Going South

I'm about to depend, a bit, upon the kindness of strangers -- and on the caprices of weather. Sounds like a fun vacation, huh? Especially since my mission is partly that of a spy.

I'm going South. To the deep, deep South. I'm flying myself in a motorized glider, from Philadelphia to New Orleans, following the Appalachian Mountains 900 miles to the delta of the Mississippi. I'll be following a line of peaks whose valleys are peopled by good ol' boys and girls who, by and large, despise me and my type -- that is liberals, Yankees and people not entirely white.

I'll be passing through towns who continue to rally around the manicured thieves currently in residence at the White House. I'll be staying among people who think that Fox is fair and balanced and that Rush Limbaugh makes sense.

If I'm lucky, at least the weather will be kind. The sky will be clear and the wind will set up a steady blow from west to east over the mountain tops, curling the air over their peaks, so that I can ride the waves like an air surfer. If I'm not so lucky, my glider still has a motor, which will at least get me off the ground and keep me going.

Now, I'm not expecting the good people of Charlotte, Chattanooga, Birmingham and Hattiesburg to welcome this Yankee boy bearing buckets of chicken and grits. But the one good thing about being a stranger in a backwater who happens to arrive in a odd aircraft is that you do become an item of curiosity. And curious people often ask questions that can become interesting answers.

Here's what I'll be trying to find out:

Just what is it that keeps the South in the Republican camp?

And why do they continue worship at the shrine of the Washington Warlords, even as their own jobs disappear, their businesses bleed and their children are sent to die for people who hate them?

If you've got any theories, drop me a line. I'll try to read them as I surf the wind into the heart of political darkness, a mud boy among the mountain folk, going down to New Orleans.

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