Greetings from Dicksea, my Yankee friends, Double-Damned Yankee here.  

I recently drove from the ATL down to Columbus, Georgia, home to Fort Benning, where there are around 120,000 active duty US military.  

The main drag off the interstate into Columbus is called Veterans Parkway.  Along both sides are all sorts of bidnesses that are rare and/or non-existent in Vermont – pawn shops, title loan shops, massage parlors, ‘lingerie shops’, strip clubs, used car lots where you can pay by the week, check-cashing and payroll-advance storefronts, and others of similar ilk and repute.  Flim-flamming and scamming soldiers is the game here, like in many military towns.  

(There are eight Walmarts within 30 minutes of the base.)

It is a long proud tradition.  Back in the 1950s, Phenix City, just across the river from Columbus in Alabam, was put under martial law because soldiers were getting rolled, beaten and killed – moonshine, gambling, and prostitution businesses ran the town.

There are a million and one reasons to oppose the F-35s at BTV.   Having grown up a mile-and-a-half from a 3/8ths-mile Saturday night dirt racing (modified stock), and upstate NY 2 cycle-engine snowmobile drone from November to April (back when we had winter), I certainly can appreciate the noise argument.  

Out of sight (and out of hearing range), these planes – and the military excess they represent – might be out of mind.  But, rest assured, citizen, you paid for them (well, you and the Chinese), this is YOUR military, and these planes will be somewhere.

Perversely, precisely because you are the kind of people that care about these things, the folks who fly them and keep them in the air would be best off in your back yard.  

Just sayin’.