FLAG THIS!

So – a lunatic goes nuts in a church, kills nine people before turning the gun on himself and…then "click" - finds out he has run out of bullets.  It is obvious what crucial issue is raised from this tragic event – a problem so clear and pervasive that how our society has missed dealing with it before now is beyond me.

There just aren’t enough bullets in the world.

And now, a rally to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee (and "Unite the Right") turns out to be a thinly disguised attempt to "Unite the Nuts" as hordes of neo-Nazi's and Klansmen descend on Charlottesville, Virginia and share reminiscences about the good old days when such gatherings of white people weren't known as "rallies" in the South but by such other quaint expressions as "the election" or "the Tuesday night lynching". This was capped off by one lunatic driving his car into a group of anti-Nazi/Klan protesters.  I'm sure he'll blame the whole thing on malfunctioning Google Maps.

Oh, and yeah – there does seem to be a teensy bit of a racial element to this whole thing.

Yet despite what would seem to be fairly apparent problems to be dealt with in connection with the events in South Carolina (and now Virginia) a large group of people have seen fit to focus on one particular reaction to the events – the common-sense attempt to place the Confederate battle flag (and the Confederacy) in its proper historic context.

To be honest this effort was underway long before the shootings in South Carolina or the Klan rally in Virginia – it’s just a fact that one of the most egregious examples of misuse of the flag (flying it over the South Carolina state capital building) was highlighted by the shooting.  The flag there was taken down (by the Republican Governor) and was followed by a similar cave-in from such namby-pamby liberal organizations as NASCAR, WalMart and Sears.  Aside from alerting people to the fact that Sears still exists, these corporate entities were deemed to have taken these actions for crass commercial reasons directly related to the profit motive, which is really surprising because, of course, we’d all been under the impression that WalMart existed to promote transcendental meditation.  Now it is clear as well that the flag was a major symbol for the hate-mongers in Virginia.

In addition to South Carolina other states had recently begun to face reality when it came to the rebel flag.  Texas, long a hot bed of liberal activism, had just won a Supreme Court case in which it was determined that the state did not have to supply license plates with the battle flag included to a group styling itself the  “Offspring of Murderous Traitors” – sorry – I meant the “Sons of Confederate Veterans”.  The court recognized that while an individual has the right to express themselves through the display of a symbol, they cannot compel the government to assist them in their expression.  They also cannot compel a corporate entity to market that same symbol to them if the determination is made that to do so would “harm the brand”. 

This is the crux of the problem that I have with rebel flag wavers.  No one, and I mean no one of any substance, is telling them they can’t wave away.  Wave the rebel flag, tattoo it on your body part of choice, plant it in your flower garden and stick it straight up your ass for all I care.  Just don’t expect me, or any person with any rational understanding of that flag and what it represents to regard you as anything other than a racist jackass when you do so.  Bottom line – and I will explain this but we might as well get it out up front – when you display this flag:

You insult and desecrate this one:     

I will never understand how people can see pictures like this:

and somehow fail to understand that the reason the rebel flag is seen marching alongside the neo-nazi symbols of the twisted group of marching racist lunatics is because that is exactly where it belongs.

I did not grow up in the “North” or the “South” – I was born and raised in the United States.  And in every town near where I was born there is a memorial somewhere, usually on the town green, commemorating the death in service of a huge number of men who were slaughtered in their thousands by misguided and foolish individuals who fought against their own country under the Confederate flag.  Those honoured dead are just as much veterans as those who fought for America in any other war – and unless you would feel it appropriate to wave the flag of ISIS, the Viet Cong, North Korea, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan or the Kaiser – you should not feel it appropriate to wave any flag of the so-called “Confederate States of America”.  And we haven’t even talked about slavery or race yet.

But we will.

First however I want to deal with the multitudes who are wringing their hands and crying about how the poor Confederate veterans deserve some consideration when remembering the Civil War and the cost in humanity.  I agree – yes they do.  On an individual basis each soldier on any side in the Civil War deserves to be assessed and, quite possibly, honored for their service.  Note however that I say as an individual – not as a collective.  Only one side deserves any collective commemoration – and (hint) it ain’t the side that treasured the ability to own, sell, buy and breed other human beings as property.  Please remember also that a flag is a collective symbol – it isn’t a representation of a single person – but a group.

In truth we (should have) dealt with this dilemma of how to treat the individual Confederate soldiers long ago.  The greatest general of the war, Ulysses Grant, wrote about this very eloquently when discussing his treatment of the traitor Lee and his army.  As Grant walked alongside and talked to Lee at the time of the surrender at Appomatox Court House he described the following feeling:

I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.

See- right from the beginning it was there – the people – the individuals – were worthy of respectful treatment – but anything to do with that cause, from the institution that spawned it to the flag that it fought under – deserved nothing but scorn. That’s the lesson that should have been taken from day one following the end of the war – all remembrances of the “Confederacy” should have been treated in much the same manner that the Germans treat their Nazi past.  Instead of the “pride” that has become associated with the South and its peculiar institution, maybe the focus should have been on the shame that attached to their foolish and aborted attempt to perpetuate it through violent rebellion.  Instead of statues to Lee and the foolish and traitorous choice he made, maybe, just maybe, it is more appropriate to focus on the effort espoused by a true hero of the Civil War and "bind up the nation's wounds" rather than rub salt in them.

“But the Confederacy was about more than slavery” we are told.  “It was about “State’s Rights” and how people should be allowed to make their own decisions and how the war never would have happened if the secessionists had just been allowed to peacefully go on their way".  Think about that for a second – because a second is all it should take to realize this is all bullshit of the richest and creamiest variety.

The Confederacy was, at its heart, only about slavery.  Sure it was about “State’s Rights” – a State’s right to let its people own slaves.  Sure it was about people making decisions – white people making the decision to own black slaves.  Sure it was about peaceful secession – letting people peacefully secede so that they could own slaves.  Talking about the Confederacy without acknowledging the role of slavery in its creation and existence is like talking about the Air Force without talking about airplanes.  There are a few other things going on there – the USAF has mess halls and bases and an academy that has a football team – but really – if planes didn’t exist – it wouldn’t exist.

In fact the Confederacy was more about its own slavery perpetuating bureaucracy than about people.  Far from being an incubator for rugged individualism the South promoted collective farming (plantations) and was so tied up in protecting the prerogatives of its various little politicians that even Jefferson Davis, its President, despaired of drowning in his own country’s paperwork ahead of being overrun by Union soldiers.  It was Lincoln’s vision of a country “of the people, by the people, for the people” that cleared the way for the United States we all know, love and grew up in.  The Confederates tried to stop that feeling of national pride.  This is all wonderfully explained in Garry Wills award winning book “Lincoln at Gettysburg”.  Some of the rebel flag advocates should read it as they travel the country and perhaps realize that the reason there is an Everglades National Park instead of even more Florida strip malls is because the Confederacy lost, the reason there is a Cape Cod National Seashore instead of yet more Massachusetts condos is because the rebel flag was defeated, the reason Yellowstone isn’t a sheep and cattle ranch is because the southern hack politicians who set up the Confederacy were too incompetent to make it succeed.

So when a right thinking person (black or white, but, let’s face it, especially a black one) looks at a Confederate flag they are seeing a collective symbol of a bureaucratic movement that felt it was entirely appropriate to whip, chain, auction, separate and breed human beings like cattle.  There are times when the African-American leadership gets an issue wrong, sometimes spectacularly so, but when they are right they are right – and on this one they are RIGHT.

“But it’s a cultural thing” you say.  It sure is.  But there are degrees of cultural experiences.  In Northern Ireland, on the 12^th of July, proud “Ulster Loyalists” build enormous piles of pallets and tires, some soaring hundreds of feet in the air.  They then put the Irish flag and a picture of the Pope on the top of the pile, douse it in gasoline and light the whole thing on fire, along with signs stating that if certain Catholics wandered by they’d burn too.  That folks, is your “cultural comparable” – not freakin’ grits and pecan pie. 

“But the civil war was a hundred and fifty years ago – the south, and its symbols, have evolved” you say.  Yeah – sure.  Here is a bit of history that’s more recent, well within many of our lifetimes.  At the time Dwight Eisenhower (obviously another wimpy liberal) sent troops in to integrate the schools and Rosa Parks bravely sat at the front of a bus the southern states once again felt the threat of being told to actually treat its citizens like citizens. So,  where did they turn to express their outrage (besides lynch mobs and firehoses, that is)?  Right – they went straight to that old standby, the rebel battle flag.  The presence of the rebel flag on the state flags of the south isn’t a legacy remaining from a century and a half ago.  It is, in many instances, a recent phenomenon.  Most often this took the form of “hiding” a reference to the Confederacy in the state flag – but Georgia went so far (in 1956) as to put the actual battle flag in to its state flag.  This has since, in a fit of sanity, been removed – but Mississippi still feels it entirely appropriate to put the rebel flag front and center in its own state flag.  Mississippi, by the way, has inspired many fine songs about its political astuteness and wisdom.  Among my personal favorites would be Phil Och’s “Here’s to the State of Mississippi” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7fgB0m_y2I and Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ25-U3jNWM .

“But even that was still a long time ago” you say.  “Isn’t it time to just see the flag as a benign way for people to express something more than hatred”?

No.  No it’s not.  And I’m getting a bit tired of restating the obvious, so if you want to know why that clearly isn’t the case – well,  we’re right back to where we started.  This is why:

And now this is why as well:

Photoshop the flag out of the first picture and the “Gold’s Gym” shirt doesn’t make you worry about this guy being a racist lunatic.  The towel on the head doesn’t either.  But the flag – with those eyes –  be honest -doesn’t that make you worry just a bit?  And the fact that it is the presence of the flag that sends this image over the brink into the world of homicidal lunacy should tell you something.

And doesn't the sight of bodies being crushed by a driver who had his unfathomable rage fueled by that same obnoxious flag bring at least some pause to anyone who would choose to support the ideals that lie behind it? 

Symbols as an expression of free speech are a complex area.  Everyone should be allowed to use a symbolic gesture to express a thought – and that thought can often be quite eloquent and moving, like the Red Sox placing the World Series trophy on the finish line of the marathon, or just the sight of the American flag flying someplace where you don’t expect to see it.  But collective symbols can be a sign of ignorance as well.  People who allow a mute symbol to speak for them are often just telling you they are too damn stupid to speak for themselves.  So if you want to tell me about pride and culture – well then tell me.

But if you wave that damn Confederate flag in my face, believe me, I know what you’re saying.