Treading water

There’s no escaping the fact that Virginia is still a Confederate state, only dragged kicking and screeching a rebel yell into the 20^th Century. (I’m not actually convinced they’ve made it to the 21^st.) Them good ol’ boys are still pissed off that you can’t smoke everywhere including hospitals and grocery stores, because tabacky.

I mean, yes, it’s the Mother of Presidents, but seven out of the eight born here were slaveholders, and my money’s on Woodrow Wilson being one, too, in his heart of hearts. So there’s a distinctly dark underbelly to the genteel veneer of culture and refinement.

There are plenty of visual manifestations, including the garrison-sized Confederate flag that waves over I-95 in Stafford County. But one that gets up my nose is the proliferation of cod-patriot Tea Party vanity license plates you see around here—even in Northern Virginia, which Tea Baggers refer to as Southern Maryland. (They still resent the fact that two of the richest counties in the country, Fairfax and Loudoun, consistently vote Democratic, and that with the educated tech-based population expanding south and west, we’re going to eventually turn the whole commonwealth as blue as a summer sky.)

So, in a recent Twitter thread, I really got a charge out of some of the memes that threw shade all over these yahoos. Viz:

God bless America.