Monthly Archives: January 2021

By Michael F. Duggan

The first thing you noticed was the desolation of the place.  No more than 20 people got off of the train at the long platform at Union Station where a year ago hundreds would have detrained.  It was before 7:00 and mostly dark.

The station was well-lit and more alive than I expected, so strange, so unchanged since last March.  The virus had shut down the routine life, and for ten months I had driven to work.  But The Hill was now buttoned-down. Major arteries were blocked off making driving difficult, and I was back on the commuter train.  A half-dozen people crossed the great airless concourse of the station at 7:04.  Outside under the arches facing south to the Capitol were the perennial homeless, restless and unmasked in a pandemic.

There were clouds on the east horizon and the sunrise was more vivid than usual, and the light of dawn reflected in the windows of office buildings along North Capitol Street to the west of the station’s plaza.  There were no cars for blocks in either direction on Massachusetts Avenue at Columbus Circle.  The crosswalk too was deserted and terminated at at the base of nine-foot-high fence-barricades, and I entered the green zone at First Street, NE. The barricades were topped with razor wire.

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The checkpoint was manned by police flanked by solders of the Guard. I recognized the insignia of the Twenty-eighth “Keystone” Division and the yin-yang shoulder patches of Twenty-ninth “Blue and Gray” Division—heirs to the men who went in with the first wave on Omaha Beach.  There were other patches I did not recognize.  You just presented your ID and named your building, and the police officer let you in. Two MTVs were parked back-to-back but unaligned across First Street just below Massachusetts blocking all but a single lane of traffic between them.  But few cars came and in spite of the sunrise it did not feel like rush hour.

Walking up The Hill, there were many more Guardsmen and women than pedestrians: young people with M4s, some of whom nodded and called me “sir” as I passed.  Constitution Avenue was blocked off from traffic below the Hill and there were no other people as I crossed adjacent to the Capitol.  As I passed the Supreme Court I could see that both it and the Capitol grounds were enclosed behind the high fence-barricades and concertina wire—green zones within green zones.  I was alone outside of this internal line of barricades and kept walking.

All was quiet.  And I went into my building, turned on my computer and drank my coffee and went to work.

January 15, 2021

By Michael F. Duggan

I wrote the account below a few years ago during one of the occasional dustups involving Confederate flags and related symbolism. Given the social and political rifts that remain in this country, I think it is as topical as ever.  It has nothing to do with realism or policy, and I hope that the satirical tone will not distract from the usually serious timbre of this blog. All of the events depicted are true.  

Warning: Mildly indelicate/regressive (frankly childish) humor to follow.

The Confederates have finally taken Gettysburg. 

With the week off and far too many errands to reasonably accomplish, I took the day and went to the small Pennsylvania town. It was a glorious afternoon, and the battlefield was awash in the full splendor of August flora—blood red cardinal flowers between Plum Run and Houck’s Ridge, asters throughout.  Then I went into the town.

Without getting into constitutional or legal issues, let me just say that the tourist area and the road leading into it were a bit of a jolt.  It ranged from the disappointing (e.g. Pennsylvania farmhouses flying the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia) to the brazenly in-your-face (e.g. a sign on a shop door reading “Don’t criticize what you can’t understand.” “Really?” I thought, “unreconstructed, pro-Confederate types quoting Bob Dylan?  How about a few lines from Oxford Town”?).  In an attempt to please everybody, Gettysburg has long catered to both “sides.”  But now the northern town and site of the Union’s greatest victory seems to have taken on a distinctly Southern twang.

In one sutler store, I interloped (feinting interest in various historical reproduction items) on a fifteen-minute lecture as a man, who I assume was the storeowner, enlightened two earnest out-of-towners on the history of the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia (and then on every other banner he believed gave liberals moral discomfort) in excruciating detail.

He explained: “First they [meddling liberals] came for the Confederate flag.  Now they are coming for the MIA and Tea Party flags.” He then went into the eighteenth-century origins of the latter with equally stultifying minutia.    

“Why would they do that?” asked one of his audience members with innocent disappointment.     

“One word,” he replied, “Political. Correctness.”    

“One word?” I thought, looking up with a grimace bordering on an audible scoff (causing me to fumble the Made-in-India knockoff of a Model 1853 Enfield socket bayonet I had been examining). This blew my cover as a disinterested bystander. The store owner was on to me like gray on Robert E. Lee, and, like Marse Robert heading for the Potomac after Pickett’s Charge, I beat a hasty retreat.

But the apex of this anachronistic adventure into the absurd was the “Confederate Bikini”(^TM?) prominently displayed on a manikin in another storefront window.  Suffice it to say that this item—perhaps evoking the likes of Daisy Duke in a defiant “Hell no!” mood—was not in the drab gray or butternut of a Confederate uniform, but rather was comprised of Confederate Flags strategically positioned to hold the high ground and bottomland alike.  Somehow it just didn’t seem like a solemn celebration of “heritage” to say nothing of its limited usefulness for reenactors; it is well documented that comparatively few Confederate soldiers actually wore bikinis on campaign, much less in combat.

Driving home I thought to myself: what would be a good sales pitch or catchphrase to market such an unusual and patently inoffensive piece of apparel?  (Regressive humor about to start)  Here are a few I came up with (feel free to come up with your own):

1). Now you can cover your “Southern regions” with your “heritage”!

2). This thong has nothing to do with slavery (but it is suggestive of a cleft in the Union).

3). How do you like these “Little Round Tops”?

4). Hell no, I’ll never forget… the sunscreen.

5). Betcha can’t “look away, look away, look away…”

I’m sure that one could come up with others about “waxing” nostalgic for The Lost Cause, “Mason-Dixon” tan lines, and how “the South will rise again,” but I will leave these to the imaginations of others.  

Apologies for any bruised sensibilities, North or South, left or right (and bottom to top).