Lawrence Mayo
What the Confederate Flag now means to me
By Lawrence Mayo
As a 'damn Yankee' – that is, a Northerner who came to the South and didn't leave – the Confederate Flag has never really held meaning for me. I understood that for most who displayed it, it meant a reverence for the heritage of the South and expressed the rebellious spirit I so often find, and admire, here.
Then the events of the shooting in South Carolina played out. Dylann Root was found to have embraced that flag, but for different and objectionable reasons of true racism.
The hysteria that followed was terrifying to watch. Both Democrats and Republicans, media and corporations, all jumped aboard a fevered bandwagon that cast aside rationality for a false emotional response. Apple corporation, for example, banned all Civil War games in their app store. Utterly absurd.
The media breathlessly reported every banning, discontinuation, removal from state grounds, and whipped the masses up as well as they could.
The masses were unresponsive. I saw no turning of opinion, and there was no grassroots groundswell for this Southern cultural cleansing, this was a manufactured hysteria and the classic definition of overreaction, but it was at the organizational level. That, my friends, is censorship.
So the Confederate Flag now has a new meaning for this New York-born Southerner.
July 16, 2015
As a 'damn Yankee' – that is, a Northerner who came to the South and didn't leave – the Confederate Flag has never really held meaning for me. I understood that for most who displayed it, it meant a reverence for the heritage of the South and expressed the rebellious spirit I so often find, and admire, here.
Then the events of the shooting in South Carolina played out. Dylann Root was found to have embraced that flag, but for different and objectionable reasons of true racism.
The hysteria that followed was terrifying to watch. Both Democrats and Republicans, media and corporations, all jumped aboard a fevered bandwagon that cast aside rationality for a false emotional response. Apple corporation, for example, banned all Civil War games in their app store. Utterly absurd.
The media breathlessly reported every banning, discontinuation, removal from state grounds, and whipped the masses up as well as they could.
The masses were unresponsive. I saw no turning of opinion, and there was no grassroots groundswell for this Southern cultural cleansing, this was a manufactured hysteria and the classic definition of overreaction, but it was at the organizational level. That, my friends, is censorship.
So the Confederate Flag now has a new meaning for this New York-born Southerner.
- It means a resistance to the tyranny of political correctness.
- It means hostility to censorship.
- It means, opposition to mindless hysteria.
- It means, pure antipathy – nay, hatred! – of the media for fanning the flames of hysteria and aggravating the uproar./
- It means great objection to being backstabbed by the party – the Republicans – that tries to convince me that they are my home.
- Finally, it means I shall never surrender.
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