The Case for D.C. Statehood Should Be Made on Principled Grounds
Also: A 51-star flag wouldn’t look weird.
Jonathan Chait has done a great job chronicling the very-stupid arguments Republicans are making against D.C. statehood. Even by the standards of the Republican Party -- which is to reasoned logic what the woolly mammoth was to basketball -- these arguments are very dumb. Representative Jody Hice argued against D.C. statehood by saying “it would be the only state without an airport, without a car dealership, without a capitol city, without a landfill.” Tom Cotton made a similar case, stating that D.C.’s lack of timber production should be a factor arguing against statehood. It’s hard for me to make a joke here because the Republican arguments are joke arguments; normally, the comedic trick would be to “heighten” and make hyperbolically-cartoonish arguments, like “you can’t be a state because you produce very little talc and only have three Dairy Queens!” But the joke arguments aren’t any dumber than the actual arguments. Republicans are literally beyond parody.
I’d like to take a quick second to address an anti-D.C. statehood argument that I think is an unspoken part of this debate. If anyone cares (and I suspect that they do): The flag wouldn’t look weird. I think that when some people imagine a 51-star flag, they picture something like this:
And if we also add Puerto Rico,1 maybe something like this:
But the flag would look fine. There wouldn’t be one freakishly long row, or some Betsy Ross unbalanced-visual-weight bullshit (this is the only Substack with the balls to call Betsy Ross a hack). It would still be the flag that all of us know: 13 stripes to represent the 13 Lassies, with an evenly-balanced collection of stars upon a field of blue to represent Frank Sinatra’s dreamy blue eyes. See:
