Summer is still three weeks away, but Virginia’s Piedmont has the moist rag of heat waving across us for the first taste of the season of warmth and perspiration to come. It was a bit of languor on the deck above the Fire Ring, a coolness of night still emanating from the siding, intermingling with the moist sunny heat in the air heated by the magnificent glowing orb in the clear skies above.
Paperwork to clear up has been piled in a stack in the Bunk House. The advertising for the campaign to come is flowing in with the daily delivery. The Writer’s Section is laboring in new territory and uncertain. With the recent census, our Commonwealth is riven by change. Our placid little Refuge Farm was anchored in the Congressional 7th District. There were proposed changes in the redistricting plan here as they were in all the states with demographic change.
We had an incumbent, a prim and professional woman with a nice public face and persona. She had an unusual background as an eight-year CIA case-officer, and was anchored in the Richmond suburbs with outreach to crossroads Culpeper. There was some speculation about her relationship with the Agency, particularly in the early muted controversy about the role involving the software in the Dominion electoral processing machines, and their extensive adoption across the heartland of America. We are a bit conflicted in alliances, sympathetic to the employment baggage we share and more than a little skeptical about her actual independence. She presents as a nice moderate Mom, but may be something else since she reliably votes with her Caucus.
The new boundaries of District 7 have been approved, and removed her home from its bounds. Thus, there is a vacancy of sorts as new portions of the Blue NoVA are now jammed together at the boundary of the old Commonwealth and the new Imperial Capital region to our north. Another uncertainty is the role of the primaries in determining the binary choice for November’s election. Having voted legally for years in a state in which we did not actually reside based on military assignments elsewhere, we only paid attention to the stark choice between “D” and “R.” The choice was normally made without much thought, and with the full awareness that neither letter really relfected out concerns in daily life. Just the small contribution to the balance of representatives in that Washington arena far away.
The scramble to see who will be named for the binary choice is something new and forces a reconsideration in something that has traditionally been automatic. Some of us had “D” associated with long family tradition. In deference to that tradition and the astonishing current agenda of that faction, some are simply not voting. Not based on indifference, but as a vote of non-participation in the circus to come. For those who traditionally have voted for “R” as a measure of stronger support to the military community, this is a new adventure with some of the same issues as the abstainers.
The Primaries have an election Day set for June 21st. With new voting procedures, there is Early Voting from May 6th to June 18th. We are uncertain whether to participate. We live here, but are not “of here.” Our participation in the primary process thus has a certain ambivalence, since we would prefer to not have Representative Spanberger return to vote in lockstep with the Old Order. Regardless of her personal appeal and shared resume baggage. The advertising so far is limited to a couple of seven candidates vying for the “R” nomination.
The latest information is from a woman named Yesli Vega. Her advertising is slick and her views are purported to be in consonance with the general sentiment at The Farm. A ursory check on the web indicates her connection to the large El Salvadoran community now here. That is a factor in electability along with previous waves of Vietnamese and other refugees from conflicts overseas.
Our position is simple. We would like Washington to do something sensible in terms of what is looming. Those issues are simple to say but complex in resolution. There will be a Recession, of course. Feeling that as a certainty, we are here in the country. intending to be away from urban areas subject to social dislocation. That of course depends on the severity of the economic situation. If it is something like the Great Recession of 2008, it could be an event that will pose inconvenience and detriment to our attempts to save something for the period of withdrawal from active employment.
There are other possibilities, of course. We have talked about them at the Fire Ring when it was still cool enough in the evening to light a few logs and relax under the velvet skies of the Piedmont evening. There will be hunger that results from the conflict in Ukraine. There are already signs from distant places that this could eclipse the relatively mild perturbations of 2008. It could, in fact, be an international crisis in commerce, cash and food. That will likely combine hunger and violence. We have not seen anything like that in terms of universal misery and sadness in nearly a century.
So, the cursory examination of Mrs. Vega is a generally favorable one. She has a claim to not be of the reviled White structure currently serving as a cut-out for historic evil. She claims to do these things:
Support the Constitution
Secure the Southern Border
Reverse inflation and stop reckless spending
Support School Choice
“Back the Blue,” which we assume is law enforcement.
“Defend the unborn,” which we assume is an anti-abortion position. No religion mentioned.
Put an end to unconstitutional government mandates
We generally support all those points from a philosophic perspective, though we generally support the “right to choose” limited though the first trimester absent medical or legal issues. Do we support her against the others? We don’t know yet.
Would a White Male candidate with special operations credentials in some of the same areas of conflict in which we served be a more or less electable alternative? Derrick Anderson is one of the other candidates and meets that bill. He is a white male former Special Forces officer with six tours in iraq and Afghanistan. He is a little more hostile to Rep. Spanberger than we are, but that would be natural on the path he treads. He also has a bit of special insight on the nature of fate and chance. During one 2014 command deployment, five of his team members died in a horrific friendly fire bombing.
Having shared some of the perspective on the hardships of deployment and commitment, we have common baggage with him and Rep. Spanberger. So, taking the field as it is shaping, we are left with larger considerations than single choice. Is Vega’s gender and ethnicity a competitive advantage against a personable incumbant we actually appreciate? Is Spanberger hampered only by her allegiance to the Old Order that has brought us to this appalling series of perfectly avoidable crises?
Dunno. We will need to pull this apart a bit at the Fire Ring. It might be worth waiting to see what the real residents of this new-drawn District think, and leave the traditional binary choice to November.
Copyright 2022 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com