The Secesh category archive
All That Was Old Is New Again 0
The things that wingnuts and Christianists are saying about the gay marriage ruling remind me of what segregationists said after Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka et al back in the olden days, when I was young ‘un growing up under Jim Crow.
The tune is the same. Only the lyrics have changed, and they but slightly; the hate remains intact.
The Confederate Party 0
The Booman looks at data from the last two Presidential elections and draws a conclusion.
Nixon’s odious southern strategy has reached fruition.
Follow the link for the Booman’s much-more nuanced analysis and predictions.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
James Bond was “licensed to kill” in a fictional world that never existed.
Allow me to introduce you to those who would be “licensed to hate” in the real world that we all must share.
Afterthought:
My family has lived in Virginia since 1613; it has shared and participated in Virginia’s sins and in its virtues.
These persons make me ashamed to be a Virginian, for they would perpetuate Virginia’s greatest sin.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Sam and Pap cut through the Rebel crap.
Flagging Interests 0
Jonathan Chait contemplates the veneration of the Stars and Bars:
Follow the link for his attempt to untwist that logic.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Thom asks about racism,
Why are we not calling this unpatriotic?
Monumental Events 0
Before every courthouse in every city and county in the South stands a Confederate monument. It commonly takes the form of a statue of a soldier atop a pillar and bears some sort of inscription in memory of those who fought for the Secesh.
Unlike the Confederate battle ensign, Confederate monuments have not become symbols of contemporary hate; for most, I suspect, they fade into the background, though I must admit that this is my own not-black perspective. I have not yet seen a bumper sticker of a Confederate monument on a pick-up truck between the NRA sticker and the Gadsden flag license plate.
Nevertheless, the Charleston shootings and the recent decisions on the part of some stores and governors to remove the Stars and Bars from sale and display have rippled out to include them. In Jefferson Davis’s capital, someone had the gall, the unmitigated gall, to “deface” (in the words of the news story) one with the slogan, “Black Lives Matter.”
Closer to home, the resident curmudgeon of my local rag (working motto: “Other people can’t have nice things”), pretzels her logic to defend a local one as a benign symbol of another time.
Flagging Interests 0
Having lived in the Philadelphia area for 25 years, I loves me my cheese steaks, though I’ve never been to Geno’s or Pat’s Steaks; they are creations of hype. You can get better cheese steaks at other places.
In my part of the world, the best cheese steaks are at Elias; order a “Philly cheese steak” almost anywhere else in southeastern Virginia and God protect you. Most places in these parts seem to think that, if they put bits of mystery meat and cheese-like substances between two breadish things, plus heaven knows what other non-canonical ingredients (peppers, Kelly’s? really?), they somehow have created a “Philly cheese steak.” They are, as my first boss used to say, “in error.”
I can, nevertheless, congratulate Geno’s for doing the right thing.
Doing the Charleston 0
John Romano visits Charleston, South Carolina, for yesterday’s services and tries to understand white Charleston’s continuing veneration of the Secesh.
One more time: when persons speak longingly of the “Lost Cause,” ask them what, specifically, was the cause that was lost.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Today’s edition of my local rag had a very good editorial about the Charleston shootings. Here’s a bit:
And so nothing like this can happen in a place like South Carolina without stirring the memories of the racial violence that has torn the South for so long.
It was the kind of violence, both overt and psychic, that burned black churches and lynched black men and closed black schools and churches. It slaughtered black children. It attempted to turn black people into something less than people.
That historic persecution was systematic and organized, while Wednesday’s massacre appears the work of one entirely cowardly man whose history and mental state we know little about.
But the bloody consequences are a haunting reminder of the uncivilized horror that is a stain on this nation, and a signal of how far we still have to go to recognize that hate and terror serve only as a path to ruin.
Afterthought:
I’m still trying to wrap my head around Republican attempts to claim that the Charleston shootings had nothing to do with race, despite the shooter’s overt statements to the contrary. They lead me to wonder, are Republicans stupid, are they pandering to their followers, or both? (“Neither” is clearly not an option.)
I’m voting for the second choice. Nixon’s odious southern strategy was always about pandering to the basest of the base.
Ex Post Afterthought:
I reckon there’s some wishful thinking mixed in there too. There’s precedent, as the Republican Party’s economic policies are based solely on wishful thinking.
