Sunday, January 10, 2010

Confederate flagged

Over the holidays I went to Georgia to look after my mom's financial and health affairs, and my Georgia cousins graciously gave me a guest room to stay in and a pickup truck to drive, but the latter turned out to be just a bit problematic. Cousin Roy acquired the truck at auction and thinks it previously belonged to a drug dealer, which explains the rather heavily tinted windows. I'm not a heavily tinted vehicle window person. On top of that, the front license plate holder (Georgia doesn't require front license plates, so people put on whatever they please) has a plate emblazoned with the 1956 Georgia flag. That flag incorporates the Confederate battle flag. And my cousin had a FOR SALE sign in the front window. So I - an emphatic liberal - was driving something that suggested a very different kind of driver. I visited Trinity Episcopal Church for a Sunday service. A pedestrian parishioner seemed delighted to see me pulling into the parking lot. I must have looked like a potential convert on the hoof.

The pickup truck itself was fine. It's a small one with decent acceleration and great visibility fore and aft. It was fun to drive. I began to understand why my writer friend Pauline Baird Jones loves her cute little white pickup truck. (Friends who have large items to move love her truck too!)

The little green truck's radio worked quite well. My cousin may have been startled to find it tuned off his favorite country station and onto Georgia Public Radio. When I took my mom to her hair stylist, she hopped right in. Mom suffers from Alzheimer's and some coordination difficulties, but the little green truck has a handy grab handle on the passenger side. Mom likes it when Roy takes her places in it. Long story short, the truck was good, the truck wearing a Confederate flag not so much. Nobody visibly bristled at me, but still.

Some white Southerners cite the Confederate flag as a kind of ancestral icon. Maybe so and maybe no. It might be one thing to honor your ancestors' flag in the privacy of your home, but it's another thing to flash it on Southern streets. I was interested to see if it turned up anywhere besides on the front bumper of the little green pickup truck. It did. When I took an afternoon walk in the park, the winter day had a clear stillness, like the surface of the park's lake, a reflective calm - except in the one area: the vicinity of two young white men in a mud-crusted pickup truck flying a Confederate flag and blaring country music.

Said flag is in the middle of the photo.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Fear not the Confederate Flag, regardless of what incantation it may appear.

It nay simply be the square version seen in the 56 flag of Georgia, made famous by General Robert E Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, under which thousands of nrave Georgians fought and died. It has also appeared on TV in Matlock, and the movie Smokey and the Bandit.

It may be the more common rectangle version Army of Tennessee seen on the Dukes #01 Dodge and made famous by General Joe Johnston who tried to save Atlanta from the evil Sherman and his looting raping arsonists and murderers.

It may be seen in the corner of the Mississippi Flag, or over the SC State Soldiers Monument.

But Confederate Flags are also present = as the current state flags of Virginia and SC. The patterns for the NC, Al, Ak. Fl, and Missouri flags come from Confederate Designs, and the red and white Botony Cross on the Maryland State Flag is Confederate.

Confederate flags have been used all accross the world as symbols against tyranny and oppression - from Sudan to Poland to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

It flew over the US Army Dixie Division in WW2. It flew as a victory symbol over Shuri Castle on Okinawa. It flew over troops in Korea and Viet Nam, and has seen action in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Bosnia.

It is used as a sport team rally symbol in County Cork Ireland, and it has been used to protest government wrongs in Scotland, and is seen as a prop in a recent Brad Paiseley video from Japan.

Perhaps Ms Latner the world is a little more understanding than what liberals give it credit for. I sense a thick dripping bias and hate in your view of the flags for which my ancestors were so fond.

Should you decide to break away from the hate and bias, you will find most of what you have been taught is false. Hopefully one day you will see past the lies and view the Confederate flag in a much more appreciative light.

Thanks and God Bless
and a Prayer for your Mother
BB