The Indy Car Series event, held on August 23, 2026 in Washington, D.C. to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence by delegates from the British colonies then officially in rebellion, ironically gave people visiting or living in the federal capitol a visceral experience of freedom blocked by governmental police and military authority. For not only the Mall, but also the entire route of the race was blocked by military and local police during the race such that public viewing was blocked. Entire city blocks separated the route from where tourists and local residents alike could drive and walk. Whether the federal government excessively pushed security at the expense of Americans being able to view the race without the luck of a lottery draw in advance for a ticket to be able to see the race at the Mall (roughly, between the Capitol building and the Washington Monument) is one question; the irony of being in such a visual, even overwhelming, militaristic police-city during a celebration of political freedom is more definite.
The public could not access
the race route, or even get close enough to see the cars passing. That the
entire race course, rather than just the designated fan areas on or near the
Mall, was blocked raises the obvious question of why even to have a race if
people are blocked from watching it. To be sure, free general-admission tickets
were issued by lottery in advance but this process did not allow people
in the city on the day of the race to spontaneously see the race, and the fact
that a lottery had to be resorted to means that the demand for tickets exceeded
the supply, which in turn may have been artificially restricted by security
proponents in the government. Around the route, even surrounding streets were
blocked off even from foot traffic. Even some museums near the Mall required a
Grand Prix ticket for entry. High temporary fences along the Mall between it
and the museums kept even people going to the latter to even glimpse the race.
To be sure, blocking visuals
of the viewing stands, where ticketed seats were not free, could be justified
on security grounds because President Trump was present there, but that
rationale does not justify blocking the entire route, especially given the
legitimate countervailing public interest to attend a celebration of the
Declaration of Independence. In other words, a strong public interest existed
but was wholly denied.
The sheer mass of local
police, including their cars with emergency lights on, and the militias from
the member states, including formidable military trucks, was arguably visually
so oppressive as to be a turn-off to freedom-loving Americans. In other words,
even if access to the route but not the viewing stands were possible, the
experience of so many uniformed people with guns could be enough for a
preference to leave the city that day.
Moreover, seeing so much
military and police could prompt people to wonder just how much freedom still
existed in the United States. The visuals could perhaps be likened to how daily
life in Berlin in Nazi Germany may have looked. The presence of the military
may have been especially startling to Americans not used to how much
Washington, D.C. had changed since the twentieth century.
On the governmental side, the
penchant for security can take on a life of its own, such that proponents
unknowingly lapse in the sort of healthy judgment that is capable of balancing
security interests with others. Such balance goes by the wayside as a republic
transitions itself into a police state, and the change can be so gradual that
reversal is almost impossible. Like a frog in a pot of water that is gradually
being heated, citizens of a republic may not notice even that a transition has
been underway. To be sure, American tourists in Washington on August 23, 2026
may have been stunned by the fresh sight of so many military troops, trucks,
police employees, and police cars so concentrated blocks from the route and
even farther into the city itself.
History may record the
transition from the Roman republic to the Roman Empire as sudden, but in the
daily life of the Romans, the increased visuals of weaponized troops may have
been gradual. Perhaps some educated tourists in Washington during the race may
have thought of what Rome may have been like when gladiator contests were going
on in the coliseum—celebrations of Roman political power accompanied by a
formidable military presence in the vicinity, given the typical attendance of
the emperor at the games. Americans could benefit from the insight that even if
their empire is a “city on a hill,” as President Reagan referred to the U.S.,
it is not immune from the rise and fall of empires that has gone on throughout
history. A domestic presence of military forces even in the midst of a lot of
local police present may be an indication that a republic is in transition to
something else, and this transition could be part of the more general decline
of empires.
