Of the books I've read lately, Clay Shirkey's Here Comes Everybody had some interesting notes on how the internet and easy connectivity has changed how society reacts to, well, everything
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Wow. I've seen similar photos of trucks in VA or WV that were covered in racist anti-Islamic bumper stickers, but that mural+plane combo is pretty extreme.
Except for a brief foray in China, I've lived in the South all of my life. Those flags are everywhere, and owners argue that they are for pride in one's "cultural heritage" - that's actually the new cover message of a lot of white power groups. It's not that they hate black/brown people, they simply have an enormous amount of pride for being white... ugh.
I have no problem with being proud of being white. I'm white, after all. That's not the issue.
The Battle flag, though, celebrates very specifically a pride in descendants who maintained their "pride" (or dominance) through forced legal separation, legal denial of rights and all the violence attendant thereto between the white and Others, specifically black and brown people. (IIRC, the reds and yellows don't fair too well under this "culture".)
Ah, but since the losers of wars are supposed to feel the shame of the defeated, one must fly the flag of pride to deny this shame, mustn't one? Otherwise one is a loser, almost by definition.
The problem with pride: It doesn't exist. It is only the opposite of shame. "White pride" groups exist to bolster their literally shameless support of past atrocities, actions that should have been decided after they lost a Key War.
There is a lot of really twisted mythology which has grown up around the Confederacy. Jeff Davis talked and wrote a lot after the fall of the Confederacy. He wrote a re-write of history. He claimed that most slaves were "happy" and "content" to be slaves. Modern wavers of Confederate flags talk like Jeff Davis' rants were actually true. That seems scary to me.
I had not been aware of that angle. Does that, perhaps, explain why they are so vehemently Xian? Do they require the Xian bible to back up their beliefs?
Not at all. The Curse appears in the Old Book, so they could easily be Jewish. ;-)
More seriously, I've yet to find an active segregationist that's not bible belt bait. (Okay, actually, one; but he's a Wiccan Trekkie gun nut addicted to WoW, what a statistician would consider an "outlier".)
And I doubt the segregationists are the only ones to use the Bible (or any given sacred text) to back up their inclinations. It's just easier to appeal to authority, never mind that that's a logical fallacy as well.
Y'know, the more I think about it, the more I'm led to think the South's vehement Xianity exists on its own, as opposed to backstopping a "traditional" culture of oppression and therefore being widely embraced to support this backstop. To know for sure, though, we would have to have knowledge of religious practice well before and after the Civil War
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"Confederate Veteran" is a declaration of adherence to a racist ideology, as are the Confederate Battle Flag, the bigotry against muslims, and, in context with the other three racist symbols, the numbers "14" (as in "words") and "88" (as in "words" and also as in "HH" or "Heil Hitler")
The guy has *five* specific signs on the back of his truck that he's a violent white supremacist.
I'm not so sure about the numbers. Then again, maybe I should accept the Dog Whistle codes you suggest, because if I honor his claim that the numbers represent the car numbers of NASCAR racers, my opinion of him actually goes down. ;-)
One of the online opinion polls I take mainly has questions about politics, but they always as if I consider myself a NASCAR fan. I always wondered if they used that question to ferret out the rednecks.
I thought that was the source of the "##CV##" pattern? We get those around here all the time with vanity plates for sports teams and the like - Ottawa Senators fanplates are all "##SE##" with a Sens logo on the left.
Apparently not, given the SAMPLE sample. His CV might further, if true, imply himself to be a Confederate Veteran. Perhaps he was active during the Civil Rights movement, if you know what I mean.
Except for a brief foray in China, I've lived in the South all of my life. Those flags are everywhere, and owners argue that they are for pride in one's "cultural heritage" - that's actually the new cover message of a lot of white power groups. It's not that they hate black/brown people, they simply have an enormous amount of pride for being white... ugh.
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The Battle flag, though, celebrates very specifically a pride in descendants who maintained their "pride" (or dominance) through forced legal separation, legal denial of rights and all the violence attendant thereto between the white and Others, specifically black and brown people. (IIRC, the reds and yellows don't fair too well under this "culture".)
Ah, but since the losers of wars are supposed to feel the shame of the defeated, one must fly the flag of pride to deny this shame, mustn't one? Otherwise one is a loser, almost by definition.
The problem with pride: It doesn't exist. It is only the opposite of shame. "White pride" groups exist to bolster their literally shameless support of past atrocities, actions that should have been decided after they lost a Key War.
That's just my take, for what it's worth.
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More seriously, I've yet to find an active segregationist that's not bible belt bait. (Okay, actually, one; but he's a Wiccan Trekkie gun nut addicted to WoW, what a statistician would consider an "outlier".)
And I doubt the segregationists are the only ones to use the Bible (or any given sacred text) to back up their inclinations. It's just easier to appeal to authority, never mind that that's a logical fallacy as well.
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The guy has *five* specific signs on the back of his truck that he's a violent white supremacist.
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