Mike Castle and how to win as a Republican in a rural Yankee state

Downtown Dover, Delaware, Photo by Tim Keiser, under license c.c.a.s.a 2.0 generic

His list of priorities, as listed on his website, are as follows: "Fighting for Delaware", "Jobs", "Energy Independence", "Good Governance", "Education", "Supporting Our Troops", and "Healthcare", in that order and stated in that fashion with bullet points, and lengthy, folksy, passionate discourses below. His opponents are not listed in any particular order, but instead can be selected from a drop down menu, and include "Economy", "Education", "Energy", "Environment", "Financial Reform", "Health Care", "National Security," and finally, "Offshore Oil Drilling", which last time I checked is not a major revenue source for the state of Delaware - stated profesionally, technically, scholastically, transactionally, and without any reference to the state he seeks to represent.

Now, to be fair, this is not displayed on a separate page, but directly on a menu on home, and if you click the "issues" button up top instead of viewing the drop down menu (which you will see first), it goes to a page with little boxes surrounding each issue and stereotypical pictures of what people would think of when they consider that issue, but in no picture is Delaware clearly seen, and your eyes go all over the page, and every time that the words "Delaware" or "Delawarean" are used, they are in small print, below the more important "Energy", "Economy" and "Education"s that are many times their size. The picture of Coons, gazing seriously with the eyes of a hawk, could just as easily be used in a newspaper advertisement for a law firm.

For some time now, Harry Reid has been asking local Democrat senators, such as Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Ben Nelson (D-NE), to forsake whatever their constituencies might want for the sake of passing progressive national legislation. When they ask about their own voters, he offers earmarks, and money, to essentially bribe whatever constituency he feels needs to be pulled along. [Source] He points to the use of Republican filibusters as a common enemy, and whips all of them together to march lock step lock step in favor of the agenda that the party as a whole has advanced. Coons mentions Delaware only as a part of the larger whole, like: "Delawareans, as well as the entire country, have felt the effects of the current economic climate." Ad libs off of that phrase could capture the entirety of both Coons', Reids and Pelosis platform.

Like Andrew Jackson before him with his decision to evict a peaceful and economically successful native people, the Cherokees, from the state of Georgia without Georgias consent, Coon sees not 50 individual states, but a larger agenda that he (hopefully) sees Delaware benefiting from, but never the main focus of. Castle has not once taken his eyes off of Delaware, and you can see his very website swelling with state pride.

A full profile of the election from the NY Times seems to show very little optimism on the part of democrats in Delaware, with the appointed replacement to Biden not seeking a full term, nor Bidens relatively popular Attorney General of a son, and RCP shows Castle ahead of Coons by double digits. Castle has been Delawares sole house member for 17 years, and is a moderate Republican used to routinely working with Democrats. More importantly, I suspect, is that he is a true Delawarean, while Coons is the executive of Delawares largest, northernmost and urbane county, essentially an extension of Philadelphia, with nothing in common with the remainder of the state, and no real care for it. The democrats, like Pelosi and like Coons, have lost themselves in the dream, and this will hurt them among rural northeastern townspeople, who clearly believe in representatives representing.

Why the Confederate Flag?

Civil War Monument and Cemetery in Owingsville, KY. Attribution conditional Fair Use license by C. Bedford Crenshaw

You look out at the great sacrifices of the past, those who have come, fought and died for family, land and what they valued, for the old and the young, giving their lives when they had barely begun for a home they would never see again, entire generations massacred, their blood trampled in the wine press. Proud flags flying high over the hills, strong spirits screaming loud through the valleys, young men in their prime, following orders from generals who drive up death tolls because they don't understand that the protective formations they were taught so long ago are killing their men in greater numbers now. Deaths by the thousands, thousands of unique individuals destroyed from the earth, cast to the uncertainty of the cold grave with bullets in their chest, broken bones, agonizing infections and tears of terror and rivers of blood dripping down their face as they look up in to the eternal sky for their final moments on Earth.

It's no wonder that such a thing would leave an imprint on a people. And it's no surprise that those who lived took back both horror and pride at their ordeal and their survival. It is true that it has not been forgotten, though it is untrue that people are bitter - that's something Yankees like to think. But there is a proud rivalry, and like it or not, people down here think of themselves as American AND Southern at equal levels.

It is true that to some people find the Confederate Battle Flag offensive. It is also true that it stands for many things to many people.

To me, this symbol stands for the following: standing up for yourself, especially local vs. national, the cultures of the Southeastern United States, both refined and otherwise, rebellion from oppression, and standing up for the weak against the moneyed interest of Northern Industrialists, and a better, more honest America. There are two groups of people who object tot this symbol.

Addressing the first group: This symbol also stands for History, and who Southerners are as a people, and that's where I think some people, though they do not realize the source, object to it. Some people would erase the past. This is especially common among the white, educated wealthy Southerner who doesn't want to be associated with redneck land, slavery and past abuses. They would take all the pain, all the death, the agony, the abuses, and throw it out, but they don't realize it runs in their blood, and they don't realize that it's a complete package. You can't have a past and have no pain, you can't have a future and have no values, and values are rooted in the past as they have to be. You can't stand for something - and destroy yourself so someone doesn't get angry at you or feel hurt.

Some people would lie, and demand that others do so. The minute they here a criticism, an idea they don't like, they demand an apology, surrounding themselves with yes men. They demand conformity, comfort, and what isn't theirs. They don't care what's inside the dish, they never did and never will. To them, there's no value to anything that can't be seen and therefore doesn't touch their petty hearts. As we lie and lie and lie, our enemies become clouded in fog, our up becomes down, our down becomes up, our anger becomes passive aggression, divisions become permaneant as people are too afraid to express them, and they pass them on to their children and their friends to express themselves the only way they can. Lawfulness becomes a joke, and the individual becomes condemned to a spiral of delusion, deceit, and paranoid back watching.

But there's one other group, those who have memories of their own, and those who believe they are standing up for them. These memories are sad, and true, and I deeply regret what has happened to those people. But to allow these racial terrorists to steal symbols that stand for the South, good and bad, is to let them win. See, to let them steal our values, our past, our lives from us by the inevitable rubbing out that accompanies this silencing is to ennoble them, to promote them, to give them free space in our hearts and minds, in our memories and in our soul. You take the symbols, the analogies, the stories, the way of living, and you push it out of public sight, along with those who still cherish it lovingly delivered to Satan for his evil use. It is to give them, our Satan, Southern history, to give them Southern culture, to give them the South, along with many of the people who reside in it.

You can't destroy everything just because of a flaw, for if you did, the fires would burn the entire Earth to ashes, for there is nothing that is flawless on Earth. There is still a lot that is beautiful about the South: the millitary tradition, the sense of honor, the hospitality, the delicate style and refinement of Southern art, architecture and design, an extremely open society that includes people much more readily then it excludes them, the sense of history and the deeper side of life, and a quiet stubborn strength that will not submit to anyone, under any conditions, often to the aggravation of Dixieland itself!

Those whose character is destroyed have no values, no roots, no sense of history or depth, no idea of who they are. Maybe they can discover it, but that takes years, years wasted, years lost, years never seen again. Why waste the youth of our children over pettiness? Especially since they may well turn out exactly like we did anyways.

We can't just abandon our past. It is part of us, and we are a product of our past more then anything else. The Confederate Flag will continue to be the standard of this website, for now and the future to come, exactly because I hope to promote its use as a symbol of the South and Culture in general.

Classic American Cities - Los Angeles

Photo by Nseranno under CC ShareAlike 3.0

I don't know exactly when the story of Los Angeles began, but I know it is mentioned in Richard Dana's classic seafaring account "Two years before the mast." He said that in 1835, just as in today, it was the largest pueblo in California, and just like it's later incarnation, it was a sprawled out city of lengthy roads from many ranches and farms. Now, in the 1850's it would be briefly surpassed by San Francisco, but once again, as cities do find their natural place, it's brilliant position at the meetings of many valleys and where the coast bends from it's Southernly trejectory on the California coast, and it's place near many mountain passes, made it again the hub of California and the Southwest.

This map courtesy of Federal Government, public domain, 1920.

The history of modern Los Angeles starts with the red cars, in 1901. This 1920 map shows the extent of the red cars then through Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, and Riverside counties. They carried workers from the suburbs to work and beachcombers from inland areas to the shoreline. As hard as it is to believe, traffic was actually heaviest on the weekends!

Back then, Los Angeles, with its many dispersed centers, was a place that was not so built up in one spot that an ordinary working family could not afford their own home with a view of mountains or shoreline, and the moderately wealthy could afford ocean front. It was this setting of supreme suburban spoiling that gave us "I Love Lucy."

Public Domain, courtesy of Wikicommons, Location Santa Monica, CA

Few cities are defined by trees, but the palm-lined boulevards of Los Angeles seem to call to a vision much higher, dragging it down to earth and defining a city. They speak of paradise.

One great irony of Los Angeles is that it's name means "City of the Angels," and yet is associated with the most libertine of social liberalisms. Yet this stereotype has very little truth to it. Although the city itself is very religiuosly disorganized (few cities are otherwise), Orange County to the East of LA is probably one of the most christianized parts of the US, and certainly the West.

Courtesy of Jon Sullivan. Released Public Domain.

Different parts of Los Angeles grew with different businesses: the growth of San Bernardino (according to "Fast Food Nation") came largely from heavy industry and steel, Pasadena grew with advanced science and technology (the JPL and CalTech), Orange County & Long Beach grew with the oil industry, and Hollywood, oh Hollywood. Hollywood was once just a sleepy suburb outside of the city, and now, in the minds of most, it defines it. And what a wild place too, whooey, the way those guys dress! I remember my friend Andy coming back from Los Angeles with a fur around his neck and a leather jacket. Granted, he went to Acting School, but still! This town grew up as the result of the foolishness of film producers in New York City, driving their folks westward.

It seems that when Los Angeles does well Hollywood does well (1940's-1970's), then things fall apart, it crashes (1980's), comes back again when the films improve (1990's), and crashes once again (late 2000's).

Palm trees in place, we enter 1940 and the completion of the Arroyo Seco Parkway:

Courtesy of Diane Kane of Caltrans. Public domain.

The Arroyo Seco Parkway was the first freeway built in California, and was an immediate hit. It greatly reduced travel time from Pasadena to Los Angeles, linking the two cities further, though today, just like the Alaskan Way Viaduct in Seattle, another very old but shorter freeway (1926), it is considered outdated with narrow lanes and sharp turns.

The Arroyo Seco Parkway did so well that in 1947, instead of extending the existing rail system, Caltrans built a freeway grid to expand their infrastructure. The level of freedom granted by automobiles and the prosperity created by a system that worked well for quite some time soon made LA a model for many other cities, and CalTrans a primary advisor to many state transportation boards. All their freeways are named, names like Ventura Freeway, Santa Monica Freeway, San Bernardino Freeway, and Ronald Reagan Freeway. This particular tradition is now fading, though, as many of these freeways are now simply referred to by their numbers (the 10, 22 freeway, et cetera.)

The red cars are no longer with us. Those freeways were so successful that there was no one left to ride those red cars - they were riding their own cars, sometimes even to their mailboxes!

Two American Presidents have come from Los Angeles, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan (and unlike ole' Jimmy, both were 2-term.) Nixon grew up in Orange County not long after the red cars arrived. Ronald Reagan grew up in the Midwest and then moved there to become a movie star. Ironically though, Ronald Reagan in many ways represents the values of Orange County better then Richard Nixon did, though Tricky Dick represented them a little better then most people realize.

Public Domain. Courtesy of Michael Price.

Today, Los Angeles is suffering through a hard time. It's middle-class, once the envy of the nation, is being ground to nothing against three millstones: unemployment, government debt, and housing costs. It's crime level, although now improving, is still among the worst in the nation. It's skies are polluted, and it's age-old optimism wanes to zilch. The transportation grid that was once an example to all of America is now America's most congested, and most "solutions" have been too draconian (usually involving tolls) to truly provide relief. Some say LA's narcissism and pride have finally caught up with it, but I think there's still some spirit there. Besides, the bad blood will leave first, leaving the good blood to rebuild. Let us all pray for the city of Angels.

American Cuisine - a socratic rant

American cuisine can be essentially broken in to four parts:

1 - Fast Food
2 - Southern
3 - Old North
4 - Southwest

2 & 4, and 4 & Mexico overlap to a point, as does 1 & German. Stereotypically, however, "1" is most frequently associated with the US, most likely because it is easily industrialized, inexpensive and serves a useful purpose in an urban or automobile-nomad society.

"3" is the perhaps the most forgotten off all, but dishes like New England & Manhattan Clam Chowders and Maine lobster remain very common dishes well outside the Northeast. "4" is fairly memorable, and probably could be called to mind very fast to any foreigner, but as the unofficial Texas State Motto goes "It's a whole 'nother country down here."

"2" is perhaps the most unsung, and most unique. Also probably the best of American cuisine. Be it the Cajun side, the Atlantic side, the Black side (geography in the South is three-dimensional, partially dependent on color), or the Appalachian side, the quality of Southern cooking will resonate with anyone who has tried it. Though there is always some dispute as to which is which, and which is also outside influence, Southern cooking really is the best in the country.

Possibly the least impressive region in the country cooking-wise is the Midwest. Outside of Chicago, nothing significant in the culinary area can be attributed to them. California can lay claim to fast food, and the Northwest (2nd worst) can lay claim to a unique way of preparing salmon and a few other such things but I know of nothing that can be attributed to the rural Midwest.

Cowboys and Indiankillers

The Western United States has a split personality. The film that exemplifies what I'm talking about is Serenity. In that movie, Earth, too overpopulated to sustain those on it, is left by large numbers of settlers for a new solar system. The Inner Planets form a totalitarian Interplanetary Alliance, while the Outer Planets remain essentially freewheeling and libertine. I guess you could compare the first set to:

- Washington State: Where the City of Seattle has a bottomless supply of schemes to force (notice I didn't say encourage) people out of automobiles.
- California: Where at one point they were attempting to make homeschooling illegal.
- Oregon: I'm not quite sure exactly what they are doing but this state gives me the creeps. --Austin, TX/Denver, CO: the twin towers of Southwestern-style doom, which watch the West Coast in admiration and are emulating them.

While the second set would be more comparable to Montana, Eastern Washington/Eastside of Seattle, Wyoming, Colorado, West Texas, Idaho, Nevada.

Really, it comes down to the people who created the West. On one hand, you had the corporate men, the government, the cavalry, the people who came more for money or power then freedom, land, or a simple life, and they attached themselves to high convoluted ideas like, Manifest Destiny, and if you and yours didn't fit in to their little vision, you had better get out of town because they would find you and kill you, just as they did with the Indians. They wanted to make Europe, wanted to make a grand civilization, and then they started Starbucks. They may be city people, and they may act effeminate and drink Lattes, but don't let that fool you, they are mean nasty dudes. If the gangs in Philly saw these guys riding over the ridge, they'd wimper, they'd cry, they'd quake in their boots and they'd get out of town immediately, and to their credit, some of the cities with this mentality (like Seattle) have low crime rates.

Now, in this day and age, they don't really kill people much - maybe they softened up a little, or maybe they just know that now lawman has arrived, you can't get away with that kind of BS anymore. But that doesn't mean they don't still want Eurotopia. They build mass-transit systems, and then insist people ride them, as if the people are for the train, and not the train for the people. And if you don't listen, they throw a $6 toll on the bridge from your town in to the city, and if you still don't listen, they restrict parking and shut down all garages beyond a certain size. And in California, to get their little slice of heaven, they take a useful industrial town and use a wacky combination of environmental activism, population limits, and bizarre byzantine regulation to push all useful business out of the town and make it in to a Hacienda for the rich and glamorous - it's called Santa Barbara.

But then theirs the other western mentality, the one that John Wayne tried to portray on TV and was usually showcased (not very well) in the Western's. The loud, but humble, ambitious, but simple, open-minded, but honorable, lawless, but responsible, American Cowboy. He's the guy who just want's to be left alone and go on his way, and he's like the crew of Serenity. See, he wasn't the one who killed the Indians. He thought they were just folk. He wouldn't have done it, he wouldn't have seen it as right. It was all the pretty people off in LA and SF who did that dirty work, plus the law men, or contracted out the Army to do it, and even to this day they still try to rid the West of all that isn't European. One target down, so many to go.

Of course, the way Obama, and California, is going, who knows, 2012 could be their last stand! But, probably not, probably just a minor setback.... (notice I'm trying to incite an argument.)