Just go read it.
There is so much assholery in this article, I can't even begin to dissect it. But here's a taste:
...Yet when the Tampa motorcycle mechanic saw the world's largest Confederate battle flag unfurl above the intersection of I-10 and I-4 in June, he felt a jolt of solidarity with the lost cause and lost rights that he says the battle flag represents...bold mine.
Oh and then there's this one:
..."There is a subculture within the white Southern population, of which the SCV is the most visible voice, that feels besieged by modern culture in general, and they identify the Old South and Confederacy as a way of life and a period of time before the siege began to really hit the South."...
8 comments:
But, but, but, the whole reason that flag even exists is because their great-grandpappy's felt equally "besieged". It's just a BS victim mentality that's been handed down from generation to generation going back to the founding of the country.
The "Old South" never existed. Maybe 300 years ago. You really want to go back to a pre-industrial, agrarian, slave-based, cash-crop-driven economy? Really?
Get over it!
I wonder how many of those bikers were cheering when John McCain offered up his wife for the Miss Buffalo Chip contest in Sturgis? Bet there's a fair bit of overlap.
Yeah, I'll never understand it. There is something to be said for solidarity, and symbols of a culture and way of life, but the people who think the confederate flag is a meaningful symbol (that has nothing to do with racism) these days are fooling themselves. None of those people to whom it meant the death of a way of life are around anymore, and frankly I wouldn't have had a lot of sympathy for them either.
Most of the people fighting for the South were doing so out a misplaced sense of pride in the sovereignty of their land. Most Southerners were just as resentful of slave-owners because slaves took their jobs. They just happened to like being better than someone and didn't want "yankees" telling them what to do.
I'd really like to see some citation there about what "most" southerners were fighting for. It sure isn't a pretty picture to think of them fighting mostly for the subjugation of another people, but I have a hard time buying your "slaves took their jobs line."
Maybe some southern soldiers resented slave owners for being rich, but the slave system had been in place for so long at that point that I find it hard to believe anyone thought of those jobs as being "taken" from them (not to mention the BACK BREAKING nature of the jobs in question--just as we don't see anti-immigration folks running out to harvest tomatoes or perform other jobs often taken by immigrants).
Furthermore the existence of the KKK, Jim Crow laws and lynchings (to name a few) implies quite strongly that even poor southerners were quite invested in the system that told them blacks were less human than themselves. (As you point out when you say whites liked having someone to be better than--although I think this statement puts the connection far too casually.)
A poor southern white of 1860 might have resented slave owners for being rich, but that doesn't equate--at all--with believing that blacks should be free or have equal rights, or with fighting for some reason other than to maintain slavery.
It's weird that these people fly the confederate flag in the usa.
Would you fly a Mexican flag over a Carolina courthouse? Of course not. Why? Because it's a whole different country. So was the confederacy. It had its own laws, its own army, its own currency.
Would you fly a Mexican flag over a Carolina courthouse if Mexico were a defeated enemy of the USA? If Mexico had been founded precisely on the premise that it was a foe of the USA?
And if someone did, wopuld it be treason? Would they be a traitor?
Personally, I think it's a goddamn tragedy that the enlightened north was unequally yolked to the south by Abraham Lincoln. I say: break the US into 2, 3, or 4 whole other countries.
Look at you with this awesome post getting the Shakes love!
Southern flags are like bell bottoms -- the kiddies today don't know what they really are about and should just fucking stop with that shit!
I don't understand the fascination with the Confederate flag. Uh, guys? You lost that war. You got your collective asses kicked. You weren't minding your own business and then got invaded, you seceded from the Union and then got schooled in how it was a very bad idea.
Besides, I don't think the Confederate flag fans would like it if, say, Alaska got tired of having its natural resources raped for the lower 48 and decided to secede and become an independent country. Or if Hawaii decided they are too far away and much prettier than the rest of us and wanted to be their own country. And Hawaii has a much better argument for independence than the South ever did.
I"m not saying that the South doesn't have its issues--but so does the rest of the country. Suck it up and deal, Southerners, and stop dreaming about a past that never existed.
BTW, I'm a descendant of a Union army soldier from NY. ;)
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28559
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