Reply #195: Thanks, Gringo.

[TacticalPeek]

I dislike the artifacts, also, but even with this there is a nuance available to appreciation, as well as the un-nuanced fact which others previously noted: that these are found all over. Years ago I was driving through the Catskills in beautiful, upstate NY, descending a ridge on switch-backs and near-hairpins, and noticed in the rear-view a big rig closing with me at a not-too-bright speed choice. When he got up on my rear bumper, I discerned that his big, square grill was painted over with the Stars and Bars. As he passed me in his mirrored sunglasses, I thought to myself, in your mode, "Redneck fool.". And I was right of course, as you would be if so thinking, but that guy was probably not even from the South. Redneck fools are where you find them.

Which brings me to the nuance about that damn flag. Yes, it has despicable connotations and bigoted uses today around the world. That is due to a grievous mistake my Southern forebears made when they originally allowed what should have been a hallowed and honored symbol to be irretrievably sullied and stained by "those yahoos", as Shelby Foote puts it, hateful dregs of Southern society. The first time a klucker ever showed up with that flag, honorable Southerners should have been on him like construction workers on a hippie burning Old Glory. Alas, we screwed up on that, and now almost any good it could have is fatally mixed with deserved infamy, and it should never fly in any part above any government. On cigarette lighters and beer coolers, it serves some value as an almost certain "tell" on the owner. Its evil comes from its use.

I say "Alas" and "almost certain" because I think its value could have been, and maybe even still might be redeemed. It seems wrong to completely negate it, to banish it from thought and sight. Things pushed down in the consciousness have a way of bobbing up in undesirable ways.

Back in the sixties (wonder why I keep going back to then?), the leftish Students for a Democratic Society, SDS, tried to organize students in the South without much luck. So a "struggle of regional liberation" concept was born, embodied in the Southern Student Organizing Committee, SSOC, pronounced 'sock'. We later learned we were partially funded by CIA or FBI in some COINTELPRO intrique, but we didn't know then, and just did our part in the struggle as we could.

The SSOC emblem was the Stars and Bars, with a black arm and a white arm reaching from each side and grasping hands in a "power shake" in the center of the flag. It was saying that we accepted our heritage, and would integrate it with the South's progressing future, uniting the people against oppression. Hey, we were young and pretty.

There is plainly much work ahead on that mission, but I think it is important that the South better resolve its many contradictions to make it to a better future. Politically, the bigots you see with their flags and guns down here, were, historically speaking, voting for FDR and Truman. Cure their hatred, and they're dems on the socio/economic/political battleground. Cook our country's politics down and it's mainly about economic warfare, not to go too Marxist on you.

Similarly, I think your thread here is very important, because the issues it raises could impact the '04 election results, and that makes it very, very important to me, and should to us all. I do not want unity in '04: I want strong, powerful unity that sweeps all before it and smites the usurper from his throne. Unity that efficiently integrates our party's own contradictions into a powerful, mongrel, junkyard dog of force for good.

I see here too often the stances "against", the prejudices, the biases, that down through time have usually splintered the opposition to oppressive power. This is too important. This really is life and death on a grand scale, and maybe for a long time. So it's really dangerous to be seeing Yankees, and hicks, and city slickers, and military, and conservatives, and lefties, ad destructum, when all that's really there is people.

We must understand ourselves to defeat our enemy, so it's good that we have this discussion.