So, I went out and visited America last week. Leaving California is always interesting, and it’s quite a culture clash when you go back to someplace like rural Pennsylvania, where my family came from. Last week, we went back for a quintessentially American kind of event. My grandfather was being inducted into the Chambersburg High School Athletics Hall of Fame. He was a coach and athletic director there for something like 40 years. My little trip out of my LA blue bubble was a welcome reminder that all of America isn’t a nightmarish hellscape like California is.
So, we landed at Dulles and headed out to Gettysburg after spending a night in DC. I’ve been to Gettysburg about a million times. I actually have a scar on my forehead from where I fell as a little kid on the Peace Memorial. The drive was interesting because I saw a lot of Trump signs. There were a few Harris signs but a lot more Trump ones. You get out of the cities, and it’s bright red. You need to understand that the old joke is true about Pennsylvania. It’s liberal Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and Kentucky in between. These places are where normal people live. There was no weirdness. It was neat, clean, and orderly. Drug zombies weren’t staggering and shouting. There wasn’t trash everywhere. No bizarre transvestites were walking around. It was all normal.
Gettysburg was impressive, as usual. The battlefield draws thousands of visitors a day, mostly middle-class, clean-cut, and older. Taking a look at the battlefield reminds you that this country has been divided before. Hopefully, our divisions won’t end in the kind of bloodshed that occurred over those three days in 1863. Luckily, this time, the enemies of our constitution are not warriors but whiners, and instead of muskets and sabers, they have cats and Twitter accounts. I kind of doubt the Democrats this time have the courage or the skill of the Democrats the last time. Back then, the Democrats marched toward the Union line on Cemetery Ridge during Pickett’s charge. I can see today’s sending a bunch of mean tweets and yelling slogans, but they don’t quite impress me as the type who would fix bayonets. I think our side would. It would probably be best if the Democrats behaved themselves and didn’t start and lose civil war.
In Chambersburg, where my father grew up, the Schlichters were an institution in the community. The Democrat Confederates burned it a couple of times during the Civil War, and I remember my grandmother held a grudge. She had a picture of Lincoln up on the wall. Besides my grandfather being the athletic director and guidance counselor, his brother was the police chief and other Schlichters were on the city council and such. They were all active in their church and community organizations. It was quite different from the blue cities, where people typically bowl alone.
Patriotism was manifest. My grandfather also went off to World War II. This was typical of the time, but it seems to be still common. Banners with pictures of local folks who had served in the military lined the streets. We attended the high school football game on Friday night, and it was about as American as you could get. When they played the national anthem, people stood and put their hands on their hearts or saluted if they were vets. There was no kneeling nonsense.
People are friendly and polite. The town was clean and neat. It was surprisingly crowded, though, with the narrow streets packed with cars. I don’t remember that from being a kid, even though the cars were much bigger back then. There was a lot of chain restaurant and hotel action on the edge of town near the interstate, but once you got into town, you saw the small diners and restaurants. There were a lot of churches. There were also a lot of tattoos, which I don’t remember from being a kid. I think there’s more money in town than there was even 15 years ago. People seemed happy. Chambersburg hasn’t had a ton of foreigners dumped on it, and the cats and dogs seemed uneaten.
What was also interesting was that all the racial divisions that we keep hearing about didn’t exist. Chambersburg is a multi-ethnic town. There didn’t seem to be any racial tension or hate. Folks got along. It never seems to be an issue. I thought it was interesting that a member of the Class of 1963 came up to us at the ceremony and talked about how my grandfather had helped him get into college. He was a black guy. That didn’t matter to my grandfather. And I’m not sure it matters once you get out of the cities where racial crap is an obsession.
So, what’s the takeaway about this little slice of America? Perhaps that normal people are not obsessed with the same idiotic things that the regime media tries to make us believe they are obsessed with. Perhaps America isn’t a racist, sexist hellhole. Perhaps America is a patriotic place full of people who love their country and love their community and take care of each other. I’m not pretending Chambersburg, or the rest of non-blue-city America is perfect. That would be ridiculous. But I’ve lived and traveled around the world, and compared to most of it, Chambersburg was paradise. We ought to remember that before we let the left destroy our country in a selfish pursuit of power.
My super-secret email address is Kurt.Schlichter@townhall.com
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