Holding serve, and other notes

A short post to set up my mini-vacation.

It wasn’t really a surprise but it’s nice to win, and that’s what the Delaware GOP did on Thursday, holding on to the 37th District House seat with a convincing 62.7% of the vote in unofficial returns. That lines up pretty well with 2022 results from the district, meaning the needle didn’t move appreciably one way or the other. Valerie Jones Giltner won every one of the 12 precincts in the 37th District, losing only the absentee vote. Importantly, she dominated the early vote about the same way she won the overall race, and about 1/3 of the ballot was picked up in early voting.

So now we will begin to watch the 2024 filings trickle in, as there haven’t been a whole lot of filers yet. My biggest surprise so far was seeing my State Senator decide to run for another term, although he could pull a last-minute withdrawal and open the race up to a chosen successor. One thing about Delaware’s late state primary (coming next September) is that the filing deadline occurs after the General Assembly session concludes.

With that loose end rolled up, I’m going to talk a little bit about something completely different.

Over the last few weeks, Substack has been roiled in a controversy about Nazis. Perhaps they’re not Nazis in a classical sense, but their strain of anti-Semitism is at question here. I know a few people on the side of saying we should directly censor an anti-Semitic view by demonetizing it, and when the powers that be said Substack wasn’t going to be playing censor, a few folks took their balls and went home. Don’t let the door hit ya.

If they hadn’t told me there were anti-Semites on Substack, I would have never known because I don’t go looking for them. It’s really hard to stumble onto a site with Substack; most of the sites I subscribe to came as those linked to (or by) those who follow me from Notes. (Substack also suggests sites, but I’m sure that list is curated and seems to me to lean left of center.) Aside from thinking Jews may have gotten a bad reputation thanks to Matthew 28:11-15, I don’t have any reason to be against them so an anti-Semite site probably won’t appeal to me. I look at all this as a competition in ideas and I’m not afraid to mix it up or take on all comers.

It was a pretty good year for me here on Substack all things considered; after all, I nearly tripled my subscriber numbers and had (by far) my most-read post. It’s a good base from which to begin 2024, which I will do next week. Following the lead of my peeps at The Patriot Post where I also write, I’ve already told my subscribers at The Knothole that I’m taking this coming week off, and I will do the same here as well. The only posts here will be a repeat of a monoblogue post I did some years ago for Christmas (up tomorrow for Christmas Eve) and my pre-scheduled serialized chapters of Rise and Fall on the next two Tuesdays. Aside from that, Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, I will be back on Wednesday, January 3.