This is offtopic. It does not concern WoW. Some people say they like to read me rant. So I’ll publish it. Usually I just delete these rants when they’re this ranty, but what the heck. You’ve been warned.
This rant is just me blowing off some steam, because if I don’t I’m gonna walk around cranky all damn day.
I listen to talk radio sometimes, depending on my mood.
I consider myself, politically, to be neither American Democrat nor Republican, but Conservative first, and in some ways Libertarian. Or Anarchist, on a bad day. Or Revolutionist if it’s a really bad day.
And I don’t bring that in here. It’s got nothing to do with WoW. Nobody cares what the hell politics I believe in, and I would despise anyone that voted based solely on my recommendations, anyway.
Do your own research, make your own informed decisions, and vote your heart and your head. Think your own thoughts, and don’t just parrot someone else. This ain’t a political blog. Period. We talk about how to have fun in a video game. And I rant here to blow off steam so I don’t go around all cranky… well, no more so than normal.
But I wanted to explain that, yes, I listen to talk radio. KTLK in the Twin Cities is an FM talk radio channel that is mostly conservative. They have Rush Limbough, they get Sean Hannity. I find Rush, in particular, to be entertaining. Sean, not so much. In the same way I find anyone with a charismatic style entertaining… and I feel I am on top of issues well enough that I can enjoy his mastery of rhetoric without particularly drinking the kool-aid he’s sharing.
Let me put it a different way… I have read books by both Rush Limbough and Al Franken… and listened to them both read those books on audiobook form, because I enjoy their rhetoric. Both of them. They make me laugh, and at times they both make good points. And I see no reason why I can’t enjoy both. But an ardent Republican or Democrat would be outraged. But see, they don’t tell me what to think, or believe. They tell me what they think and believe… it’s not the same thing.
So, I am driving in this morning, listening to some talk radio. The morning guy is named Langdon Perry, and frankly, he’s a twit. Just, ignorant. Kinda like a know-it-all college kid given a mic and told how great he is. Just, a twit. You won’t learn anything by listening to him, but he covers recent events and fills time on the drive to work.
Which is fine, you don’t necessarily have to be personally informed on issues and well educated to pick a topic, spout out an opinion, and then have people call in to agree or disagree. In fact,well over half of the topics he picks to talk about, he just grabs off the local newspaper. And all of the facts he possesses on that topic, he got from the article in the paper he read.
As long as newspapers are always fair, unbiased, and 100% factual and thorough in their coverage of a story, no problem. So yeah, I take the discussions and his opinion with a large grain of salt. Not to say that I question the journalistic standards of our local papers, *cough* *cough* morons *cough* *cough*.
The topic of the morning is a news story in the paper, where it is reported that two teens in a local high school came to school, parked in the parking lot, and were waving ‘rebel’ flags around in high spirits. The High School year is over, it is graduation time, and the Principal decided that the two students that had engaged in this inappropriate, potentially racially offensive behavior, would not be permitted to take part in the graduation ceremony.
The two of them are still graduating, getting their diplomas, etc. They are just being denied participation in the ceremony.
Okay, sounds good to me. Of course, those are 100% of the facts the story gives us. No indication whatsoever of what the circumstances may have been. No interviews with the boys. No actual quotes from anyone. No idea what in the hell prompted two seniors to be waving ‘rebel’ flags. Are they really racist little shits? Sounds like it, but wtf? There has to be some reason. No one just wakes up and decides to go to school and try to get expelled and ruin the rest of their lives and maybe have to repeat their senior year.
Anyway, they were in the paper. That is going to make them famous as local racists. I think that, frankly, that plus no graduation ceremony is punishment enough. They are always going to be known as ‘those two racist bastards’. Warranted or not, I think we can move on, right? I mean what more do you want on top of public humiliation, a public whipping?
But holyshit, did Langdon Perry go nuts over this. He took the immediate stance that all the parents are outraged over their precious liitle woozikins being banned from the ceremony, and immediately asked the listeners if they thought the punishment was too light, too severe, and if the parents are right in being upset that their kids are banned from the ceremony.
And during the entire monologue, he is referring to the ‘rebel’ flag as being the Confederate flag, a symbol of racism.
Now, this pisses me off.
Not because he’s wrong. The popular conception of the Confederate flag, which is what the combined Battle Flag of the Army of North Virginia and the Second Navy Jack is known as, has long been associated in the minds of a lot of people with racism.
But that’s not all it symbolizes. At least, not to some folks.
Now, I’m in Minnesota. Listening to a Northern born and bred white guy argue racism without the slightest idea of the history behind these powerful, emotionally charged topics is irritating enough. I mean, wince inducing. It;s painful, and a good producer should have shut his ignorant ass up. You want to talk about it, invite a guest speaker that may have some knowledge of the subject to discuss it.
But someone calls in. A lady who sounded intelligent, educated, and pretty strong willed. And she tried to correct him as to the symbology of the Confederate flag. Which clearly was a big mistake.
She tried to point out that to many Americans throughout the country, the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Viriginia is a proud reminder of the men of the South that were willing to fight a war in the belief that we, as American citizens, have the right to be governed by laws of our own choosing, voted into power by a government administered by our chosen representatives, and that if the values of that government and it’s laws no longer are in keeping with the will of the majority, the majority has the right and the duty to stand up and oppose it.
I’m not going to argue the history. For many Americans, the Confederate flag is a symbol of hatred, racism, and inequality, based on it’s use as an official flag of many Southern states that had written and enforced Jim Crow laws and racial segregation throughout the South, and it’s continued use by some radical white extremist organizations and the KKK.
I’m not going to ever argue that seeing it as a symbol of racism is a wrong point of view, if that is the opinion you personally hold.
My point is, BOTH viewpoints are equally valid. One is not superior to another, for to claim that only one of these views is true and proper and complete is to deny the courage and suffering of those that endured the tragedy of the American Civil War.
And I said tragedy. The Civil War was not at the time a cut and dried war based on slavery as it is taught today. Not to the men that fought in that war, and died in it.
For the men of the South that took part in that war, that fought and died for what they believed, the issue was as simple as wanting their own states, people they themselves had voted into office in thier local area, to have the power and authority to pass laws that were for the good of the local citizens, in an argrarian community, rather than have those laws come from a government far away, increasingly dominated by the higher populations of the northern industrialized states. They were fighting for their rights. No taxation without local representation. Yes, there is a ton more than that, and yes, for many of the men in power in the Southern states, it was about holding on to their slaves. But not to most of the men that actually fought that war.
The North winning the war was a great victory towards the cause of bringing about a large country united and unified under a single government.
But it was a tragedy that so many sons and daughters of the United States of America, both North and South, had to go to war, to fight and to die to settle this issue once and for all. And every one of them ultimately died for their beliefs, not just so they could buy a slave.
To dismiss the entire issue as racism, to state, clearly and bluntly, that the Confederate flag stands solely for racism is to, in my opinion, spit on the graves of all those fine young men and what they fought for. Yes, I feel that strongly about it.
Now, I am well aware that I am unusual in the depth of my feelings on this topic. I have long been interested in military history, and I have also been an admirer of the courage and strength it took for Americans to risk everything to fight for what they believed in, even against their own brothers and lifelong friends.
The stories of the men that had fought in that war on both sides, almost all of them men who had shortly before fought together as brothers in arms in the Mexican-American war, now facing each other across the field of battle, are amazing.
This was a war where the enemy was never evil and faceless, for you knew them as well as you knew yourself. It was a war fought for what each side believed was right, and the common man on the field in the South that had left his farm and family to fight had never owned a slave, and wasn’t fighting in favor of slavery, he thought he was fighting for the right to decide his own future.
I have stood on the fields of the battle of Gettysburg. I drug Cassie and my son out there, to stand at the many memorials, to see the land where at such a decisive moment the future of America was decided. I have climbed through the forest to stand on Little Round Top, where a small memorial to the men of the 20th Maine sits nestled in the dense trees, and looked down that hill, visualizing in my mind the bayonet charge that Joshua Chamberlain led his men in that day, holding the far left flank of the entire Army of the Potomac against the South.
And this lady attempted to explain to Langdon Perry that, while he was absolutely right that a couple kids waving a Confederate flag at school were very likely trying to get their racism on and be hateful little pricks, not all Americans believe that the Confederate flag stands for racism, and only for racism.
Langdon castigated the woman, and called her wrong, and I believe the word stupid was thrown in there. And she made a terrible mistake. She attempted to use a simile to help explain her point. She compared the way two groups can have differing, equally valid feelings towards one symbol, that it can mean something different depending on the historical context it is viewed in, and for comparison she mentioned how the swastika is clearly seen as a symbol of evil and hatred when placed in connection with Nazi Germany during WWII, but as viewed by the Buddhists and Hindi who also use it, it is a positive symbol, and to impose your own viewpoint on the ultimate meaning of a symbol is to impose your own opinions on everyone else. Which, hello… is bigotry.
Langdon then use a classic debate technique which I don’t know the name for, not being a college graduate myself, of taking what she said, which I thought was pretty clear, rephrasing it as her stating that Nazi Germany wasn’t evil and racist, and then proceeded to attack her using his rephrasing of her statement as his argument that she is stupid and ignorant and wrong.
I wish I knew what the hell doing that is called. Yet another reason I wish I’d gone to college sometimes, you don’t learn all the pretty labels for the shit people pull in the outside world.
Now, okay, I felt bad that someone tried to dump a little water on the racism fire that Langdon was trying to start and got taken down so viciously. You could tell that she was upset at how he tore into her and refused to even pretend to listen to what she was really saying, and you could also tell his emotion were fully engaged.
He was on a real tear, it wasn’t an act to get people worked up. I figured that everyone would clearly see what an ignorant little jackass he was being and someone would tell him off soon.
And oh yeah, they did.
But not how I expected.
From that point on, and I turned my radio on at work to follow this when I could, the topic remained on this issue. And even after the second host, Chris Baker, came on two or three hours after this started, it remained the center of discussion.
But not in a reasoned, rational way. Langdon Perry and Chris Baker both openly adopted the position that the Confederate flag was a symbol of racism, period, and if any caller tried to oppose this viewpoint in any way, they were called stupid, idiots, racists, and ignorant.
The two of them shared with the audience how sad they felt for each other, for all of these ignorant racists that called in that seemed to think they were Facists. They took to calling each other ‘Facist’ during the rest of the show, and any time one of them said something, the other would say something along the lines of “Well, I’m sure you must be wrong, since you’re nothing but a Facist.”
Okay, so it was a distasteful, shameful display. They were both childish, ignorant offensive little twits. But I always knew they were both twits. It’s not until Rush comes on at 11 that the KTLK is entertaining without, at some point, irritating me.
But my true horror was reserved for the callers.
As the morning went on, the number of people that called in to either agree with them or disagree with them, and HOW they debated the topic, became mind numbingly terrifying.
The arguments used… the utter lack of historical knowledge, the firmly held opinions without any facts or knowledge whatsoever, the true racists that came out of the woodwork, just….
See, the audience for talk radio is, supposedly, the group of folks that are politically aware and active in debating topics and discussing current events. At least, that’s what I thought. What I assumed. I thought the best. I knew there are kooks, sure. But mostly college educated, politically active members of the community, right? In general?
Right? Please?
These people are supposed to be better educated and better informed than the average American radio-listening citizen. Aren’t they?
But I seriously doubt, from what I heard, that any of them had the faintest clue about anything having to do with the history of this country.
Just, not a clue. No appreciation whatsoever or interest in how America was formed, how she grew, and the hard work men and women put in to build it into what so many either love or hate today.
It’s like that one lady represented the intelligent, level-headed listener, and after she got flamed, the rest of them shut the radio off and left the show to the nutjobs.
And this crew are the people that listen to talk radio? These idiots VOTE?!?!
I am so depressed that I could cry.
I don’t give a damn what your political opinions may be, but how can anyone close their minds and remain so willfully ignorant? It’s fine if you’ve never been exposed to history, or sought knowledge out, but if you are spouting offensive bullshit, and someone calls you on it, how can you sit there and shut them down, dismiss them as wackos, and then have a pity party about how the stupid people don’t get your lofty point of view?
I’d love to see that jackass fired.
I miss Dan Connery. He may have been a bit wierd on some of his views, but he was well educated, fair minded, and he actually had a sense of humor. He didn’t just fake it.
Just… GAH!
Yeah, I know, no one has the slightest idea how I could feel so emotional about this. It’s not like it’s important…
But to me it is important. It’s living proof of closed-minded people that are ignorant of the facts of a situation, that prefer to believe that anyone that finds something about the men of the South that fought in the Civil War to be admirable must be a racist.
It reveals what I have often seen in isolated incidents; the attitude so many here and throughout the North seem to privately hold, that Southerners are inherently racist. Bred in the bone racist.
Damn it, open your minds and stop believing in stereotypes! These racist Southerners you’re feeling so damn superior to watch MTV too! They get the exact same cable channels you do! You think your cultural stereotyping holds generation after generation agaisnt that kind of onslaught? Have you seen the figures for how many Northerners are huge NASCAR fans? Huh? It’s one country, you damn bigots, wake up and see it! Like it or not, the country is one big bowl of gumbo, with the different bits mixed in everywhere!
Take people as people first, and shove that condescending elitist attitude up your asses!
Okay, I feel slightly better now.
But right now, I know exactly how I think Henry B Gonzalez must have felt when he felt he was serving this country with integrity to the best of his ability, and he was approached by some guy out of the blue, and called a Communist… and after a moment, he proceeded to punch the guy right square in the mouth.
Entries (RSS)
June 5th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Wow. Where to start. I am a big fan of history and historical/polictical debates always get my attention. I’m afraid that my knowledge of the American Civil War is based mostly from watching the History Channel Documentaries (as I’m from the UK) so wouldn’t even dream of making any kind of comment like some of those radio callers. But I have felt the same kind of feelings because of similar debates over here. I have found myself wondering how there can be a huge spectrum of views about some issues. I guess its good that you can Vent out on the Blog, hope the rest of the day got better afterwards.
June 5th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Damn, Bear, you and me gots to find a way to someday sit down with a coupla beers and discuss Serious Issues. I thinks we’d both find it a worthwhile & refreshing experience.
Slightly relateds: a pic I took at Fredericksburg, one of the bloodier and stupider battles of the war.
June 5th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
That is, feeling enraged, not feeling like the people on the radio… I reread the comment out and it just seemed to be saying something i wasn’t meaning. I’ll shut up now before I get myself in trouble.
June 5th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
America is the land of the free, where everyone is free to remain as stupid and ignorant as they please…until someone gets hurt. Then things become blown grossly out of proportion to the point that ambiguous unenforcable litigation is needed to protect ourselves from our own stupidity. To put it bluntly, the american ship is sinking, with every idiot in America drilling their own hole in the hull, and I sincerely hope that enough of our leaders realize this, educate the population, and start bailing/patching/rebuilding, before we capsize.
June 5th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
The “debate” (and yes I use that term loosely) tactic I think you’re referring to is a straw man: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
Sometimes I have too much fun looking up logical fallacies, usually after I’ve been subjected to a forum flamewar.
June 5th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
/shake head at where our country is at… the more I think about how badly we as a country behave, our way of thinking, and the direction we are heading towards, I just cry.
June 5th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Oh yah, one more thing… a college education now aday is more or less equivalent to work training and no more.
June 5th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Oh yah, one more thing… a college education now a day is more or less equivalent to work training and no more.
June 5th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
It is SO good to know that I’m not alone in being frustrated by this.
And yes, “these idiots” do indeed Vote. Probably firmly along party lines too… the same party lines that their fathers, and fathers’ fathers voted on.
Go ahead and tell me that thought doesn’t scare you.
As for that debate technique, I too have seen it before, and I did once know the name for it…
I’ll be back with it once I’ve found it again.
June 5th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
It’s called a Straw Man argument when you mischaracterize what the other person is saying in order to win your point. Very common in arguments that take place on internet forums. Take a look here for a list of different fallacies. Go read that page and then go lurk some of the different forums. Some form of flawed logic is almost always used to win any internet argument. My favorites are hasty generalizations – one of which, I just made.
June 5th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
“I’m not going to argue the history. For many Americans, the Confederate flag is a symbol of hatred, racism, and inequality, based on it’s use as an official flag of many Southern states that had written and enforced Jim Crow laws and racial segregation throughout the South….”
To be clear here the issue is slavery. The debate that lead to the Civil War was not about Jim Crow laws or maintaining institutionalized segregation both of which continued long after the Civil War. Many people hate the Confederate flag because it represented a government that meant to continue institutionalized slavery; the state sanctioned ownership of humans.
June 5th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
I totally agree with you. I’ve known many people who are close-minded about things like this. I love history and my vacation to Gettysburg was my 2nd favorite (behind baseball HoF). Preach it TriB! TriB in 2012!
June 5th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
If I may contribute to your rant, to summarize, the South grew the raw materials the North required and paid them almost nothing for those materials. The North then turned around and sold the finished product back to the South at inflated prices. Besides the economic hardships the North was putting the South through, there was the disagreement that state’s rights superseded the federal government’s. The South believed the Federal government was too involved in what they deemed not their concern and the North wanted a “one size fits all” type of involvement in it’s smaller parts. Although most kids are taught the Civil War was about slavery, it really comes down to whether “Good of the Union” is more important than the individual states sovereignty. My summary has become a dissertation.
June 5th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Ah, I see others are familiar with Wikipedia. Probably better than an actual collage education any day of the week. (at least, most of the ones ending in ‘y’)
And yes, now that I look, “Straw Man” seems to be the logical fallacy we’re looking for. At first I thought it was some kind of association fallacy.
Technically what he did was set up a Straw Man, and then use that mis-stated position to engage in an “ad hominem” argument to discredit is opponent. From what you said, I gather he didn’t even use the mis-statement to support his position, instead deciding to attack her directly by implying that she was a Nazi sympathiser.
If my experience with talk radio is any indication, his aim was then to shout loudly enough that his opponent could no longer be heard, and to embarrass the caller into hanging up the phone. Thusly, he “wins”.
It’s the broadcasting equivalent of shoving his fingers into his ears and singing “La La La La” at the top of his voice, but still…
June 5th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
If I describe your position incorrectly, setting up a weak and easily attacked position to claim you hold and then attack ‘your’ position, that is a straw man argument.
I had about nine paragraphs past this, but I am editing it down to “Extremists do well in radio, because they get the ratings. That’s why I generally avoid talk radio.”.
June 5th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
(And that’s what I get for spending all that time on work in the middle of writing my response. There were no other comments when I started!)
June 5th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Urgh. I won’t pretend to know as much as many people about the Civil War, or history in general, but I’m educated enough to know there are various sides to every symbol and event, and just blindly deciding one viewpoint is right is just…gah.
I understand your frustration, Bear.
June 5th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Fellow Bear tank,
For what it is worth i agree with you on your Flag POV…Those Confederate soldiers fought because, fundamentally …..they felt their country and home were being invaded and their kin threatened, and I abhor the racists who stole their symbol of honor and perverted it. And I have mulitple college degrees and would be considerd a flaming liberal by most….so not all lefties think the same…….People choose simplistic answers because they are afraid of the complexities of reality.
June 5th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Fred, I haven’t read past your comment yet, but I wanted to make clear that, while you are correct in what you said, what I was referring to in that instance was the more recent linking of the Confederate flag with racism in the minds of many based on the Southern states use of it during the events of the Civil Rights movement. Part of why it is such a big hot button issue when Southern government buildings still fly it in modern times.
June 5th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Ugh, a complex subject. Allow me to take a small piece with which I disagree. I do not hold the rebel battle flag in any sort of praise.
The US civil war was a host of complexities - as are all politics. And there were some truly noble souls and honorable people fighting on the side of the rebellion, and the opposite on the north. This does not redeem four facts.
Fact one: All the “noble” issues over which the civil war was fought excluding slavery - the trade issue mentioned by Michael Nelson above, several tax issues, and many other issues - had already been pushed, and lost. In particular, I suggest you read the situation that almost sparked the US civil war — the Nullification Crisis. The important point to bring forth is that the leaders of that crisis said at its conclusion that they would accept the decision. Just under three decades later, many of them were pushing the same issues again.
Fact two: All the noble issues aside, the most frequently cited issues for “why we’re fighting” were related to slavery. Go read the articles of secession - every single one of them cites slavery and the north’s hostility to the institution as the root cause. (from the Mississippi document, “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world.” Read them yourselves. This was a war started by one group to preserve an institution we consider inhumane.
Fact three: The south lost.
The battle flag of the Confederacy - the battle flag of the rebellion, the rebel flag - was the representation of all this. Normally, when the symbology of the losing nation in a war of domination is kept by the loser, it is representative of continued rebellion. “Conqured but not defeated” is the cliche. And this was no exception. It was used as the representation of all held Right by the Ku Klux Klan, to name the most famous of the active post-war organizations dedicated to reversing the defeat. “The south shall rise again,” was - and in some areas IS - a declaration of continued rebellion.
Again, there were honorable and noble individuals who fought under that banner. There were other issues that drove the states to their rebellion. But the published articles of every rebelling state made it plain that Their Cause was, at heart, the ability to continue the institution of slavery which was the cornerstone of their way of life. And because a flag is symbolic not of individuals but “of the nation for which it stands,” I shall not stand in praise of the rebel flag.
June 5th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
I get so peeved listening to folks like this. The ones in this world I always seem to argue with see everything in black and white, and they always seem to make the most noise.
my world doesn’t work that way. there are two sides to every story and everything is shades of Grey.
June 5th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Ellis, lol, not only did you hit the nail on the head, but after she hung up in the middle of his shouted rant, he said something along the lines of “Oh, and there she hangs up instead of debating the issue. Figures.” I think that was the actual moment I popped Enrage.
June 5th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Poor Cassie… this whole thing just served to remind me… she’s never seen any of my Civil War movies… after we toured Gettysburg, I promised I’d watch Gettysburg with her so she’d better appreciate some of the history of where we were, and I forgot.
Now I remember.
Poor Cassie.
Oh, and do you want to know a truly epic feeling when watching a movie? Seeing Gettysburg at an on-base movie theater when it was first released. I was still stationed in Camp Pendleton when it was released, and as I’m a big fan of Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels, I was stoked. STOKED.
Watching Gettysburg surrounded by fellow servicemen and women, most of whom appreciated exactly what we were seeing, and with the theater being on-base and rolling a trailer with the Star Spangled Banner and everyone saluting the flag of the United States of America before the movie rolled… priceless. Truly priceless moment.
Oh, and if you want to enjoy an amazing read, read Michael Shaara’s “The Killer Angels”. It’s not dry stuffy history like you got in school.
And if you CAN stand the more intense history, try “General James Longstreet” by Jefferey Wert.
And if you want some speculative sci-fi mixed into your Civil War history, try ‘The Guns of the South” by Harry Turtledove.
Hmmm, “Battle Cry of Freedom” is pretty darn good, too. I can’t remember who wrote it.
And now I know I’m feeling better, because I’m engaged in thinking about books and movies instead of bitching. Cool.
June 5th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Few scattered thoughts bound to get your blood racing again :
1) Talk radio is not meant to be an informed, balanced discussion of issues. It’s goal is to attract an audience so it can sell advertising. Taking extreme positions, distorting the truth, and pandering to people’s basest attitudes is to be expected. You may as well complain that the referees don’t always make good calls during pro westling matches.
2) Political commentary shows on most cable news broadcasts work exactly the same way.
3) So do most daytime television talk shows.
4) People enjoy things that reinforce their own beliefs and the audiences for these shows are self-selecting (including those that love to hate the commentators). So I wouldn’t despair too much about our country based on a handful of people that called in. You’re seriously kidding yourself if you think the talk radio audience is typically more saavy than the general public. I think the people you would have enjoyed debating this issue were simply busy doing something else.
5) Still, I’m in agreement that a depressingly small number of people really have any grasp of history, including the recent history of our own country. It’s too bad, since not only is it pretty interesting on its own, but knowing something about the past gives you a better understanding about how we got where we are and what’s likely to happen next. I’d love to see schools put more emphasis on historical context and less on prepping for endless basic skills tests, but that’s a whole other rant…
6) Finally, I understand your position on respecting a flag people fought and died for. Soldiers on both sides fought with courage and honor in the Civil War, and I respect them for doing what they felt was their duty. However, I think that’s true in every war — most soldiers are just everyday people caught in a situation much larger than themselves, following orders from above, doing the best they can, and hoping they’ll come out the other side alive and return to their families.
But I can’t embrace the Confederate flag — and forgive me if I’m off on the terminology still — as some kind of symbol of the independent American spirit. That’s revisionist, wishful thinking. There’s simply no getting around the fact that flag exists because of a failed attempt to split the United States apart and form a separate nation. There were a lot of reasons for that besides just slavery, but, again, there’s no getting around that one of the “freedoms” this potential nation wanted to maintain was the right to keep slaves. I don’t believe in those goals and, frankly, I’m glad they failed. I think our country is better off for not having been partitioned in half, and I’m happy we’re — oh so slowly — moving to the point where a woman and a black man can run for President (and I’m looking forward to the day when no one will consider that a point even worth mentioning and will just look at the candidates on their actual positions).
So, I can respect the flag as a historical symbol and I can respect people who followed their beliefs even to the point of death, but I can also understand other people who still see the flag as a reminder of the oppression their own ancestors may have lived through.
I don’t know anything about these kids waving flags at school — and it seems to me that there have been cases where schools lately have gone a bit overboard in their reactions (suspending a child who brought in a butter knife in their lunch for example) — but I don’t have much sympathy for anyone who’d deliberately use them to make a racist statement.
June 5th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Ask some co-workers to recite the pledge of allegiance.
Or the star spangled banner.
Ask them to name 5 of the rights listed on the Bill of Rights.
Ask them what the red and white stripes on the flag represent.
No one cares anymore, and that’s the problem. The ones that do care, like this poor woman, get shot down by bigots like this Perry or Baker. People have the mentality of if it doesn’t affect them on a personal level at that very moment..they just don’t care.. There is plenty of evidence to support it too..just look at evening television and you’re bound to find a large number of programs that I honestly feel are only made to keep people dumb and happy..
I’m sure some of it could be linked to our STELLAR education system as well but I digress…
June 5th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Speaking of movies BBB, I was in the service when we got to watch Saving Private Ryan. Different period of time, different movie, but I have a gut instinct I had the same exact feelings you did watching Gettyburg.
June 5th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Oh, and for Civil War movies, I really liked Glory.
Matthew Broderick as an uptight Massachusetts Colonel? It kind of worked, go figure.
But Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman made the movie.
And what an ending…
June 5th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
See, you disagree with me. And that’s fine.
I can live with it.
I don’t feel the need to delete your comments just because they are better written and researched and supported than my post.
Kirk, I believe that almost every one of your points as to why you do not respect the battle flag I did mention in my rant. I of course did not properly research linkies, but then, I was ranting.
So I think it’s safe to say that I agree with your position concerning the political eladership of all the affected states desire to retain slavery. I agree that in modern times there are many worthless shites that use the Confederate flag as a symbol that they want to bring slavery back, or otherwise spout foul crap, inlcuding but hardly limited to the KKK.
Like I said, I didn’t really want to get into the history of the topic. I conceded wholeheartedly that calling it a symbol of racism for many is totally valid.
Where we disagree seems to me to mostly be that you say you hold the flag as representing not individuals but the nation for which it stands. And I do not even consider the Confederacy of the United States to warrant calling a nation.
The flag I am talking about started out as the Battle Flag of the Army of North Virginia, that is how I truly think of it, and it represents to me in my heart exactly what it stood for then; the brave men of the Army of North Virginia.
I just… I see your points about how some groups of asshats use it. I really do. That “The South shall rise again” bullshit drives me nuts.
But I believe that you are dead wrong that my position of respect towards the Battle Flag is showing respect to a politician, any politician. That they suborned the symbol is just one group of asshats taking the symbol of something good and perverting it yet again.
June 5th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Oh yeah, you can’t watch a Civil War movie without having seen Glory, what a great film…
June 5th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
And lower on the list of films but still “add to the list’, Shenandoah and the Red Badge of Courage. And, for some folk, Gone with the Wind.
Bear, yeah, I see your point. Disagree, but… like the TJ controversy, I’m not trying to change your mind, just stating what my stance is. Getting more fully into why I think you’re mistaken about flags and symbols requires either more hours than either of really want to spend typing, or spending several bottles and hours in comfortable chairs somewhere. Neither is a reasonable option.
Oh, and if you made those points, I missed them. Mea culpa.
June 5th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Oh, you got me mad, BBB. I’ve been to Gettysburg and many of the other battlegrounds across the South. I’m incredibly proud to have been born in VA and to call myself a Southerner. And I just dare any of those nitwits to call Gen. Robert E. Lee a bigoted racist! I’ll punch their lights out!
Ok, calming down slightly. I LOVED the movie Gettysburg and I’ve seen it several times and used to be able to quote from it. I believe my brothers still can. Glory made me cry. My mom just read that Turtledove book you mentioned and I’ve been meaning to check it out. I also really enjoyed Gods and Generals although most everyone else thought it lasted too long. Ooh, and we got to go to 135th Gettysburg celebration-at that time the biggest reinactment to ever happen in the US. It was AWESOME.
And although everyone else has eloquently said much of what can be said, I’ll add this. Loyalty to your state was much more important back then than it is now. It was only after the war (I really hope I’m remembering my facts right) that we started to call ourselves “Americans.” And as you said, BBB, most of the soldiers that fought and died in the war for the South didn’t own slaves, and they weren’t fighting for them. They were “Fightin’ for our rats.”
June 5th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Sorry bud, I grew up on a farm in Missouri, have a southern drawl like Foghorn Leghorn, and can speak from personal experience that 99.9% of people who choose to flaunt The Colors in public are in fact racist assholes. I know the type–the small town I went to school in had Klan marches in the 80s.
They know that flag’s symbolism as the reminder of 400 years of slavery to black people, and they make the choice to offend. They don’t give a crap about all the heroic stuff that makes you so misty-eyed, they just know that its a way to intimidate the “n*ggers”. So to hell with them and their flag. I’ve got more respect for black people than the Confederate flag. (Which earned me the honorific title “n*gger-lover” many times growing up.)
Rush Limbaugh is a zit on the anus of humanity and makes me ashamed to be a fellow Missourian. A hypocrite who argued for severe sentencing for drug offenders, but quietly accepted getting off scott-free after getting caught with a large amount of illegal narcotics. Extremely aggressive militarily when it’s other people’s children dying, ditched service because of an ass-cyst he developed by not wiping when it was his turn. He’s the very embodiment of 80s greed and the ethos that “anything goes” to win, especially lying.
When Rush Limbaugh dies, I’m going to fly to Cape Girardeau, Missouri and dance on his grave, then piss on it. I hope he burns in Hell. He’s the Godfather of the politics of hate.
June 5th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Hmm.
The thing is, BBB, that ’symbol of racism’ trumps ’symbol of positive, independent individual rights’. Yes, for some it might be a symbol that shows their free spirit and desire for less governmental influence. Hell, it could represent for some a personal desire for more cheese. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter, because it currently has been co-opted by those who would use it as a way to oppress other humans and deny them their human rights.
And to me, that trumps the validity of any other expression. Sorry that it got co-opted. I’m sorry that some people ruined it for others. Feel free to explain to anyone who will listen about how it represents freedom and diversity. But don’t expect that to be a particularly valid point of view.
And yes, her argument is particularly reasonable in this facet because the nazi symbol is entirely co-opted in this way. Just because the symbology of something has meant something in the past or means something to a few select people does not give that symbol a blank slate for anyone to interpret it however they choose. Symbols exist as a social construct, not as an individual value, and therein lies their power.
Even worse, much like Pidge says - part of the positive aspect is already clouded in negativity; part of the ’state’s rights and struggle against big government’ included the right to enslave other human beings. It isn’t reasonable to separate the two notions, and that’s why it became a symbol of Jim Crow and racism in the first place; the idea that the confederate flag can be removed from racism and slavery is, to my mind, willful ignorance of the history of that flag. It’s choosing to look at only one small aspect of it without looking at anything else. Sure, that’s a choice, but it’s one that is expecting others to believe in something in an unreasonable fashion.
If you want to support Virginia and the great army of Northern Virginia, get a bumper sticker saying that. If you want to commemorate Robert E. Lee, get a plaque with his bust on it. There are other ways to positively commemorate the great heroes of the North and South without using a symbol that is so deeply intertwined with historical and current racism in this country.
June 5th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
this makes me mad, that ignorant little twit bastard has no idea what the Confederate flag stands for. it is the battle flag that represent racism not he actual flag! GOD northerns are so stupid! no offense to the intellectual northerns but the stupid ones think that they are far superior. Regardless of the fact we had the best general. we just didnt have a strong president.
June 5th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Hey Wind liked your rant. we don’t get much of that up here but when we do I just listen and shake my head at some of the idiots in the world. (I had a call from some lady asking if South Carolina was part of Canada or the US :S )
As for movies I recommend ‘The Blue and The Grey’ it’s a mini-series about that time. And yes ‘Glory’ was very good.
June 5th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Wow, im not from the states, but even i can see that both sides of such an argument are valid… regardless of how little i know of american history. The fact that the “twits” mentioned before are influenced by people who are apparently equaly as clueless is somewhat concerning.
June 5th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Yeah, I’m with Pidge.
As far as the high schoolers go: the only thing they’re being unfairly made victims of is national attention. Stupid kids do stupid thing for attention. Not much to debate there. Stupid kid nationally humiliates woman on national radio? Enter Bear Rant.
June 5th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
LOL nationally nationally nationally. WTB Edit function.
June 5th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
As a student (by no means a master) of History, these kinds of arguments invariably frustrate me. History by its very nature makes people incredibly biased, with people believing that their side was the right side, and accepting generalised statements as absolutes (the Confederate flag is a great example of this). Anyone who has the slightest interest in History would know that the appeal of the study is NOT knowing who is right and wrong, it is NOT about knowing what happened, but rather it is about exploring the different stories that are told about an event, and accepting that there will always be different versions of the same story (yes, forgive me, I do lean towards the postmodern perspective).
The saddest part of this is that people take this clear cut, black and white definition that they have applied to the past, and apply it to just about every other darn thing in their lives. This black and white attitude is so depressing, and is one of the reasons why I live in a country that claims to be proud of it’s cultural diversity, but then has such a large number of people who are happy to label different cultures because a small number of them do something wrong (I am an Australian by the way, not an American. I have no idea if this is something that is just limited to over here, or if it happens everywhere).
As for talk back shows, unfortunately I suspect they heavily screen the callers. Anyone who would have had the balls to agree with that poor woman was no doubt rapidly dumped.
June 5th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
I agree with the Straw Man being one of the tactics applied, but I also think that it is possible that the ol’ Ad hominem was used. Ad hominem is when you attack the person making the arguement rather than address the arguement itself. Often used when a person is unable to find fault in the arguement itself and often results in a change of subject. So it might go something like this:
Talk Host: “The Confederate flag is racist”
Caller: “The Confederate flag means different things to different people”
Talk Host: “Your a redneck retard who doesn’t know a thing about Americanism”
Then again, I never finished my post high school education so I could be wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
June 5th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
I’m probably the only one, but I firmly desire a return of “The Fairness Doctrine.” It won’t bring civility back to radio, but the talk radio yahoos will be relegated to the domain of Art Belle and I will never be so misfortunate as to have to chance across the horrid examples of humanity that they are again…Especially that fat pos Rush Limbaugh.
June 5th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
Half the people who elect the president have a double-digit IQ.
June 5th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
“Regardless of the fact we had the best general. we just didnt have a strong president.”
Ah, one we can bite into without the unnecessary ill will that is a stupid piece of cloth. Sorry, BBB, I’m about to hijack this.
In a word, balderdash. The best general of the civil war was Ulysses S. Grant. When the two were face to face, both won battles. But winning battles is the realm of Colonels and Brigadiers. Generals are meant to win campaigns and wars. And General Grant won campaigns in two theaters, and in consequence the war.
Allow me, having said that, to add that there was one man of the south who, had he survived, might have reversed the issue. Stonewall Jackson was not only tactically better than Lee, he actually understood the strategic issues that Lee so blithely ignored, issues which are at the root of his defeat at the hands of Grant.
Of course, the North removed its best general. I find it the height of irony that the strategy pursued by General Grant was, almost completely, that which got Scott removed from office. The newspapers called it the Anaconda plan, and called it unnecessary, believing that a serious show of force, marching the army south, would be more than enough to collapse the rebellion. Since Scott was removed due to political pressure before the fighting began, i don’t feel it fair to claim him as the best general of the war. And so i turn to the one who executed the plan - effectively.
June 6th, 2008 at 3:08 am
Good points, Kirk, but I don’t think you’ll ever sway Lee supporters on this issue.
Personally, I’ll walk right around that endless debate, and just say that Lee has become the best rememberd and best respected general of the Civil War.
I think that’s due to more than just his military exploits. I think it was because he was a great man who was also a great symbol of the conflicts and contraditions of the war itself.
He was an outstanding West Point graduate, a distinguished soldier in the Mexican-American War, and was offered command of the Union Army. But he also reluctantly broke his oath to support the Union and led an army against his former comrades because he felt loyalty to his state demanded it.
Like most landholders Lee was a slaveholder, but he seemed fairly ambivalent to the institution of slavery during and after the war.
Outnumbered and outsupplied, he won key battles that encouraged the South and worried the North. But he also suffered terrible losses and made some dreadful tactical mistakes and ultimately had to surrender the Confederate Army.
Lee still embodies the romantic idea of the “Lost Cause.” But after the war he argued against continued guerilla actions and supported reconciliation and Reconstruction as the best course to rebuilding the South.
He was a demanding, strong willed leader. But he also showed his human side time and again rallying his troops, praising them in victory and apologizing to them over losses.
And, always, he was an honorable gentleman who lived the values he professed and tried to do what he thought was best for the State he loved.
Sounds like a worthwhile legacy to me.
“I wish he was ours.” - a Northern woman on watching Lee march by during the war.
June 6th, 2008 at 3:21 am
Well BBB, I really don’t think ignorance or lack of historical knowledge is the main problem here.
The distinction you are making in the meaning a symbol can have, depending on your POV, actually lies in a very narrow and treacherous path.
Consider the simile the old lady tried to give at the talk show. The swastika. And put that together with your argument about the confederate flag.
/history lesson on
After WWI, the winning countries imposed severe penalties and regulation on Germany, both on economic and military aspects, so as to prevent the country to build it’s power again and lead the world in a second war. But Germany managed to get through. One of the arguments Hitler used to justify the invasion on nearby countries, was that German people needed “lebensraum”, that is lining space. For most everyday Germans, having faced economic oppression between the 2 WW, that was true. They needed space (and raw materials of course) for their country to develop. They didn’t care for all the “higher race” bullshit and all. So they rallied under the banner with the swastika, for something they believed was ok.
/history lesson off
You can see where this arguments leads us.
Another such example is the pentagram. Most (if not all) people connect the pentagram with the worship of Satan. The actual symbol is way older. It dates back to ancient Greece, where out ancestor mathematicians from the school of Pythagora, used it as a symbol of structural perfection (the Golden Ration and everything, go look it up on google), and harmony.
The point I am trying to make is that, the real problem is not ignorance, but fear of where this arguments might lead you. Most people prefer the easy way. Behave like ostriches who plant their head on the sand in the face of danger. Call names and not sit down and talk, at anything that has the potential to break the bubble they live in. They DON’T WANT to think. That’s what they teach them to do. Others have made that thinking for you, before you. Go with the flow etc. Why give a damn if the confederate flag might actually represent something noble, when it’s easier to just call it a symbol of racism and be done with it. Get the point and the pattern?
June 6th, 2008 at 4:44 am
@Beowulfa - you go girl!
Its like the swastika that the Nazis used on their flag. It has been perverted because asshats decided that they wanted to use it for thier own ideals. The swastika was originally a symbol for good luck and was in lots of cultures before the freaking asshat Nazis decided to use it. Now when most people see a swastika they think about what happened during WWII. The old meaning has almost been washed away because of this.
God…I really feel for the world and the idiots on it.
June 6th, 2008 at 5:37 am
@Pidge,
No, never have convinced a southerner of that. The best I’ve ever gotten is an agreement that Grant was a lot better than his reputation.
And yes, I place Lee as a human fairly high. Much higher than Nathan (spit) Bedfort (spit again) Forrest, for example. Which is, in turn, part of the original argument I was making, which is also sorta buried in the original rant. The flag was a war flag, and its continued presentation was a not-so-subtle declaration of sympathy and support for (and possible participation in) the same guerrilla campaign Lee so roundly rejected.
June 6th, 2008 at 6:19 am
I’m reminded of Apu taking his citizenship test.
To paraphrase Apu,
The causes of the Civil war were many and varied, including social and economic factors, and the issue of states rights…
To paraphrase the guy giving the citizenship test,
Just say slavery.
People don’t want complex issues, they want sound bites and black and white. I don’t listen to talk radio, watch cable news, or read any political books because they are trying to distill things into sound bites and only present one view on the subject. Unfortunately, that is what most people in this country seem to want.
June 6th, 2008 at 6:50 am
I’m gonna have to agree with Ras on this one, living in nowhere VA. Almost every person flaunting the confederate flag here is a racist asshole. In fact, at the school I live at, we had a student on the “traditional” Senior Streak, wear nothing but a confederate flag. He then proceeded to run into the study hall, sit next to a black student in the room, and continually berate him with racial slurs.
Was he kicked out? No.
But he was the next year for drug-related reasons.
June 6th, 2008 at 8:27 am
We are living in a country where we no longer can say certain things for fear of offending someone. Instead of “live and let live” we are increasingly becoming a nation in perpetual offense.
It’s funny how we look down upon the Muslims for being offended by some cartoons when there are Americans who would react the same way to a person who created cartoons that challenged current views on racism, sexual orientation, or global warming.
We have lost the ability to have a dispassionate discussion/debate on issues in order to feel self righteous. It’s a shame that our divisions have led to the “I’m right, you’re stupid” stage where nothing is resolved.
June 6th, 2008 at 8:55 am
Symbols have no power in and of themselves. Just like guns can’t kill someone without being fired by another person. Symbols are given power by people. If I decide to make the smilely face the new symbol for my facist regime of global domination then does that make aneyone who has ever used it in turn evil?
The flag by itself is nothing. The flag hanging over the grave of a confederate soldier is a memorial the sacrafice he made. The flag hanging over a red pick up being waved by a bunch of asshats is a symbol of hatred and asshatism plain and simple.
These days anything viewed as offensive to a single person is chastized and removed as soon as possible. Whether its intended to be hatefull, as a joke, or purely on accident that person is then labeled a bigot or racists or whatever.
Our society as a whole just seems to be completely one sided now a days. Different opinions can’t exist anymore regardless. I love debating and often times both sides of any arguments but people hate this because it might step on someones toes. The flag is bad the flag is good I can argue both sides…. but at the end of the day wtf does it matter?
Lets take the flag out of the situation…. A couple of asshats waving a stick around yelling racial slurs… there ya go focus is back on the kids and not on a piece of fabric. Lets look at the people not at objects to find the source of our problem
June 6th, 2008 at 9:19 am
Quoting Pidge:
“1) Talk radio is not meant to be an informed, balanced discussion of issues. It’s goal is to attract an audience so it can sell advertising. Taking extreme positions, distorting the truth, and pandering to people’s basest attitudes is to be expected. You may as well complain that the referees don’t always make good calls during pro westling matches. ”
It seems like the vast majority of callers into the shows don’t seem to realize this. I think the main reason I listen to MPR instead of KLTK is that the hosts don’t tend (tho they still do to an annoying degree, especially certain ones) feul the fire of ridiculousness as badly as the KLTK ones do.
June 6th, 2008 at 10:15 am
Symbols are constantly being redefined or perverted to mean something else entirely. The best modern example of this topic is the Swastika which held a number of different meanings (most of them religious) until Nazi Germany adopted it as a symbol. Today, the Swastika is largely considered an image of bigotry and persecution.
When we talk about symbols, it’s easy to think about what it used to mean rather than what it now means. Symbols are cultural references and cultures can easily attach or places new meaning on a symbol. It’s not exclusive to just images, but also words and names. I think we would all feel very badly for the other Ted Bundy or the other Monica Lewinsky who just happened to have a similar name by coincidence.
It’s true that honorable and noble individuals fought under the Confederate Flag. It’s also true that the symbol has also been perverted by the Klu Klux Klan and other groups to represent racism. In most places (other than the south), people will attribute the meaning of that symbol to racism rather than any other previous historic meaning.
The meaning of any symbol is determined by how our culture chooses to interpret that symbol. I can go give someone “the bird” in some undiscovered tribe in the Amazon and they’ll have no clue what I intend for it to mean. That’s an important point because different cultures can interpret the same symbol differently. With the Confederate Flag, we have a culture in our Confederacy states that still remembers the original meaning of the symbol. While in the rest of the US, most people attribute the new meaning to that symbol.
It’s unfortunate that it happens, but we can’t simply choose to ignore it. As a kid, I used to think rainbows were cool. Now I realize that the possibility of a rainbow bumper sticker is forever lost to me if I don’t want to be confused with being homosexual.
June 7th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Hmm… sounds like you need to get him replaced- say, with Glenn Beck; he’s a favorite of mine. Funny, and a bit nutty in all the right places. ^_^