Just when hope has largely departed, a ray of sunshine. Senator Chap Petersen of the 34th District in Fairfax showed up in my inbox with a nice message on why he was pleased to attend this week’s festivities in Jamestown.
Why did he feel the need to explain, I wondered? I didn’t have to wonder long, as this screed appeared on the Arbiter of Leftist Political Correctness, Blue Virginia, casting Petersen into Democratic purgatory. Blue Virginia, of course, is a perfect showcase for that strain of potty-mouth Democrats who taught Donald Trump his political manners. Resistance? No, just rude and crude and nasty. Ibraheem Samirah is their hero of the week, Petersen the goat.
Maybe the disarray in the Democratic party is really sufficient for them to blow their chance to regain control the Virginia General Assembly! I was spending an afternoon on VPAP trying to figure out the chances, and nothing I saw there cheered me as much as did Blue Virginia’s rant against Petersen.
If you want to read its attack on one of the better and more thoughtful members of the current General Assembly, follow the link above. But for your real reading pleasure, here is Petersen’s comment in full:
Petersen Senate Sentinel:
Friends, Virginians, Citizens of Fairfax:
On a hot summer day on July 31, 1619, the first House of Burgesses convened in Virginia. Was it the first democratic assembly in the New World? Likely not. But it is the only democratic assembly which has continued to meet every year since 1619.
From its humble beginnings, a tradition of self-rule began in English-speaking America. Within centuries, this Virginia tradition would be joined by its cousins: freedom of speech and freedom of religion. The world would never be the same.
Today’s America likes to imagine it’s in a crisis. Hyperbole and bellicosity are omnipresent. But the first settlers in Jamestown had real problems. They were surrounded by hostile natives. They had no food. During the starving time, over 80% of the settlers died. Those who survived did so through cannibalism. (The real kind, not the political kind).
Yet they survived. And eventually they created a new nation, which became the envy of the world.
In 1619, the first Africans also appeared in America. They came in slave ships from shores of West Africa. They were pressed into a cruel and barbaric existence, from which they too survived and then thrived. The twin strands of Virginia’s DNA, like a double helix, thus began its inextricable intertwining.
As for my family, we washed up in Tidewater Virginia, followed pioneer tracks through the Cumberland Gap, then clustered to the suburbs of northern Virginia. All in search of the American dream.
So, did I choose to join the 400th anniversary celebration in Jamestown on Tuesday? You’re damn right I did.
Sic semper tyrannis and Wahoowa.
I am proud to be a native of this land.
I’m still on dozens of legislator email lists, and usually hit delete as a reflex. But never with Petersen.
