Back in the 80’s when I was in graduate school, I did an exchange program in England.  It was a great adventure and a great chance to get out of my cozy home town of Seattle.  One day I was talking to one of my professors about all the war monuments I’d seen when I was travelling, and I was struck when he told me how impressed he was that American’s didn’t hold on to things the way Europeans did.  For them, he said, World War II was as present as it was in 1945.  I laughed and told him he should talk to an American from the South, where “Dixie” is the unofficial national anthem and Johnny Reb is still a hero.

I was joking at the time.  I thought it was a joke.  Back then my picture of modern-day confederates was Granny Clampett running around in a gray kepi and jacket, threatening Yankees with a shotgun.  I’d never been to the South outside of the Dallas airport.  I was still fairly blissful in my Pacific Northwest/BosWash view of the United States.

It’s only recently that I’ve really been paying attention to this:

And this:

And this

What is wrong with these pictures?  They are all of “proud Americans” flying the flag of a long-defeated enemy with equal pride.  One of them, Chris McDaniel, is even running for national office.

How would any of us react if this were a Swastika or a Rising Sun?  What if some state decided to add one of those to its flag like Mississippi did in the 1890’s?

Yet we give these “patriots” a pass even as they talk and yell and scream about nullification and secession, though I doubt most of them know what either one actually entails.  How they can consider themselves more American than commie pinko fags like me even as they make big talk about breaking away from the United States, I’ll never know.

Then again, logic doesn’t really have a place in a world where slavery isn’t such a bad thing, where abortion AND birth control are the work of the Devil and where millions of bubbas can collect $2 or $3 in federal benefits for every dollar they pay out in taxes and still decry the Fed as the great Satan.

If it didn’t make me so angry, it would make me sad.  For all their talk about individualism and forging their own futures, these “rebels” are just monumental takers.  And when the big social apocalypse finally comes, they’re the ones who will fail.  They’re the ones who will be living in shacks (as many already do) and working in underground factories (as many already do) to support the elite who played them for fools and lulled them into dependence while distracting them with crosses and imaginary demons.  (Hm, maybe things won’t be so different for them.)

No, their masters won’t be the city slicker socialists in the East and the West; they’ll be the wealthy Bible-thumping, small-government good old boys and gals they’ve been supporting for more than a century.  Someday they may realize that, but after generations of magical thinking, they will never allow themselves to believe it.  In their minds, their woes will continue to be all on the black and brown and pink people who are laboring next to them.

It would make me sad, except that it’s pure stupidity, and nothing pisses me off more than pure stupidity.