THE SWINGER VOTE

If you make a sharp left on Mt. Zoar Street about thirty feet west of the Rite-Aid and continue driving for about a half an hour toward Sayre you reach one of the oddest places in all of rural America. What appears on the surface as a typical Republican redoubt of disheveled virtue, anti-Euclidian hand-wringing and genteel homophobia is in fact a hotbed of revolutionary foment and closeted subversive intrigue.

I'm talking of course about Grande Trace, New York, home of the Secret Sons of Albion.

The Secret Sons as anyone who has even glanced at a newspaper in the past six months can tell you are an ad hoc cabal of middle-aged men who intend by glint of witchcraft and homeopathic magic of deposing and upturning what they call the "smart-ass urban elites."

I love these guys with their over-sized baseball caps, decrepit RV's and their fanatic devotion to forgotten poets and political philosophers. They meet twice a month in the basement of Our Lady Star of the Sea and argue until their wizened throats turn brittle with all their idiotic fury. 

I stopped by a few weeks ago - my buddy Elton is a regular - to something they call a "Bagel with Hegel," and I'll tell you, these guys are hot-headed. Someone in a weathered khaki vest and a Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt was screaming about transcendence and something about finitude and duty and for a few tense minutes I thought things would get violent. But when he got up from his seat and gave this tattooed Kantian a tender kiss on the lips I knew it was all a big bluff.

The Feds think these guys are a real threat but after seeing them in action I don't think there's much to worry about. Sure they have a few guns but who doesn't. If there's any real reason for concern it's their obsession with William Blake.  Dragging "the chain of life in weary lust" is a pressing issue for them and if the "lambs of joy" can't find their way to "the Tent of God" any time soon there's no telling how the Secret Sons might react.  

But on the grand scale of conspiratorial crackpots I give these guys a 6. While they still believe in God and are adamantly pro-life they also swim in the nude and smoke a lot of pot.

Man, I love this country!