06-14-2020, 03:25 AM
(06-13-2020, 11:58 PM)jason Wrote: I'm sure there are a million reasons that some southerners love that flag. One of them is very misunderstood in modern times. The average soldier that spilled his blood in that war never owned a slave, and didn't know anyone who did. Most of them never ventured more than 20 miles from where they grew up (until the war), and most likely never saw a slave before that. It's just like it is today... The little man fights the big man's wars. They weren't fighting for slavery. They were fighting to defend what little they had from large foraging armies that had invaded where they lived. It changes as we get farther and farther away, but someone my age may have had their great great grand pappy die in that war. It's also sorta ironic that a guy who grew up in the south, but recently moved to Minnesota and was killed by a cop there started all of this.
I get it... The Klan, neo Nazis, and various other shitheads have waved that flag over the years. It's been used to intimidate, but it's really just a battle flag that a certain group of Americans used during our history. I don't think it has any place on statehouses or anything like that, but "banning" it does nothing to solve any social problems we have in this society. I don't know how we solve the problem, or if there is even a solution at all... But I know that symbolism isn't going to do it.
I sort of agree. I can't say what it's like to be a black person in America, or how it feels to see that flag on a shirt or bumper sticker. I know that when I learned about the civil war and slavery, the flag I'd seen in my grandpa's basement as long as I could remember certainly seemed a bit more controversial. Again, it was a weird juxtaposition, because for his time, my grandpa was extremely liberal considering the community he lived in. My paternal grandparents didn't have a confederate flag anywhere near them, but objectively were far more racist than he was.
I'll say this: I won't miss it. I definitely have judgements about a person who openly flies it, right or wrong. That said, it's not quite swastika level judgment. If I see that flag, I practically wish death on whoever wears or flies it. I've been raised to believe that it's pure evil, and I was raised by pretty conservative people.
