The Confederate flag should not be praised by the government and it should not be banned by it either. There’s nothing inherently wrong about the flag but it has been used for bad causes, giving the symbol a negative connotation. Thus the answer is the first sentence of this paragraph: Government is right to not endorse its use and hippies are wrong to blanketly demonize its use.
There. I solved your stupid non-problem.
How did I accomplish such a marvel? Behold, the rudimentary use of facts + situational reality. Tada!
The truth is that the flag is used as mind-numbingly ignorant symbol of un-american attitude of separation, segregation, hate, ignorance, and bad ideas in general, but also — none of that… Because the other truth is that it’s used as a legitimate symbol of history and heritage without any racial connotations whatsoever.
Dukes of Hazzard stuff is now banned due to history revisionism about the Confederate flag in the past week.
I think “pride” in the flag, or any other exclusively regional symbols, is dumb. But who cares? You’re dumb for caring. Or more likely, just ignorant. I’ve been interrogating Confederate flag supporters for over a decade trying to understand why any toolbag dummy would embrace it and while I disagree with the rationale I always receive, it’s not fair to lump the common arguments in with bigots, haters and truly evil people that include murderers and violently wicked humans.
Most often I hear displayers of the Confederate flag talk about pride in history. Which would be fine, except that history is about a war that caused an obscene amount of death that was largely over a dispute regarding the allowability of the ownership of human beings as property. and it lost. So… you’re telling me you’re proudly representing a period of historical bloodshed in the name of legal enslavement of humans that caused immense suffering and negative historical repercussions despite being an ultimate failure because….your family tree at certain points in history lived in the geographical area in which this horrible event took place? Are you THAT friggin tribal and stupid?
That’s *my* reaction at least. even though I know some of it is fairly dubious, such as the more ambiguous role that slavery played in the Civil War. My position on that has always been that yes, the war was about slavery, but yes, it is factually accurate to note the real-life conflicts of the issue and reason there was a separation attempt and ensuing war. But despite acknowledging the nuances of the historical record – the fact remains that slavery was AN issue if not THE issue and since it’s immoral – why would you want to fly a flag that went to war to defend against encroachments into that immoral institution?
It shows you the heart of anti-americanism in the Hippie mind when they call Confederate Flag wavers racists but defended the fighters in Iraq with the emotional relation appeal trope, saying “what would YOU do if Iraq invaded YOUR city?”. So to some dummies, it’s only okay to fight and murder encroachers into your immoral bondage of innocents if you’re not American. To everyone else – we think that regardless of the prudence of resuming the Iraq war of the 90s again in the 2000s, that like the south in the Civil War – the people defending their state were resisting forces that are there to make things better for everyone. So yes we get why they feel put upon – they’re jerks. What jerk loves to be corrected or told they have to follow the same rules of decency as everyone else? Why would you lionize a losing team that fought in protection of a thing you recognize is bad?
It seems painfully obvious to me but the response I get to this reaction raises some points, not all of which are illegitimate. Bearers of the flag always tell me that no, they are not celebrating the causes of the war or it’s goal, but yes they are representing their geographical location and that that area of the globe and heritage, losing side or not – regardless of the immoral reason behind it – was the center of a lot of death and horror that people suffered through, not all of which because they were adamant supporters of slavery. I think geographical representation is dopey, but no one else does, so if you don’t think it’s horrible to feel a sports-team style kinship with your state, then there’s no reason to do so in a collection of states.
And that’s all the confederate flag is. The problem is not what it *is*, it’s what it *can be*. And it *can be* a symbol of racism, “white pride”, pro-slavery, and any other number of subsets having to do with unjust separation of races. This is why there is a conservative and liberal divide over the issue: Liberals see things in black and white (despite liking to think of themselves as doing otherwise) and thus anything that they view as possibly racist IS racist and unless it is exterminated it is contributing to “racist culture” which a large government must remedy by force. Conservatives, being less collective and more individualistic, see things more individually and draw generalizations from patterns instead of starting with a blanket rule with which to retroactively apply to everyone in all time periods. It’s how Hillary Clintons and Barack Obama can get away with being firmly against re-defining “marriage” to include same sex unions just 3 years ago but now act like only Hitler would ever say such a thing. Likewise with the flag, people selectively choose at what time a trending buzz about the meaning of a symbol dominated and retroactively apply it to all time. Only when it’s politically expedient to try to marginalize it’s opponents as bigots in order to gain power does the Left suddenly realize a position or symbol is unjust. Many people go along with it because following the herd on an issue is most natural when there are emotional appeals involved that don’t motivate resistance or opposition research. Everyone else points out the group think of the herd and is perplexed that people are actually just going along with the history revision that the flag unequivocally means horrible things. Never mind that that unequivication is brand-new (causing awkward blind-eyes to have to be turned about that time Governor Bill Clinton commemorated the Confederacy Star in the Arkansas flag or that campaign supporters for both Bill in 1992 and Hillary in 2008 distributed completely non-controversial Confederate Flag promotional items).
Seriously though, has Hillary been asked about the Arkansas flag? pic.twitter.com/8yJ5ExLDzA
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) June 20, 2015
In the reality of cold-hard-facts, there isn’t anything actually wrong with the flag. It’s not a synonymous symbol with racism or hate or the KKK – it’s a symbol of region of the country during an event that happened that was a massively big deal, forever affecting the country and what it is and what it stands for and thereby affecting world history in a major way. Remembering that with visual representation is not a bad thing. Yes, one has to deal with the fact that haters, racists, and the official organization of the KKK cult do in fact use that flag in all of those bad ways. They fly it not because they give a fig about remembering an event or because they’re such southern-state pride-ists that they want to display a symbol of their home – they see that flag as a symbol of a glorious event in where brave men gave their lives for the noble cause of keeping the negro in chains where they belong. Since that association isn’t a direct parallel, the problem becomes “what do we do when a symbol is co-opted?”.
As with every case where a symbol is used by a group, the rest of us have to decide how to respond. The Republican party is represented by an elephant. That doesn’t mean Democrats can’t enjoy a nice National Geographic special on pachyderms. Gay pride is represented by a rainbow. That doesn’t mean we forever have to associate rainbows and rainbow colors exclusively with homosexuality. The reason is because the factual reality is that groups don’t own symbols that pre-existed them. The sociological reality is that people associate things with what is familiar to them.
There are dumb reasons that are no more dumb than reasons of history and pride that aren’t objected to, and no we shouldn’t give in to any one group claiming exclusive representation to an image or symbol (and especially not if it’s a co-opt to a bad idea like Racism), but who cares?
The whole non-issue and it’s debate is stupid. The people acting like it’s a big deal whose repealing will have any affect over anything positive whatsoever are being dumb and the people who act like the importance of proud display over it is a big deal whose act is accomplishing literally anything positive whatsoever are being dumb.
My diagnosis: Stop being dumb.
Repeat after me:
The Confederate flag should not be praised by the government and it should not be banned by it either. There’s nothing inherently wrong about the flag but it has been used for bad causes, giving the symbol a negative connotation. Thus the answer is the first sentence of this paragraph: Government is right to not endorse its use and hippies are wrong to blanketly demonize its use.