The Storm About Dixie

Off my front porch facing west this evening.  Light rain.  I fly this flag until July 3.  I take it down July 4, as already discussed in this blog.  This does not make me a racist.  I defy anyone to find evidence of racism in the relatively long history of this blog. Suddenly, the academically recognized social force known in the public sphere as Southern Pride must be expunged. Really? We cannot have a genuine discourse about race while simultaneously censoring a major cultural symbol of a significant and powerful minority group (white southern males). You idiots. 

Retribution and banishment are not the traits of dialog nor do they promote true understanding. I have always flown the Confederate flag. Allowing the heinous actions of a murderous racist to dictate what a symbol actually means (even when he did not articulate anything about the symbol, he was just photographed with it) is not only surrender to the power of racism, it is allowing the meaning of the symbol to be dictated by those who have no intimate respect for (nor a complete understanding of) the symbol to begin with. By definition it is an illegitimate interpretation and not a part of civil discourse at all.
I wonder what the odds are of the Confederate battle flag being used on Army of Tennessee counters in the GCACW Atlanta wargame that will likely come out next year.  If not that flag (which has been included in all other historical games in this series) then what symbol will be used to represent the Southern military in such wargames?
And now Apple has removed all the Civil War game apps from its app store because Southern troops are depicted with their historic battle flag.  Seriously?

I've never seen anything like this in my lifetime.  Bizarre American cultural cleansing in the public sphere.  Meanwhile, I notice that every website still selling Confederate flags is temporarily shut down due to high demand.

 I cannot buy a Confederate battle flag tonight if I want to. How rare is that?

The primary symbol of Southern pride is to be expunged. Even as Gay Pride, another rapidly moving social force, received the blessing of SCOTUS this morning (which is fine by me).

I know Dylann Roof had his photo taken with the flag, but I have read his alleged manifesto and he does not even mention the Confederate flag once throughout his abhorrent racist diatribe.  He is wearing a Gold's Gym t-shirt as he holds the flag.  I hope the gym survives the storm.  

How do you even talk rationally about this?  The despicable meets the absurd. 

 President Barack Obama sang Amazing Grace in a Christian eulogy for one of Roof's victims today in Charleston, SC - the very seat of secession. An irony. Spontaneously breaking into a gospel song like that may be a historic first for a US President. Not absurd. Poetry. 

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