It was just 157 years ago. Sherman was on a roll. His troops obliterated the South. The Yankees blasted and pounded the plantations, towns and cities. They pillaged helpless households, poor and rich alike. They burned them to the ground. In the vaunted march to the sea, a scorched earth strategy basically expunged any semblance of Southern culture and infrastructure. The smoke and the stench of death lingered to greet the crush of Carpetbaggers, many of whom, vulture-like, came to feed off the Southern carcass. They moved to the South to exploit and profit from the region’s misfortunes. Easy enough. Purchase or lease plantations. Or “partner” with planters crippled by war. According to History.Com Editors, “In addition to economic motives, a good number of Carpetbaggers saw themselves as reformers and wanted to shape the postwar South in the image of the North, which they considered to be a more advanced society.” There you have it — the attitude, the prejudice, the superiority — that exists to this very day. The communication and entertainment industries routinely denigrate, if not ridicule, the South, not only as it was, but as it is. You won’t bother offering examples of this deprecation. Anyone who doesn’t “get it” must be wandering about in left field. The South and Southerners are inferior, always have been, innately defective in one way or another. The people are unschooled, lowbrow, intolerant, irrationally devoted to their Bibles and guns. But, as backward as Dixie may be, new Carpetbaggers by the thousands have cashed in their Yankee chips and set their sights on I-95 South. They’ve decide to abandon (more like “escape”) their “advanced blue-state societies,” famous for grotesque taxation, soaring living cost, unbridled congestion, long winters, and more than their share of civic corruption. Like their forebears, Yankees have decided to export their exceptional, civilized qualities to redeem the substandard South. One of these qualities is political acuity. In North Carolina, they have managed, bit by bit, to paint the landscape purple — a color closely resembling the places they fled. You don’t blame them, not for a minute, for relocating to a more relaxed, convivial, snug and even healthy latitude. But you do blame them for neglecting the obvious — that Southern lifestyle has a deeper meaning than a 6 PM weather report. And you do blame them for clinging to the blue state politics that embrace a Woke-driven ideology. Don’t get testy. Everyone knows — not all Yankees cozy up to Benedict Biden. Or to Socialism, or to open borders, BLM, CRT or vaccine mandates. Not all. But, look Matilda, don’t think those patriotic Democrats vote the way they do after carefully studying history — after analyzing what policies make America a better country. They vote Democrat because they grew up voting Democrat, because they invested themselves in voting Democrat, because they can’t admit they’ve been bamboozled — repeatedly. Their infirmity is habitual prejudice — a psychological addiction as virulent as any drug. The story isn’t new. History.Com Editors say that during the Reconstruction Period, southern state governments were “represented by a coalition of African Americans, recently arrived Northern Whites (carpetbaggers) and Southern Whites” called “Scalawags.” These native Southerners were detested even more than Carpetbaggers, “as they were viewed as traitors to the South.” The story isn’t new but player affiliations have changed. In 1865, African Americans were Republican. Lyndon Johnson sure blew a hole in that loyalty. Carpetbagger and Scalawag Republicans eventually became lefties. The story isn’t new but the numbers have changed. North Carolina has the ninth largest population in America, soon to rank eighth. Every single year, the State adds 100,000 new residents and has for the past decade. Thanks primarily to Northeast immigration, the demographics tilt Left. But you mustn’t shrink from the color purple. Instead, have faith that good people, Yanks and Rebs, left, right and in the political middle, will look Washington D.C. insanity square in the face, and cast it aside as so much detritus. America doesn’t need a new story. It was written in 1776. It lacks only the reading.

Ed. Note: Shout out to many Yanks who make The South a better place.

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Today’s a good a day as any to talk about something that has an impact on everyone at one time or another. Living alone. If you believe online stats, over 36 million men and women now live alone, representing a record high of 28 percent of all U.S. households. Big number. Triple what it was in 1950. For whatever else is wrong with living alone, the pandemic makes it worse. But don’t make more out of it than it is. And be honest. Some people prefer a solitary life, devoid of obligation, free to come and go, free to choose without consideration and free to backslide without blame. One large loner group is the young — that is, young adults — perhaps thought of as the carefree generation. Not likely that carefree, by the way, because all on their own, their stress is the 24-7 pressure cooker of self reliance and threat of failure. Then there’s the widow and widower groups and every other category in between. Elderly widows tend to support each other, to build close relationships and participate in various social activities, unlike elderly men who tend to isolate, which explains why widowers tend to remarry at a greater rate than widows. Widower behavior does make sense. Most of them don’t do well on their own. They need female management. They need experience — and clearly, no one would doubt that females are almost always the chief operating officers. Look at the evidence. Left by their spouses, widows get along very well, thank you — to do what they have always done — run the show on the home front. Widowers need, depend, on that leadership in the worst way. Widowers, alone, without a COO, ruefully rediscover what it’s like to be teenagers again, without mothers to take care of them. You see, despite what you hear, women are the stronger sex, more independent, more resilient, more tenacious and healthier. If this assertion were not true, why do women have longer life expectancy? But as needy as the majority of men may be, some widowers suck it up and make like Jeremiah Johnson, the famous mountain man. Take it day by day. Plan, or don’t plan, one meal at a time and make that meal simple. Put the clocks in the closet along with the dreaded routine. Bag up and give away a lifetime of clothing. Keep several jeans, tees, sandals — and a couple of society uniforms for those rare public appearances. Hang onto a variety of weapons should Benedict Biden’s government threaten your weathered sovereignty. Keep the windows undressed. Protect the parchment that people call your skin by showering only before those rare public appearances. Acknowledge that other bathroom habits deserve some daily respect. And so does the bed. Unfortunately, widowers have no pressing incentive to either wear bedclothes or launder bed linens. Caring for a King bed is easily a two-day ordeal which should motivate any thinking person to perform it only once a quarter. With this system, you simply dispose of the soiled fabric and replace it with new, crisp, material. Costly? A little. But it’s a fact, Matilda — no detergent or bleach can whiten three months of dead skin. Let’s face it. Widowers who once lived a well-ordered, efficient life manged by their chief operating officers, easily fall into disorder — into a type of haphazardness, an aimless lack of discipline. It’s not surprising nor is it necessarily cheerless. You just have to recall why clean sheets are virtuous. You have to respect that a grimy fridge is godawful disgusting. You have to agree that a little routine is at least a little bit healthy. Here’s an idea. From time to time, sit quietly and pretend that certain voice is whispering in your ear, reminding you what works and what doesn’t. Jeremiah didn’t have time for a real or imagined conversation. He was too busy scratching and clawing to sustain his life. Widowers might claim they are doing the same thing. Not even close.

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Everything, but everything, has been said. But no matter how much condemnation comes crashing down on the Biden Administration, that bashing in no way can offset or recompense for the Afghan disaster. America has suffered through the darkest of days. But she never surrendered to natural or man-made terror of any magnitude. That is, until a few weeks ago. Now you hang your head in disbelief. Now you clench your fists in rage. Now you weep. However, don’t think your rancor is reserved solely for a sitting President or his minions. Sleepy Joe, his Cabinet and the Democrat Party are just the visible faces of a cultural, ethical and moral decline, with a giant helping of human ignorance. No, you must look to the alleged 80 MM Americans who voted to place their beloved country into the hands of an unscrupulous, obtuse, political hooligan. You must look to the people of Delaware, in particular, who elected a serial liar and plagiarizer at least six times — a man who claimed to have attended law school on a full academic scholarship. The claim was a lie. He said he finished in the top half of his class. That was a lie. He finished 76th out of 85. He claimed to be named the outstanding student in the political science department at Delaware University. A lie. He plagiarized the work of others as a law student. He took the words of the likes of Bobby Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey for his political speeches. As a fledgling Senator, he apologized for making “inaccurate” statements. But he wasn’t a novice when he lifted wholesale the words of Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock for the 2020 run against Trump. Sleepy Joe’s excuses were laughably juvenile. “It was a mistake.” he said. “It wasn’t malevolent,” he protested. But generations of ditzy Delawareans couldn’t care less. They gave him a pass, time and again. You won’t go down the rabbit hole of his record or reputation. What’s the point of that exercise? If you believe the polls before Sleepy’s surrender, his approval rating was above 50%. That one stat alone begs you to resign from the human species — the only species on earth predisposed to engage in premeditated self destruction. And nowhere is this human folly more apparent than in the halls of government — a place that tolerates (if not rewards) graft, deceit, collusion and rank incompetence. No career in the private sector would allow the incapacity and inadequacies of so-called public servants hell-bent on only one goal — to become multi-millionaires on $175,000/annum. Excluding bigwigs with employment contracts, 95% of Americans, people like you, rely on jobs and productive work. You know the drill. To hold those jobs you have to put up or shut up. Pick a job, any job, any business. Get the job done, be accountable, be responsible, obey the rules, day in and day out, because somebody in charge is judging you. Hell, you even judge yourself against the accepted standards. No jobs are safe. Except for those jobs at First St. SE, Washington, DC. Workers in Congress can lie, steal, cheat — even commit treason — and their employers — that’s you, Matilda — can’t fire them. They have a 2-6 year assignment. And once in, the fungus of incumbency takes hold. During that time, their performance has no executive review. It’s no big deal, you say. Things have a way of working out. If you really believe that, tell it to the families of those who perished at Kabul, because no one — no one — in Washington would intervene to stall a demented Afghan foreign policy. If you value any human value, pay attention to the epilogue. Biden will make a speech about retribution. His sycophants and accomplices will blame DT, spin the events and minimize the damage. Time will ameliorate, conciliate and moderate. GOP stalwarts will look for broadcast ops for the folks back home. No point in wasting a fund raising opportunity. Biden voters — especially Delawareans — won’t have the character to look into the mirror with an ounce of remorse. The Joint Chiefs will meet to solidify their support for continued CRT training. As Commander in Chief, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. will get credit for his leadership, but not the blame and not what he deserves — nothing less than a General Court Martial and a wretched, pathetic record that will forever “live in infamy.”

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