One of the previous posts reminded me of when I visited some relatives in Germany when I was in my teens. After going out to club with my cousin one night, we saw a bunch of drunken skin heads waiting for a train and they were laughing and loudly yelling, "Seig Heil!" while doing the one armed salute that the German army used in WW II. I didn't fully understand what they were doing, but my cousin, who was 16 at the time, got kind of an angry look on her face and told me that this was illegal. I had kind of forgotten about that until now. So, tonight, I looked it up and found this link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strafgesetzbuch_section_86a that talks about it. Basically, it is illegal in Germany, and other countries for that matter, to show any support for the Nazi party.
Contextually, I sorta understand why this has become yet another liberal/conservative battle. My opinion is that the flying of the rebel flag on statehouses was never about honoring the confederate soldiers and was entirely about letting the federal government know that the south was not going to go quietly as civil rights were shoved down their throats. The south lost the civil war, but continued to subjugate and abuse people of color for long, long after the war was over. For the people who continue to support flying the losing flag, I would sorta agree it's not racism. Indeed, that flag really is just another symbolic fight to have of freedom versus stupid political correctness. However, I think it's time for people to stop pretending they give a damn about the confederacy.
In this country, people lose their minds when Imadinnerjacket and other Iranian mullahs declare the holocaust never happened. The German people certainly won't let themselves forget how much horror and suffering they caused. In this country, we tolerated slavery for a very long time, and when the south lost, bitterness ensued and they continued to mistreat black people who had been enslaved. The world made Germany pay dearly for the trouble they caused, and though they didn't suddenly become model citizens overnight, they eventually stood up, took ownership for what they had done, and forever denounced the Nazi party. Certainly I am making this look clean and tidy, and it was not. Without the Marshall plan, the rest of Europe would have continued to punish Germany, just as the north continued to do so to the south here despite reconstruction. Still, German did not wallow. They moved forward and arguably, have done far better after their defeat than our American south and in a much shorter period of time.
In SC, where they voted with overwhelming bipartisan support to remove the rebel, the debates were very moving. I'm not kidding when I say I can understand the anger that some conservatives have regarding programs of affirmative action. Near as I can tell, however, the older generations of the south don't really have regret over what happened to the slaves, they are really just upset that their side lost. Regardless, some local Republicans have, IMO, finally started to embrace the kind of actions that while symbolic, are nonetheless full of deep meaning and hope that the south can move on. Out of economic warfare between the free states in the north and the slave states in the south, arose a rebellion that was put down. The north was hardly virtuous. Still, what the states that eventually joined the confederacy did to people of color was truly reprehensible. There shouldn't be and won't be a modern day economic punishment to the south, they have kind of taken care of that themselves already. Still, it seems like the right time to stop this praising and remembrance of the confederacy as some good old fashioned bastion and purity. It was failed movement of treason that attempted to defend the enslavement of human beings in the name of making a profit. The south doesn't need cultural cleansing at the behest of liberals, it needs to do it for itself and getting rid of all symbols of confederate flags on the grounds of state houses is a good start.
Yep. The image of the aristocratic old south, with its plantations and Southern belles has been romanticized by generations who never actually experienced the reality of a slave culture. I was born in the South and have lived here all my life, mostly in Tennessee and South Carolina, and I have always found this Southern mystique to be strange at best. Time to wake up to the modern world.
ReplyDeleteGrowing up in Chicago, I was not presented with any shortage of racism, sexism or double standards, and that was just within the church congregation I went to. Still, another part of life growing up in a city is that you find some way to get along, or you wind up as a mumbling shit talker in some dark, neighborhood bar, lamenting how things would be better if not for X people (typically blacks or some other minority) taking all the good jobs because of their skin color. I know several guys from the neighborhood who basically never seemed to move along like everyone else and eventually just seemed to have the word "defeated" stamped on their forehead. Some of these guys are kind of quiet and reclusive and choose to deal with their fate by just living in a state of alcoholic oblivion while they bounce from one job and relationship to the next. Others are angry and look to start fights with anyone successful who they feel is "smarmy" so they can vent their disappointment by pummeling someone and showing them who's boss.
DeleteThere is plenty of shit I hear and read from the elites on the left that I rebel against myself. Still, I can also just shake my head at times and walk away without giving it a second thought. When I see the screaming that some have uttered in defense of the Rebel Flag, I feel like I am seeing those angry, defeated by life, types who aren't remotely defending the flag as much as they are defiantly defending themselves against some perceived, but non existent slight from the liberal elite. There is no shortage of these kind of people in any corner of the country, but I feel like I hear this message of "defeated" strongly from the southern conservative base, and maybe that is the problem.
Huckabee has a book out called, God, Guns, Grits and Gravy with an opening chapter called, "The New American Outcasts: People Who Put Faith and Family First". To me, that seems a little ridiculous and definitely steeped in "defeated". No matter what I think about it, however, the bottom line is that this IS reality for some people and the liberal elites don't remotely understand it. I don't fully understand it either, but for now, I feel like at best, Republicans are cashing in on that anger just as surely as liberals are cashing in on African Americans and Hispanics feeling slighted by the Republican party. I'd really like to see something better.