1. The Washington bus basically points out that Oly(mpia) ain’t a city, but rather a collection of gray, greek-wannabe buildings.
By the way, saying “Oly” doesn’t make you young and hip. I’ve heard 70 year olds say Oly without any irony. It makes you sound like a poser.
2. Clark Williams-Derry: “Heads up, Salem & Olympia,” and then something on climate change. Once we can tell Seattle and Bellevue what to do, we’ll get right on that.
3. The Seattle Courant: “Olympia: Gas Tax Revenue Down, Tolls and $4.3 Billion in New Transportation Spending.” Our gas tax revenue may be down, I’m not really sure if we have a local gas tax, but so are they for every locality, I would assume.
4. Andrew: “Although the Worker Privacy Act is dead (no thanks to Olympia)…” We can’t take credit or blame for what your representative does while they’re inside our city. So, bite me.
That last links brings a thought together for me. You see, I read a lot of political stuff and I keep an eye out for metonnymic uses of Olympia (or people who I know do so for me now). And, I’ve seen a lot more liberals use Olympia to mean the state government or the state legislature than conservatives.
Might just speak to my reading list which has a lot more liberal outlets than conservative, but I don’t avoid right wing blogs and sources by any means. It just surprises me any time I hear a liberal use the metonymic Olympia.
And, this is why: It gets back to the othering of government. That if your state government is “Olympia,” some distant crap-ass place where crazy people make decisions for you, you really aren’t to blame for what’s going on.
But, if Olympia is just another town, and the state legislature is made up of locally elected folks and the governor is elected by a statewide popular election, then we’re all to blame for what goes on inside our government.
Conservatives like othering government because they don’t trust government and don’t want it to work. You’d think liberals would be of a different mind.
