Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[AugustWest]

It's not as cut and dried as it may seem.  To a lot of people in the south, the confederate flag just represents "Southern Culture".  I believe that many of them intend nothing more by it.  I don't agree with it, but I don't think they are promoting racism or being intentionally insensitive.  They're just clueless, not actively hateful.

Which brings me to my next point.  Kentucky was a border state with both Union and Confederate sympathizers.  The Confederates were mostly in Western and Central Kentucky where the large farms were (and are) located.  The Appalachian portion of the state in Eastern Kentucky was strongly for the Union.  But where are you most likely to see a Confederate flag today?  Eastern Kentucky.  Which makes the whole "Heritage not Hate" argument even stupider.  

[jaydub]

this is definitely part of why Europe has their shit together compared to us, these days."

Oh I don't know about that...

I think you might want to reconsider your opinion.

Many nations have their share of batshit insane uncles/aunties

I could go on all day..

[Toaster]

oh shiiiiiiiiit

[theinevitable]

August--

that is definitely true, which confuses me, but not among graduates of my high school.

my friend tells me they also fly confederate flags in rural maine. what?

[AugustWest]

my friend tells me they also fly confederate flags in rural maine. what?

Which just goes to show that, in many quarters, the flag is not a symbol of ruralism (or perhaps willful ignorance) rather than the CSA.

[littlefallsmets]

See, usually as you are all well-aware, I am pretty much peace love and understanding guy to a fault, a pacifist to a fault, empathizing to a fault but...

There's something so repellent about the racism and the sense of blind entitlement that the Confederacy represents and the way that those senses of entitlement and hate and the defense of willful ignorance just echo down through American and world history because we did not just shame the fuck out of those monsters down through the years, it snaps off that "understanding" part of me and...

Fuck it, they should'a burnt down Atlanta a couple more times, salted all the fuck*ng fields south of Gettysburg, just... no no no no no. You have failed "The South as a Historical Premise" and you do not have the Konami code. Game fuck*ng over, motherfuckers. You end.

It's a way of thinking that's so antithetical to my vision of living and a way of thinking that is still so much a part of why things are still fucked up in America that, fuck it, the little Ghandi in me takes five and "Jesus with the Axe" shows up and wants to just wipe that entire way of life, that entire culture, off the fuck*ng map of history by any means necessary.

It's not rational. Lincoln was probably ultimately right that the only way to minimize it was to open arms back up but, yeah.

A part of me looks upon that whole way of thinking like an infestation of spiders or a cancer.

Stomp all over it, rip it out, remove the contagion before it spreads again.

[pmcd9]

I would like to come here today to admit that in my youth I was clueless about the symbolism of the Confederate flag.  I thought (still do if truth be told) that it was a really cool flag and "it's a cool looking flag" along with southern pride, which to me at the time meant about the same thing as supporting your local sports teams, was the depth of my thought on the matter.

In early adulthood I discovered what that flag meant to some people and discarded it's use from my life.

I'm sure it was probably just my own cluelessness, but it seemed to me that race matters were much less of a problem back in the days of my youth.  I watched Roots and The Diary of Miss Jane Pittman, Archie Bunker opened a great dialog on race and The Jeffersons moved on up to a deluxe apartment in the sky and I sorta thought we were all moving into a post racial world. 

Like I say I was probably just clueless, but it seems like there is a lot more blatant racism nowadays.

[CortJstr]

I think I was in high school before I realized that that flag and the song Dixie were not created for the Dukes of Hazzard as that was the only place I had ever encountered them.

[pmcd9]

I think I was in high school before I realized that that flag and the song Dixie were not created for the Dukes of Hazzard as that was the only place I had ever encountered them.

And if you didn't know no better you wouldn't think it was a racist thing.  There's no racism in Hazard County that I am aware of.

[Ben-San]

And if you didn't know no better you wouldn't think it was a racist thing.  There's no racism in Hazard County that I am aware of.

..are there any black people in Hazzard County, though? I mean, "there's no racism in the show because everyone is white" is.. a little questionable on some levels.


(p.s.)

[linnea]

so did you tip them well?

My friend M. picked up the tab, cuz I bought her dinner last time we went out. She tipped $14.80 on a $59 tab, which is 25%. I guess that's just not good enough for the bar hags where we live. They are used to lonely dudes who must tip better than that, I guess?

[Doc]

Damnit Ben, it always takes me a second to remember those are from the Onion, the difference between normal political cartoons and satire is just too fine a gradation for my mind some days.

I'm going to take this as an opportunity to post this because I found it the other day and couldn't stop laughing at it.

[pmcd9]

"there's no racism in the show because everyone is white" is.. a little questionable on some levels.

Not really.

[Choop]

such a can for seen kyle

[JorgeFabregas]

I would like to come here today to admit that in my youth I was clueless about the symbolism of the Confederate flag.  I thought (still do if truth be told) that it was a really cool flag and "it's a cool looking flag" along with southern pride, which to me at the time meant about the same thing as supporting your local sports teams, was the depth of my thought on the matter.

In early adulthood I discovered what that flag meant to some people and discarded it's use from my life.

I'm sure it was probably just my own cluelessness, but it seemed to me that race matters were much less of a problem back in the days of my youth.  I watched Roots and The Diary of Miss Jane Pittman, Archie Bunker opened a great dialog on race and The Jeffersons moved on up to a deluxe apartment in the sky and I sorta thought we were all moving into a post racial world. 

Like I say I was probably just clueless, but it seems like there is a lot more blatant racism nowadays.

In 1979 Klansmen and neo-Nazis shot 5 communist organizers in Greensboro outside of a black housing project and were acquitted despite the fact that most everything was caught on camera and there was an undercover ATF agent riding in one of the neo-Nazi cars. I don't know if any of the victims were black, but such things are intertwined in some people's mind as the last election showed.

Anyway, it is hard for me to imagine anyone getting away with that sort of thing today--thankfully. For a good chunk of my life it seemed unlikely for a group of people to do that sort of thing, but it doesn't seem that way to me now.