We have the “West”.
We have the “Midwest”.
We have the “Southwest”.
We have the “Post-Jim-Crow South”.
We have the “New England” colonies.
All of these regions have their unique character. However, there is a place where this variety gets brewed into a delicious stew. That place is called Maryland. Sorta like “spiral motion physics,” where the motion around a source of attraction forms spiraling patterns toward the source like a whirlpool. That point is DC, and the American stew is at its diversity-best in the surrounding area, Maryland. And it’s not just the people as the geography is also representative of this diversity. Maryland may not be one of the largest states in the US, but with its variety of culture, climate, topographical features, and temperament, some would say…
Maryland is America in Miniature
Now… it’s impossible to speak of Maryland in the year of our lord 2025 without mentioning the apparent shifting in nature of that cultural/political source of gravity in DC. It is a brazen spectacle to behold, our present-day republic teetering on the precipice of a descent into a veritable kakistocracy. A governance of the witless and the fearful as outlined in the so-called “Project 2025.” This ponderous tome, a testament to the enduring American appetite for sanctimonious nonsense, imagines a future so bleakly uniform, so relentlessly scrubbed of the invigorating cacophony of realpolitik, that one is almost moved to pity the authors for their impoverished imaginations. They pine for a nation remade in the image of a white-washed sepulcher, a monotonous ethno-state lorded over by a monarch of their own anointing.
In moments of such profound national heartburn, it is instructive, and indeed, affirming, to cast a backward glance at the decision to remove the federal government’s seat from the feverish grasp of Philadelphia to the relatively blank slate of Maryland and what is now known as the District of Columbia. This was not merely a geographical relocation, but a providential compromise of competing interests escaping the miasma of a political homogeneity that then, as now, threatened to asphyxiate the nascent republic in its sleep.
One need only consider the character of Maryland, that delightful America in Miniature, to appreciate the wisdom of our founders. Here is a state forged in the crucible of religious tolerance, a haven for England’s persecuted Catholics, who, though a minority, were granted the revolutionary courtesy of coexisting with their Puritan tormentors. This early experiment in pluralism, though not without its lamentable “plundering times” at the hands of Cromwellian zealots, set a precedent for the rich and varied tapestry that is modern Maryland. It is a state where, to this day, the descendants of indentured servants and the progeny of freed slaves live and work alongside a vibrant influx of souls from every corner of the globe – Africa, Asia, Central America, and the Caribbean. Indeed, it stands as one of a handful of states where the so-called “minorities” now constitute the majority, a demographic destiny that sends shivers down the spines of the Project 2025 Christian Nationalist hierarchs.
The very soil of Maryland seems to reject the notion of a monolithic culture. From the salt-laced air of the Chesapeake to the rolling hills of the Piedmont, the state’s varied topography mirrors the diversity of its people. It is a place where the first American-born saint rests, a testament to its Catholic roots, yet where Protestants and the happily godless now outnumber the papists. It is a “Free State” not merely in its defiance of Prohibition’s follies, but in its very essence – a haven for the unconventional, boasting one of the highest concentrations of those who defy the rigid taxonomies of gender and sexuality. Let us not forget that the first American to proudly proclaim himself a “drag queen,” the courageous William Dorsey Swann, hailed from these parts, a pioneer in the eternal struggle for the right to be oneself, however flamboyant.
Contrast this vibrant, chaotic, and ultimately more interesting reality with the sterile vision of the Project 2025 evangelists. They yearn for a nation of one political philosophy, one creed, one stultifying set of beliefs, a landscape as flat and featureless as their own intellectual horizons. Theirs is a philosophy born of fear – fear of the other, fear of the new, fear of the messy and unpredictable nature of a truly free society. They would dismantle the very administrative state that, for all its bureaucratic bungling, provides a framework for our collective endeavor, and replace it with a system of pay-to-play patronage and ideological loyalty tests. They would, in essence, turn the clock back to an imagined golden age that never was.
The historical record of Maryland stands as a powerful rebuke to this retrograde fantasy. It was in Maryland that the ideals of the Revolution led to the liberation of thousands of slaves, a moral awakening that, while imperfect and tragically delayed, pointed toward a more just future. It was on Maryland’s soil, at Antietam, that the tide of a bloody Civil War, fought over the very soul of the nation, began to turn. And it was Maryland that, in the ashes of that conflict, abolished slavery and extended the franchise to its non-white citizens. This is not the history of a people wedded to a single, exclusionary identity, but of a people grappling, often violently, with the complexities of building a society out of disparate and often conflicting parts.
The proponents of this newfangled ethno-nationalist monarchy would do well to study this history. They would do well to observe the thriving economy of Maryland, buoyed by its proximity to the very federal government they seek to corrupt. They would do well to visit its public libraries, those bastions of self-directed education that offer knowledge to all, regardless of station or background.
In the final analysis, the decision to plant the nation’s capital in the embrace of Maryland was a stroke of genius. It was an implicit recognition that the strength of this republic lies not in its ability to enforce a bland uniformity, but in its capacity to absorb and celebrate its manifold diversities. The future of this nation, if it is to have a future worth mentioning, will not be found in the sterile pages of Project 2025, but in the noisy, vibrant, and gloriously untidy reality of places like Maryland. Let the hollow sycophants preach their gospel of homogeneity; the rest of us, the free human beings in this republic, will continue to draw our strength from the rich and fertile soil of our diversity.
And that’s all we have to say about that.
Onward through the fog… RH
You can’t just waltz by…
The state of Maryland…
Too much to see…
Too much to do…
Get on the Metro…
To the Fed. Triangle…
And don’t forget…
To hydrate properly.
Loopcircus 