December 31, 2024. I am in the middle of a 4 day fast (long story). Tomorrow, my reward will be to eat a bowl of black-eyed peas accompanied by stewed tomatoes and a hunk of cornbread. It’s a New Year’s tradition in Virginia and the rest of the South. During the “Late Unpleasantness,” when so called “Honest Abe” sent his hordes of heathen Visigoths to burn down all our houses, steal all our belongings and starve us into submission, the story goes the Yankees did not steal or burn our fields of black-eyed peas, thinking these nutritious legumes were fodder for farm animals. I can’t say I 100% believe these origins, but hey, I like the message. I like honoring my forebearers, and I love me some black-eyed peas and cornbread! Along with the stewed tomatoes, I accompany my annual tribute to my ancestors with a generous helping of Edwards ham from Surry County, Virginia.
To wholeheartedly celebrate a tradition or holiday, I need to be philosophically in tune with its meaning. I’m a fan of Jesus, so Christmas and Easter make sense. July 4th is all about celebrating America. Memorial Day? Absolutely! But what’s so special about the first day of the year?
I find New Year’s Day a bit offensive. It screams socialism to me and is contrary to my views of liberty and the rugged individuality that is the foundation of American exceptionalism. Why does everybody get the day off? For what? What has anybody achieved in the new year to deserve a day off? No! In the Rob Is Right world of clear thinking, and indeed brilliance, one must deserve a day off, not have it handed to you for some collectivist notion of simply being alive. I agree with the Mr. Potter’s famous line in It’s A Wonderful Life, “and what does that get us, a discounted lazy rabble instead of a thrifty working class!” Tonight, I plan on going to bed at 10 pm and getting up at 5 and “getting after it.” It’s the first day of the year, and I want to get a jump on things! In a perfect world, there are no mandated paid vacation days. People work and if they have put aside a few bucks and feel comfortable taking a few days off, then that’s great. In fact, such a policy in our government “work” force would encourage a healthy dose of reality and individual responsibility which would certainly carry over into the thinking of government bureaucrats. Namely, ain’t nothing free, everything has to be earned.
I’m hoping the new Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”) will address the incredible inefficiency in the federal workforce. There are 11 paid federal holidays. There should be none! A better system would be federal employees can take a certain amount of time off each year, provided they have met certain performance thresholds, but they don’t get paid for not working! To those of us in the private sector, it’s anathema. Getting time off for not working creates a sense of entitlement, and nowhere is there more entitlement than the overpaid and over educated “work” force surrounding Washington DC. These people are different. They think differently. They even look funny.
The biggest cultural divide in the United States is right here in Virginia. It’s not a black versus white or a religious thing. 4, maybe 5 of the highest income counties/municipalities in the United States are in Northern Virginia. It’s not like the Hamptons or Malibu where there is great wealth combined with architectural and natural beauty. Here, the federal “work” force and its dependents have bulldozed an otherwise beautiful and historic landscape to create their workers’ paradise, miles and miles of vanilla subdivisions filled with faux colonial, two dimensional architecture. Yuck! I’ll never forget spending the night in Fairfax City one night and going to Starbucks the next morning, it reminded me of a scene in Fritz Lang’s notable film, Metropolis. The “workers” were all in line getting ready to drive into the District, all very androgynous looking wearing ill-fitting clothes. No one was smiling, no one seemed to know their neighbors. But yet, viewing them, I got the same feeling of ruling class smugness I got when viewing pictures of Yuri Andropov and the Politburo. Ick!
There once was the day when federal “workers” got paid less than the private sector, but had job security, which seemed like a decent bargain, but now they have considerably more job security, work less hours and make significantly more money than their counterparts in the “real world.” What do they do that is of any real value to taxpayers? They are an annoyance, like gnats in the summertime flying around your hot dog and potato salad.
It’s easy for me to understand the conflict in the Donbas region of Ukraine or how Israelis feel about Gaza. Some cultures are just irreconcilable. That’s the way most Virginians feel about NOVA (Northern Virginia). I have a friend who is in a tizzy because one of her boys is dating a girl from Northern Virginia. She’s planning an intervention.
I’m not as provincial as you may think. I love meeting new people from other walks of life and making new friends. If you are from South Boston or the Bronx, you have a certifiable identity and a culture. But if you are a NOVA-ite, your entire self-identity is wrapped up in being a “G.” No, not that kind of “G.” You are a G-3, or a G-9, maybe even a G-14! Egh!
Personally, I hope Elon and Vivek resettle these people out of Virginia where they can be useful. Maybe Kier Starmer will welcome them into the UK where not smiling and wearing ill-fitting clothes is more accepted. If that’s not possible, perhaps sending them to re-education camps where they can be reprogrammed and given a useful skill, but in the short run, a decent first step is no more paid holidays!
Happy New Year!
