorcism – but even then as a last resort, a kind of placebo treatment dependent on the corresponding irrational belief of the patient.

    For all its blasphemous convulsions, I find The Exorcist strikingly wholesome. Its rejection of cold reason in favor of faith implies a moral order that is weighty enough to withstand even absurd, improbable evil. The doctors – like the bumbling characters in Burn After Reading – are incapable of perceiving great evil and so cannot perceive great love. Their clinical detachment leaves them helpless before Regan’s possession. The Roman rite of exorcism performed by the ailing Father Merrin reaffirms Regan’s identity as a human being made in the image of the divine. Where the doctors offer cold procedure, the exorcism drips with love.

    The Washington I live in feels caught between the moods of both movies, unable to decide whether it is a place of conviction or performance. The ironic detachment of 2008 still lingers, still pulls the spirit toward a desensitization and the impulse to treat every crisis as theater – but the spiritual dread of the 1970s has returned in new forms. Spiritual warfare is overtly present in the public dialogue. Violence is constantly in the background and evil is openly discussed, even as we strain to take moral language seriously.

    Though we are closer to 2008 than 1973, I suspect that we are spinning closer in spirit to the Washington of the Nixon era; spiritual powers and principalities seem to undergird the spectacle, and both absurdity and rationality are thin veneers to stretch over very real darkness. What The Exorcist understood – and what Burn After Reading refused to entertain – is that evil can only be opposed by people who believe someone is worth saving. Washington in 2025 is still deciding which story it belongs to.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s October 13, 2025 World edition.

  • Why you need Big Balls

    Why you need Big Balls

    Big nicknames come with big responsibilities. And the owner of one of the mightiest monikers – Big Balls – feels the weight of his own obligations keenly.

    In a rare interview, Edward Coristine spoke about how his family fled to America from Russia after his grandfather was executed for spying for the US. Valery Martynov was a KGB officer who was recruited by the FBI in the early 1980s. He passed Soviet secrets to his American handlers until he was exposed by Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, two of the most notorious traitors in US history. 

    Recalled to Moscow under false pretenses, Martynov was arrested and executed in 1987. His widow and children eventually sought refuge in America.

    Coristine, now Big Balls, says he was inspired by the same patriotic call to action as his grandfather, who “died so that I could come here and live in this free country.”

    “I feel this great responsibility to serve my country,” Coristine added. For him, his role at DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency), where both he and his nickname came to public prominence, was a way to repay the country that took his family in.

    “When I started seeing these problems that we’ve got as a government, this $37 trillion national debt and counting… I was like ‘This is insane, is there any way I can help solve this?’”

    Coristine, still only 19-years-old, has already lived several lives. Elon Musk’s presence has been unmistakable in his early years. Briefly, he interned at Neuralink – Musk’s brain-implant company – and launched his own LLC called TESLA.SEXY that dabbled in web domains and AI bots. 

    As the teenage tech prodigy mastered the tech world, Musk juggled a half-dozen projects that were not enough to satisfy him. His Ayn Randian revulsion to public spending led him to the one institution inept enough to merit his time: the federal government. And with his pal Donald Trump headed back to the White House, his DOGE meme dream was set to become reality.

    DOGE featured a team of young, brilliant tech geeks. Coristine was singled out by Musk himself for a job in the big leagues – and nothing in his world was the same again.

    The media seized on him early. Journalists scoured his online trail and discovered TESLA.SEXY, mocking its Russian-registered domains as proof of malintent. They dug into his Neuralink internship, highlighting that he was fired after allegedly leaking internal documents. Coristine denies these accusations. 

    When they discovered he had, for a joke, once called himself Big Balls on his LinkedIn profile, they sensed blood. They published profiles that called him a “concerning” addition to Musk’s team who potentially posed a national security threat. For them, Big Balls was an easy foil: young, reckless, inexperienced, a symbol of what they saw as Musk’s arrogance in reshaping government with MAGA youth.

    Still a teenager, Big Balls held a senior advisory role in DOGE, where he gained direct access to federal systems like the General Services Administration and the National Finance Center, and served as a senior adviser to the Departments of State and Homeland Security. He pushed career bureaucrats to justify their jobs, oversaw plans to close smaller agency offices, and supported the rollout of AI tools to replace clerical work.

    He racked up more accomplishments than career staffers twice his age, apparently, all before being old enough to buy a beer after work.

    Then came the night that made him a martyr.

    It happened during the dim hours of August 3rd in Logan Circle – one of Washington’s busier neighborhoods. 

    According to police, ten young punks closed in on Coristine’s car, surrounding it like a pack of wolves. Coristine got his girlfriend into the car to protect her. He then turned to face the attackers head on, who descended on him in a flurry of blows. Officers on patrol caught the chaos as it unfolded, managing to stop two suspects while the rest vanished into the streets. 

    He was left battered and bloodied, but still standing. Big Balls had earned his nickname.

    News of the attack traveled quickly – and ignited an unprecedented federal response. Within days, President Donald Trump announced that federal forces would be deployed to Washington to address rising crime. His critics decried the move as authoritarian. Supporters called it overdue. Either way, Big Balls’ bravery was the catalyst for the nationalization of DC’s police force and the swarm of National Guard troops now patrolling the nation’s capital. 

    The city went nearly two weeks without a single reported homicide, and over 1,000 criminals have since been arrested. 

    For Big Balls’ critics, diminishing him has been easier than grappling with what he represents. He, like many others, walked out of the US Government when Elon Musk left DOGE. Love him or hate him, Musk has revolutionized modern technology and is idolized by the next generation’s innovators. His ambitious, and often controversial, expedition into government auditing hit a nerve with the elite who rely on a tsunami of taxpayer funds to keep their cups overflowing. 

    As for Big Balls, the name remains, and perhaps that is fitting. He now lives larger than life in the MAGA memory – the kindle which sparked a military mobilization to restore order in the nation’s capital.

  • Trump’s shrewd move in DC will resonate across the US

    Trump’s shrewd move in DC will resonate across the US

    President Trump’s initiative to restore law and order to the streets of the nation’s capital is a smart political move. All Americans consider Washington “our city,” and we want it safe. We can see on the nightly news that it is not, and we’re not happy about it. If Trump can turn that around, he will get well-deserved credit, not from the legacy media but from the public.

    Trump and his party will reap a second major benefit, as well. If he can lessen the muggings, car jackings and armed robberies, if he can move the homeless off downtown streets, he will highlight the difference between his approach and the painful failures in Chicago, New York, Los Angles and other major cities, all of them governed by Democrats. That’s a huge political benefit, if he can secure it.

    The president can take action in Washington because he has unique authority there, despite some laws granting the city “home rule” powers. Trump is taking full advantage of that unique authority, declaring a “crime emergency” in the nation’s capital.

    What happens on the streets of Washington resonates across the country for several reasons. Americans focus on the nation’s capital, as we have been taught since elementary school. We travel there by the millions as tourists and consider it an important visit for our school-age children. And, of course, we see it on the news every night.

    This prominence means crime in areas close to the White House and Capitol Building get lots of coverage, as we saw again recently when a DOGE staffer was pummeled by a gang of young thugs. Because the national media is pervasive in DC, street crime gets more coverage there than in any city besides New York. That means Americans know the streets of Washington are none too safe, and they are none too happy about it.

    Of course, restoring public safety, if Trump can manage it, won’t get the same coverage as the rampant crime for two reasons. The first and most obvious is media bias. The legacy media never awards its glittering prizes to a president they loathe. The second is that violent crime is far more newsworthy than the dull regularity of safe streets. “Dog bites man” is a lot more newsworthy than “Man quietly walks dog.”

    Still, restoring public safety in DC has a huge potential payoff for Trump and the Republicans. Every major American city is plagued with violent crime, and every one is governed by Democrats. Most are very “progressive,” as are their local judges and city councils. The result is that violent, repeat offenders get bail immediately, and those who are convicted typically receive only a slap on the wrist. Punishment is even softer if offenders are under 18, as many are. Gangs are well aware of that loophole and rely on younger members to commit crimes.

    This passive treatment of violent crime has predictable effects, which have been especially visible in recent years. Since the George Floyd riots in 2020, urban crime has spread like a dark, bloody stain. Young, well-armed gangs are a special problem. The mystery is why progressives use the term “social justice” for lenient treatment of this crime, which imperils law-abiding victims. It’s not social justice for them.

    It’s no mystery why Trump has seized this issue. Nor is it the first time. He did it in Los Angeles, which pitted him against Mayor Karen Bass and Governor Gavin Newsom. Smart move. Restoring order in DC is even smarter since the goal is to contrast the restoration of public safety there with its absence in Democratic-run cities across America.

    Expect DC judges and local officials to try to stop him. Expect federal courts to question Trump’s authority and enjoin him if they can. Trump will relish the fight since it illustrates the Democrats’ reflexive opposition to his policies and their “soft on crime” stance.

    They will also respond that “things are getting better,” that violent crime is down in some cities, including Washington. That’s true, but the numbers are still higher than in 2019 and the response seems to justify crime levels that are still terrifyingly high. That’s not a winning formula.

    Still, Trump faces two political risks in pursuing this policy. The first is practical. Will his policies succeed? That poses a risk only if the courts don’t obstruct him. If they do, he will lay the blame at their door, and rightly so. The other risk is public alarm at the use of federal agencies and even National Guard troops on American streets. The public is understandably wary of the militarization and federalization of law enforcement, which has always been a local responsibility.

    Despite the risks, Trump’s emphasis on restoring order to Washington is a winning political strategy. It worked with border security, and it is likely to work in the nation’s capital. If it does, the president and his party can draw a sharp contrast between Republican law enforcement and Democratic failures across America.