Not journalists, surely, based on what we’ve seen so far. Will you? That’s not a rhetorical question. The rush to airbrush history, distort the historical record and strangle art and culture in pursuit of ideological indoctrination and constriction of dissent, imagination and thought itself is well underway in the United States, not yet as furious and violent as related movements that occurred during China’s cultural upheaval and the French Revolution, but still driven by the same kind of irrational fervor.
It certainly is frustrating sitting here on a tiny island of rationality, lamely pointing out where cultural perils lie, knowing that the net effect of my analysis is somewhere between nil and the societal influence of the local nut case carrying a placard in the park. I cautioned against a rush to avoid the ludicrous and cynical effort by civil rights leaders, Democratic politicians trying to somehow panic African-Americans into trusting Hillary, and social justice censors by pulling down Confederate flags now, as if the emblems had a smidgen, a wisp, an atom’s worth of culpability for Dylann Roof’s crime. I even launched a new Niggardly Principle to show the way, remember? Here it is again:
The Third Niggardly Principle
When suppressing speech and conduct based on an individual’s or a group’s sincere claim that such speech or conduct is offensive, however understandable and reasonable this claim may be, creates or threatens to create a powerful precedent that will undermine freedom of speech, expression or political opinion elsewhere, calls to suppress the speech or conduct must be opposed and rejected.
Never mind. Politicians have little integrity or courage, and certainly no ability to foresee the inevitable. If Nikki Haley and her fellow Southern governors legislators past and present had any of these qualities, they would have known that continuing to associate their states with the symbol of the Confederacy and all–-ALL—it stands for was a ticking cultural time bomb that should have been defused long, long ago. The flags should have been taken down when a fanatic, censorious mob of ideological zealots wasn’t in the ascendance, and wouldn’t take a belated decision to do what should have been done years—decades— before to mean that they are in control, and could finally dictate cultural conformity, because that’s what authoritarian leftists do.
Business is soulless and often without principle. It is the last entity that we should ever expect to do what is necessary to protect the flanks of free speech, will and thought. Anyone who wants to have a Confederate flag in a collection, on a jacket, or on a wall of their room should be able to purchase one. The disgraceful statement by Walmart’s CEO immediately tossed kerosene on the left’s flaming censorious passions. Good people—you know, like the people who run Walmart– don’t want to offend anyone, he suggested. Perfect. Let’s see, what can we send down the memory hole now?
Whatever they can find and think of that is connected in any way to slavery, racism and the Confederacy, apparently. And more.
The flag mania has already beyond reason: the National Park Service is pulling all items that include the Confederate flag from its gift shops , even at the battlefields. So if a 10-year old who is fascinated with the Battle of Gettysburg and wants to set up a diorama of the pivotal battle complete with little flags, the store at the battlefield itself can’t nourish his interests, because “Black Lives Matter.” What sense does it make to ban the flag and not toy soldiers of the men who fought under the flag? Well, it doesn’t, right? “Black Lives Matter.” And surely selling photographs of the generals who led those men, and books that contain photos of them, and films, like Ted Turner’s epic “Gettysburg,” that portray those generals as human beings and not racist killers who have been secretly whispering to Dylann Roof in his fevered dreams, can’t be permitted either.
I am not exaggerating this slippery slope, or how far the carnage may reach if rational people try to hide until it blows over.
In Memphis, they want to eliminate a prominent statue of Confederate cavalry leader Nathan Bedford Forrest, who was a city councilman, an alderman for two terms, a wealthy citizen who helped rebuild the city after the war. No question, he was slave holder, a slave trader, and involved with the Ku Klux Klan in its early years. He was also one of the most impressive, effective and courageous military leaders on either side of the Civil War, and a fascinating historical figure by any measure. GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell, always with his finger in the air, wants Kentucky to take down a statue of Jefferson Davis, a Kentuckian who has a prominent place in U.S. history. Arizona is considering removing his memorial from a highway; a statue of Davis in Richmond was just vandalized with a spray-painted “Black Lives Matter,” appropriate because the President of the Confederacy helped shoot the nine Charleston parishioners.
Next step: anyone who ever defended slavery. South Carolina’s Senator John C. Calhoun was one of the three legislative giants, along with Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, who dominated the nation’s policy debates in the pre-war period. In Minnesota, activists are demanding that a lake named after him be renamed. If Calhoun is to be dishonored, why wouldn’t the same logic sweep out Clay, who crafted the compromises that allowed slavery to creep into the territories, or even slave-holding Presidents like Polk, Jackson, Monroe, Jefferson and George Washington?
Working forward, surely Woodrow Wilson can’t escape historical airbrushing off the scene. There is a prestigious Woodrow Wilson Policy Center, and his home is a public attraction, like Washington’s, Jackson’s and Jefferson’s—shutter them: “Black Lives Matter.” The Rockefeller family-restored Colonial Williamsburg is a monument to slavery as much as anything else: turn it into a non-racist shopping center. While we’re at it, let’s change the name of the racist Rockefeller Center, too.Oh, come on, Jack: it’s not that bad.
Oh yeah? A CNN anchor asked whether or not the Jefferson Memorial should come down, because, I gather “Black Lives Matter” more than the Declaration of Independence.
I often drive over the Woodrow Wilson Bridge; I also drive on streets and highways named after General Pickett, Chief Justice Taney of Dred Scott infamy, Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and, yes, Jefferson Davis. I find it strange to find myself on Taney Street, then again, it gave me a chance to explain to my son about Taney, the court case, and the Fugitive Slave Act, because that’s what public references to the past do and are supposed to do, keep us connected to the past, good and bad. Good and bad, because you need both to understand the present, and also because today’s good may become tomorrow’s bad. Still, “Black Lives Matter,” and that’s more important than historical literacy and nuanced comprehension of the past.
The slope is getting steeper and more slippery yet: what about the arts? Well, the New York Post’s movie critic wants to use the statue-toppling frenzy to shelve “Gone With The Wind,” and with it the pinnacle of black actress Hattie McDaniel’s career, who steals the movie (and who famously said, when chastised for playing stereotyped black characters, “I’d rather play a maid than be a maid!”). “Casablanca” will be toast: Sam is as stereotyped as you can get. John Wayne has a man-servant in “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” who is either a slave or close enough for horseshoes: there goes that film, director John Ford’s output, and maybe the Duke’s more than 200 films as well. (Well, Westerns are racist anyway.) I assume all the music of Stephen Foster will have to go, as well as–-finally!—that racist “Huckleberry Finn” book, as well as anything else that racist author Samuel Clemens wrote. When purges go wild, literally nothing is safe.
Especially at risk is anyone who dares to stand in the way of progress, when that progress is really ideology drunk on power and its own unchallengeable virtue. Former Senator, Marine and war hero Jim Webb, who is not afraid of anything, has been one of the few to try, saying,
“This is an emotional time and we all need to think through these issues with a care that recognizes the need for change but also respects the complicated history of the Civil War. The Confederate Battle Flag has wrongly been used for racist and other purposes in recent decades. It should not be used in any way as a political symbol that divides us.But we should also remember that honorable Americans fought on both sides in the Civil War, including slave holders in the Union Army from states such as Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware, and that many non-slave holders fought for the South. It was in recognition of the character of soldiers on both sides that the federal government authorized the construction of the Confederate Memorial 100 years ago, on the grounds of Arlington National Cemetery. This is a time for us to come together, and to recognize once more that our complex multicultural society is founded on the principle of mutual respect.”
Says the Washington Post. ominously: “Former senator Jim Webb (D-Va.) appears to defend Confederate flag,” meaning that he defends slavery, Jim Crow, Dylann Roof and doesn’t think that black lives matter. You’ll have to do better than that, Jim, but it’s a start.
The flag is a lost cause not worth fighting over now, but every American who cares about freedom of thought and who doesn’t want to endure a real, dangerous, speech and thought restricting cultural witch hunt needs to speak up, stand up to this leftist mob and risk the consequences.
Ethics Alarms 
Louis Farrakhan: “We need to put the American flag down. Because we’ve caught as much hell under that as the Confederate flag”
Spoken inWashington, DC on Wednesday.
Sound a little alarmist until you consider all the other outrageous things he’s said that are now not outrageous to the vast majority of progressives and race baiters.
Luckily Roof BURNED the American flag…
You didn’t even touch on the military bases. The fact is that most American bases that are named for officers are named for officers who only go up to the Civil War. There is no Fort Pershing, no Fort Buckner, no Fort Walker, no Fort Westmoreland, no Fort Schwarzkopf, no Fort Greene, although any of these officers are certainly worthy of having a base named after them, and that goes double for folks like Buckner, Walker, and Greene, who all fell in the line of duty.
The fact also is that the vast majority of high officers until recently were white men. Most of the Confederate officers who have bases named after them were natives of the states where the bases are. It should also be noted that all of them were at some point officers in the U.S. army, and a lot of them served honorably therein, in this case mostly in the war with Mexico.
The question now is: because one guy not much more than a kid, brought up on hate, decided to walk into a church in Charleston and cut loose with a gun he had no business owning, do we now have to change everything around, rename all these posts, and essentially say that “whoops, we were only joking,” when we honored these officers in the first place?
Some of these names are inextricably linked with what’s usually considered honorable service, like the 82nd Airborne, America’s traditional “first response” unit being associated with Fort Bragg, and the 3rd Mechanized Infantry Division, who took Baghdad, being associated with Fort Hood. Do we now delete all of that because of one unrelated event?
Assuming we do, what do we then rename these posts? Do we pull some instantly recognizable names from the 20th century wars who are no less worthy of honor? Or, in a rush to appear politically correct, do we look for a hodge-podge of ethnicities at the expense of achievement? Not that Benjamin Davis or Terry Allen might not be worthy of honoring, but are they more so than Pershing or Schwarzkopf simply because of the color of their skin? Who makes that call? What criteria go into that call, and why now? Maybe it is something we need to look at – after the moral panic from this act of mass murder has died down. But one act of mass murder does not mean that the entire nation, the entire U.S. Army, and 240 years of history all need to be changed without a lot of thinking.
It’s disturbing that a lot of what’s going on this year seems to be aimed at essentially deleting everything that happened up to this time, and throwing it in the trash like it was never right. Before we broadjump into the future with both feet waving about in midair, we might do well to remember that if we see more than those who came before us, it’s because we stand on their shoulders, and if we look only where we are headed, without looking where we have been, we may well be looking no place.
One small bit of information to consider: General Pershing got both a missile and a tank named for him. The tanks were widely used in the Korean War and very effective against T-34 Soviet tanks. The misslle was part of the US nuclear deterrence arsenal up to the early 90s. Pershing does deserve an Army Base named for him though.
There WAS, at least, a Camp Nathaniel Greene in North Carolina. I don’t know if it still exists.
Served honorably in the war against Mexico? Are you kidding me? Do you know the flood gate you just opened for La Raza? Never mind who Bliss was, Texas is in Mexico! As are “New” Mexico and Arizona and California! Forget amnesty, we’re talking “Mexican land matters!”
Clearly all people having only U.S. citizenship should be confined to the Jackson Purchase, as all other U.S. territory was acquired at best dubiously (just as happened in practically every other country…).
I was going to mention, but it didn’t make the cut—yes, I actually cut these things, and they still go over 1000 words—that the Alamo memorial sculpture in San Antonio featuring the prominent Alamo defenders is a prime target for a “BLM” attack, since Travis and Bowie were slaveowners. The Alamo itself was somewhat of a pro-slavery stand.
Obviously we should Forget The Alamo, and those who don’t agree are sympatico with Dylann Roof.
Must be quite a conundrum for the staunch defenders of Native Americans. The Cherokee owned black slaves and both the Apache and Comanche (among a plethora of others) took slaves from neighboring tribes.
Absolutely not! General Santa Ana reneged on the 1824 Constitution and attempted to impose his authoritarian rule on the Texans and Tejanos. The war was about resistance to oppression. Btw, after Texas became a state, Sam Houston made speeches against Texas seceding from the Union.
Sam Houston was dead set against secession. He was governor when the legislature passed the ordinance. He actually barricaded himself in his office and refused to come out until he was half starved!
My point was and is that Mexico had banned slavery, and that was a point of contention in Texas independence.
And attempted to organize an invasion of Mexico, under the assumption that an external enemy would re-unites the States.
I will! I plan on confronting my liberal friends this weekend, when we meet to discuss a book we’ve been reading. This is so wrong, and in addition to the reasons you listed, I have others: it gives these political leaders a way of distracting from policies that REALLY matter and that really affect people’s lives, like their opposition to expanding medicaid and the ACA, and their efforts to restrict voting. They are going to point to the empty flag pole and say, “See? We care about the poor and the uninsured and the disenfranchised.” I know these are things we disagree on (meaning you and me, Jack), but they are issues that will resonate with the people I know.
Don’t worry your left wing friends will pay lip service to disagreeing with the purges while quietly enjoying them. At least until it’s their turn to be purged.
Robespierre purged like an enema before he finally got the chop himself.
Exactly right; the pendulum swings wildly at the start, less so as time passes.
It’s this type of comment that persuades me not to comment. You know nothing about my friends or how they will react. This is a thoughtful group that is willing to criticize its own party and President Obama. Constantly using a broad brush to paint everyone who disagrees with you as “lefties” who blindly follow along is what makes this blog appear to be the echo chamber someone else referred to recently. I tried to be respectful to Jack’s point of view while presenting my own, and your attempt at sarcasm only appears to be a snarky comment about people you know nothing about. Really need to get out more.
My latest post was directed to Tex.
Criticize maybe. Do something about? You may know.
No, I use broad brushes to paint people as Lefties, whose ideas and assertions line up with Leftism. Definitions are a cool thing, and unless your “liberal” friends are trying to revive the Classical definition of “liberal”, it’s safe to call them “Leftists”.
I wasn’t being sarcastic.
“Really need to get out more.”
So we chastise someone for making assumptions and then sign off with an assumption?
I hope so, Jan. You give me hope.
No one!
Because it is following the perpetually improving civilization-eating Left wing method of purging societies. Isolate the easy to pick “unpopulars” silence them. Isolate the next group. Silence them.
Keep on going!
Oh come now, simmer down, simmer down.
Remember the French Revolution? The pendulum swung violently one way, then another. Then back again. It took maybe 50 years for that one to simmer down.
From that macro example to this micro example, let’s remember that just one week ago Jack was arguing that the flag should come down, but NOT BECAUSE OF the Charleston murders. It had to be done for the right reasons.
Do you think it WAS done for the “right reasons?” Lindsay Graham, who first called the murders an attack on religion, was quoted yesterday as saying, “Don’t let anyone doubt, this is because of those church murders.” So does that mean it was done un-ethically?
I suggest that’s an excessively theoretical question. The fact is, social change is messy. It’s like making sausage. The American Revolution had its own swings back and forth (not as bad as the French, but still). That’s the pattern that gets followed in every social justice campaign you can imagine; remember Prohibition? Gays in the military? Civil rights legislation? Pressure on South Africa?
There are ALWAYS excesses – first on one side, then on the other. To try and tease ethical conclusions out of the guts slopping on the floor in the middle of such events is bound to be a fruitless exercise in gratuitous emotion-bating.
It’ll settle down eventually. In the meantime, expect clouds with intermittent hail, and bouts of stupidity.
At times like this, I like to think of the famous saying of Bokonon, the god from Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle: “Bokonon says, ‘busy, busy.'”
Predictable leftist on cue with predictable leftist argument that this is just an isolated unique and non-indicative episode in our history.
I presume you know how I hate “simmer down,” which I find condescending in the extreme.I am not one for jeremiads. This not a normal sequence: it resembles Joe McCarthy and the Red Scare more than anything in my lifetime. Social change dependent on airbrushing history and censorship, demonization of opponents using unfair guilt by association tactics is not healthy social change. It is profoundly undemocratic.
If you don’t think there is cause to be concerned when the park service won’t sell souvenirs representing one side of a battle being celebrated at a battlefield, when a romantic drama with as much artistry as GWTW is being threatened, and when a mainstream news anchor sees nothing shocking about asking whether a memorial to the author Declaration of Independence should be removed, well, I have to say, I find your blase attitude to self-righteous communist-style purging of history in the USA shocking and alarming. No big deal, eh?
How tragically wrong you are, and how numbed you have been by the constant thumping of PC bullying.
OK, now I know that you won’t do anything to signal extremists that this isn’t pro-anything, but anti-American, anti-liberty, anti-truth and anti-pluralism to the soul. Good to know, I guess, but profoundly disappointing.
I agree with you about “simmer,” I should have taken care to somehow convey humorous irony or not used it at all, instead of just putting it out there solo; mea culpa.
The rest, though, I still disagree. It is all absurdly over the top, so much so that it’s hard to take seriously. I bet in a week you’ll have people printing confederate souvenirs and having cases against them thrown out of court, because, as you note, the temporary excess is well beyond the pale.
This isn’t “temporary”, Charles. The Left has consistently and quietly sought to shut down differing views and “negative” opinions.
That is SO not a failing unique to the left. Recall McCarthyism?
I do recall that from some 50 years ago…
http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/06/25/apple-pulls-civil-war-games-from-app-store-in-ongoing-controversy-over-confederate-flags
Sure, this is nothing too.
My alarm is not over the top at all. Objecting to this sort of culture-cleanse is rational, patriotic, and a civic duty, and shrugging it off evokes stories about German Jews saying it would all blow over, don’t worry.
It all blows over, until it doesn’t. Excesses with anti-democratic impulses should be called out, and as loudly as possible, too make sure it blows over. The mob that makes Apple cancel a Civil War game should be embarrassed, as should Apple, as should anyone who says, “No big deal.”
It’s just the opening. I’ve mentioned it time and time again, we’re on the precipice. This upcoming generation has all the potential to be more libertarian or at least right leaning and definitely Left-skeptic that the Leftists are flipping out. It’s now or never for them.
Let them have their way, and I guarantee in a decade or so, differing viewpoints of a non-Left orthodox nature will be deemed “mental illnesses” worthy of “rehabilitation” in “hospitals”.
Completely agree the Apple knee-jerk is absurdly over the top.
You ask who will have the “courage” to resist the “cultural purge?” Well, me for one–I just tweeted how it is a stupid over the top knee jerk reaction. It doesn’t take “courage” to point out a bit of temporary insanity, and I think “cultural purge” grants it way too much seriousness.
I expect you’ll see condemnation of such excesses from a lot of “leftie” sources pretty quickly too. It’s the kind of amateur hour over-reaction you get in the immediate aftermath of big events. Or so it seems to me–I guess we’ll see in the coming weeks if the liberal press shares your point of view about excesses, as I predict they will.
We’ll see. I am dubious, but having you making noise is helpful indeed.
Jack,
You left out public school districts changing names of schools to placate the radical Left. Houston Independent School District already renamed sports teams to remove references to Native Americans. Now, HISD has been asked to consider changing schools named after Confederate Civil War figures. Here is a link:
http://abc13.com/education/hisd-asked-to-rename-schools-titled-after-confederate-figures/803563/
That the proposal wasn’t laughed off as a silly overreaction to unspeakable evil committed by one person in Charleston is concerning. Nope. This is HISD’s response: “I’m sure there will be some type of conversation because you have the communities who are actually leading the charge,” said HISD Board Trustee Wanda Adams.
And as reported on Fox26, “I think when you look at change and moving forward the timing is now,” said Wanda Adams, HISD Trustee. Adams believes there is overwhelming community support building to replace the undeserving role models with those that are. “They don’t want anything to represent the history of slavery. They don’t want names to represent anything that’s negative because we want our children to be proud of where they attend school,” added Adams.
http://www.myfoxhouston.com/story/29411978/drive-underway-to-delete-dixie-from-houston-isd
jvb
“They don’t want names to represent anything that’s negative because we want our children to be proud of where they attend school,” added Adams.”
Even if the students aren’t proud because they have been filled with bad facts, ideological propaganda, and bias.
The real reason for these flag bannings and burnings is not in any reaction to a murder by a disturbed individual who once posed with a Confederate battle flag. It’s to ultimately deny patriotic Americans ANY symbol to rally around in defense of America and American virtues. It won’t stop with the Southern Cross. It won’t stop with the Stars & Bars or the Bonnie Blue Flag, either. It already hasn’t. The Stars & Stripes itself is under renewed attack. And what of the other banners under which American soldiers fought and died? Consider the Gadsden flag, the Gonzales flag and the Pine Tree flag; ensigns that patriots bear today in defiance of the leftist authoritarian agenda and notably by the Tea Party. Those will be next. If this movement isn’t brought to heel, the only flags left flying in this country will be the rainbow banner of perversity and the pathetic parody of the American flag with Obama’s head on it.
Steve, I fly an American flag on my home. On it’s left is a Gadsden flag, on its right is Gonzales. To put it bluntly, if anyone wants either, well…Come And Take It.
Regarding “the societal influence of the local nut case carrying a placard in the park”, I am confident the effects of your analysis are much greater and much more beneficial to society. Your analysis is certainly more entertaining and less creepy.
Faint priaise, but I’ll take what I can get.
Not the Supreme Court…
The Post might be a rag, but it’s at least a rag whose readers have their heads on straighter than the writers’; what, should we next take Homer off the bookshelves because his works come from a culture that in many respects is repugnant to our own?
To move on, while I agree with most of your post, I have more mixed feelings about the place of renaming/statue-pulling old(er) public landmarks. A similar debate happened in Taiwan after democracy was finally instituted, with a key controversy happening over Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall, dedicated to the guy who on hand kept Taiwan from turning out like China (though he was the one who lost it to Mao), and the other hand was a fairly ruthless dictator himself (his son/successor was the one largely responsible for aiding the push to democracy); the hall itself ended up keeping its name, but the plaza surrounding it was renamed to Liberty Square. So in that sense, I can understand some of the rationale for renaming and statue-pulling (though not for stuff like informally banning toy Confederate flags), even though the grievances in Taiwan are a lot more recent than those against Confederate/antebellum figures; my grandparents lived through the entirety of the marital law period (and my parents through much of it), and many of the Taiwanese politicians and activists on the “renaming” side of the debate were genuine dissidents who had suffered greatly at the hands of the old regime.
That said, I think your statement about “good and bad” is probably the best guide to how the we as a people should treat more problematic place names/monuments, at least in the United States (if this country, post-independence, had been ruled at anytime by an authoritarian monarchy/dictatorship like those in Europe’s past, that would certainly throw another monkey wrench in the whole public monument/place name controversy, especially since even someone like Stalin had some genuine accomplishments to his name that people could point to). Also, it helps that even most of the people fighting to keep the Confederate flag don’t want to bring back slavery or Jim Crow, and that at least with guys like Washington and (Thomas) Jefferson, nobody who honors them does so because they held slaves, but because their overall legacies represented far more positive things (that said, I personally wouldn’t miss Jefferson Davis statues too much, but at this point it’s not like the man is anything resembling a rallying point for unreconstructed racists).
At this point, I’m almost looking forward to the Ethics Robot in 100 years posting its own calculations when we have the same fight over Pelosi/McConnell Street.
Great post. The most similar debate of the past was over the FBI building being named after J. Edgar Hoover. Well, the guy founded and built the FBI, and that’s what he’s being honored for, not his later blackmailing of politicians and harassment of MLK.
Great comment
Silly. And wrong.
I consider the flying of a traitor slaver battleflag, be it part of a state flag or on its own, on government buildings to be a cultural atrocity. On private land, fine, freedom of speech, so by all means fly the ISIS, Nazi or Confederate Battle Flag (I consider them equivalent), whatever. Freedom of speech is essential.
When depicting a historical event, then heraldry should not be censored. The classic case is the removal of Swastikas from the tail markings of WWII German aircraft on display, or on models. Silly and wrong.
Worse, rondel markings on Latvian and Finnish aircraft from 1918-1945. Red and Blue swastikas respectively, nothing to do with the NSDAP.
Silly implies trivial, and in the US, that kind of control over history and fact is not trivial. But wrong: yes.
Saw an article on CNN.com to the effect that public school names are next.
Ironically (my favorite word- I’m going to start a blog called “Irony Alarms”) if the left’s push continues, the common sense part of the country will be forced to secede. I’m going to call it the two state solution. You’d have DeBlasio Land in the north east and Pelosi Land out west divided by Common Sense Land in the middle.
Don’t forget the paedophilia accusations against the latter. Why, in A Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur he even has a naked little girl, and the hero’s girlfriend was only fifteen years old!
I do hope the Democrats retire their symbol: The Jackass.
Originally created as an insult towards Andrew Jackson, well known as a wealthy slave owning Indian killer with Machiavellian designs on then-Mexican portions of the United States. The Jackass, symbolizing Democrats EVERYWHERE, is therefore thoroughly insulting to blacks, Native-Americans and Mexican-Americans nationwide.
Any symbol of hate so readily adopted by a political party definitely needs to be retired amidst a flood of apologies for 2 centuries of oppressing those 3 minority groups and failing miserably to bring them into the American fold.
… not the mention reparations!
I’m opposing it, and will continue, but my cultural and personal influence is less than zero. Heck, even inmy own family it’s near zero. But maybe in the future My kids will remember some of the conversations and discussions that are making them roll their eyes right now I and if there’s anything left to defend when they’re my age, maybe it will be because I made them think at home despite what so many other people are trying to tell them. Anyway, thanks for writing this. You’ve said it far move eloquently thin I could. Oh yeah… I’m trying a handwriting feature, and it’s a bit janky. Probably won’t use it again, even though I’m amazed at how good it actually is. Quite the nifty bit of technology. Even if it is mostly impractical right now.