"People in Washington are stupid but not that stupid"

That's the cover of today's Washington Post Express. Inside, the quote is attributed to "Brian Doe, a wealth adviser at Graus Capital Management in Atlanta."

I'll grant you that people everywhere are stupid. In the hopes of making some of us less stupid, today we're going to have a lesson in literary terms. Specifically metonymy. Metonymy is pretty common in our every day speech. Wikipedia defines it as "a figure of speech in which a thing or concept is called not by its own name but rather by the name of something associated in meaning with that thing or concept." Common examples include referring to "The White House" instead of the President or "Hollywood" for "The American Motion Picture Industry". And I see this happening a lot with the shutdown. It's pretty common to refer to "DC" or "Washington" instead of "the Federal Government of the United States of America", and I completely understand why. But here's the thing - Washington, DC is not just the seat of our government, it is also a major metropolitan center. And so when you start talking about how "people in Washington are stupid", I know that you really mean "everyone in Congress", but I still get a little defensive. Just as Congress is not the entire government, so too, not everyone in our nation's capital is an elected official. Most of us are just ordinary citizens trying to build our lives. Many of us are directly employed by the Federal Government. Still others depend on the government for our livelihood, whether it's as contractors or restauranteurs or tour guides. DC is a company town, and Washingtonians are suffering from this shutdown just as surely as if the mine or mill in some other town were to shut down. And we're no more at fault than the rest of the country. In fact, since DC doesn't have a voting representative in Congress, you might say that Washingtonians are LESS at fault than the rest of the country.

So please, skip the metonymy and direct your frustration not at DC, but at the members of Congress who have opted to put petty partisan squabbling above the business of this country.