{"id":6168,"date":"2025-08-26T11:38:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T16:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/?p=6168"},"modified":"2025-09-22T13:02:40","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T18:02:40","slug":"one-more-thing-about-dc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/2025\/08\/one-more-thing-about-dc\/","title":{"rendered":"One More Thing About DC"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Before this blog moves on from the amazing experience that was Washington, D.C., I want to share one more photograph &#8211; one that didn&#8217;t really fit in with the mood of the others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Prior to our visit to the National Archives, Joey, Emmett, and I walked up the stairs to exit the train station, and we saw this:<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/IMG_6389-1.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-6171\" style=\"width:462px;height:auto\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s not a very good picture, so sorry about that. But what you see here are seven Jehovah&#8217;s Witnesses standing around two carts. The carts were filled with recent issues of their magazine and not a single issue sitting there was in English (I know because I asked). In the 25 minutes that Joey, Emmett, and I sat in that park waiting for the National Archives to open, none of them spoke with anyone else beside me, and a guy who walked up to them asking directions. And they weren&#8217;t sure which way to point him&#8230;and, oh boy, does that ever track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I approached them to see if they had any magazines I might like to take &#8211; you know, just to thumb through as a way to remember the good life choices I have made. I didn&#8217;t see anything in English, so I asked one of them, and she stopped talking with her friends long enough to walk in front of the carts and help me look. She seemed as surprised as I was that there was not a single piece of literature in English. A few minutes later, while I was sitting on a bench with the boys, she walked over to me with a Spanish magazine and pointed out that there is a QR code on the back, and that I can scan that to find English versions of their propaganda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This was definitely the most pathetic &#8220;witnessing&#8221; I have ever seen. Back when I was a faithful cult member, we had to wear uncomfortable suits and knock on people&#8217;s doors, harassing them to take our &#8220;literature&#8221;. And on the occasions when we stood on the streets, we didn&#8217;t just hide behind carts. We approached people! And the things were handed out were in English! And it certainly didn&#8217;t take seven of us to hold up a single magazine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pathetic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I take a certain schadenfreude in observing what a farce the cult has become in the years since I&#8217;ve exited. The old guys in charge are clearly scrambling to make it a more palatable lifestyle for the members who are sticking with it. They don&#8217;t need to wear ties anymore, they can have beards, and &#8211; evidently &#8211; they can just stand around in a big group socializing with each other while cheap metal carts sit idly by holding non-English magazines that are only half the pages they used to be, and are largely just pictures now. The dumbing down is in full force!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Before this blog moves on from the amazing experience that was Washington, D.C., I want to share one more photograph &#8211; one that didn&#8217;t really fit in with the mood of the others. Prior to our visit to the National Archives, Joey, Emmett, and I walked up the stairs to exit the train station, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6168"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6172,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6168\/revisions\/6172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}