I am so old I can remember an everyday world that is as alien to my grandsons as Men from Mars:


Spittoons were commonplace in public buildings.


Everybody knew someone who had polio.


Everybody knew World War I veterans.


Everybody knew a family that had a member killed in World War II.


Tobacco barns.


Cotton fields.


Mules.


Party-line telephones.


The first television, with one local station on two-hours in the evening.


Buses that ran on tracks with overhead electric wires.


Lots of unpaved roads, even within city limits.


Ice delivered to the door for old-fashioned “ice boxes.”


Lots of people worked in the cotton mills.


Denim was not a fashion statement but proletarian garb for working people.


Segregated schools where both races got a sounder basic education than they do
today.


Sock hops.


Drag racing.


I had never seen or heard of pizza.


ONE exotic foreigner in my high school class---a Latvian who had escaped from Communism.


Washed clothes run through a ringer and hung outside to dry.


Soft drinks 5 cents; hotdogs 10 cents; bus fare 15 cents; a gallon of gas 30 cents.


Courthouses and city halls belonged to the people who could go in and out without being searched by armed guards.

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We know that Hollywood foams at the mouth at everything and anything Southern. So it’s nice to notice this new DVD, “Hazzard Nation,” a documentary made by Ben "Cooter" Jones for the 40th anniversary of “The Dukes of Hazzard.”


A Los Angeles TV critic predicted when the new series first came on the screen that the audience would not last past the first commercial. That shows you how much Yankee “intellectuals” know about Americans. The show ran for 150 episodes and for years had a weekly audience of 45 million viewers. Its theme song reached the top 10.


It was still popular when it was taken off the screen by the Hollywood moguls. “Hazzard Nation,” with selections from the comedy and interviews with the stars and other personnel shows why it was so popular and still is. Because it characters resembled decent, independent, well-meaning Americans in a clean comedy presentation along with the admirable stunts of the “General Lee.”


Having killed the series, the moguls tried to make some money with a movie sequel, following their natural inclinations by bringing in dope and obscenity. They still had no idea why the show had been popular with Americans.


Remember this was about the time when “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “Hee-Haw” were popular with national audiences. The South’s colorful and honest people had great appeal to most Americans before the pseudo-intellectuals and crooks who own the media began to distort reality even more than their normal practice.

Dear Reader of Reckonin: You may have suffered through my long series of lamentations about the American condition called “The Way We Are Now.” So ain't it nice these days to wake up, tap on the computer, and actually hear some good news for the first time in 50 years? Trump seems to be working on his promises. When was the last time you ever heard of a President doing what he said he was going to do?


Of course, I am not giving a thumb’s up until the Reconciliation monument is back where it belongs on General Lee’s stolen property, and the forts and warships get their right names back. I know it will upset Senator from Massachusetts Elizabeth Pocahontas Warren. Somebody may have to take out her fangs before she hurts herself.


The 1960s saw the creation of the irresponsible leviathan government in Washington. Happening, not coincidentally, at the same time as a sharp decline in morality. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society was supposed to help the poor. Its actual purpose and accomplishment was to provide comfortable non-work, six-figure employment for legions of Yankee pseudo-intellectuals who consider themselves too important to do any real work. That is the Deep State.


One of the most important of Trump’s initiatives may be curtailing federal grant programs. Having had dealings with federal money-dispensing agencies and academic administrators I know whereof I speak. That is the base of Deep State allegiance for hundreds of thousands if not millions.


Remember that Republicans in Congress, sometimes a majority of them, voted for most of the federal expansion as well as the immigrant flood that has transformed American society. As I have said before, Trump’s real opposition will come from Republicans embedded in the Establishment. They are already blocking his most reform-minded nominees.
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There are large number of Trump’s own voters who don’t understand the real nature of the evils he is trying to do something about. Not surprising. The media have long been a tool of the Establishment, since the people of the media are exactly like the second level people of the Deep State.


Trump needs his own television station to tell the public facts about the evils he is fighting. This should be manageable. Such a broadcast need only be two hours in the evening. It could do completely without advertising. Such an outlet must avoid hiring any “reporters” from mainstream media who are already hopelessly corrupted. It should do what Tucker Carlson and others have been doing but aimed at a larger audience.


This suggestion is simply patriotism. I do not expect any government grant for it.