Sunset Cruise

iPod photo, sun setting over Saint Vincent Island

On my new job, I sometimes work as the mate on our cruise boat tours. My duty is to assist the captain and the guests and provide informative comment on the trip. Last night, I got to go on our "Sunset Cruise", a trip out on Apalachicola Bay where we can view a proper sunset, and as was the case October 8, a full moon rise. Nice.

Our little boat community quickly developed a rapport, and it was great to be able to speak frankly with people. One couple was from Kentucky, another from Georgia. We actually were able to politely talk politics and, wonder of wonders, we were in complete agreement. 

Sun almost gone!

Now, the Georgia couple were partaking of a bottle of white wine, which smelled very sweet, and I was offered some. However, as a Coast Guard approved cruise ship mate, I had to decline. They, however, got pleasantly tipsy. At one point, the nice lady lamented the fact that her hill-billy kinsmen voted Republican in spite of their economic and class interests. Naturally, I agreed that wonder was in order and proposed that perhaps wedge issues were to blame, i.e. abortion, gay marriage, whatever Karl Rove dreams up.

Today, I discovered a better answer. The Maritime Museum paid for all us mates and captains to attend a class given at the Apalachicola National Estuarine Research Reserve (now in Eastpoint), and the lecturer spoke of the current threats to Apalachicola Bay system: development, water diversion, pollution, and over-fishing. All but the last occur upriver, and all involve one primary theme, PROGRESS.

So, I think that all those people who vote against their class interests have deluded themselves with the chimera of progress. They believe in it, and they believe the Republican Party stands for it, even though most Democrats are also deluded by progress, although they may not believe in it with the fervor of the true church. Furthermore, they all confuse progress with money and all those other flashy symbols of the Way, i.e. a MacDonald's hamburger franchise setting on reclaimed wetland. They want to go along with that program, no matter that they will end up more poor and more desperate because of their allegiance to The Big Dream, thus dooming the rest of us.

Me, I am happy to do without progress. Oh, by the way, the patriarchy has a sole-proprietorship on Progress. No woman would be so idiotic!