Driving Old Dixie Down

I think it's technology, but social issues can flip with startling speed these days. And Freepers cannot keep up. But they try. And that's hilarious.

In the wake of the South Carolina Church Massacre, the main push has been symbolic - to shame governments and individuals who display or sell the Confederate Battle Flag. This means the 'memorial' in the South Carolina capitol mainly, though some online businesses seem to be getting on board (though we'll see how long...).

Freepers are of two minds - the flag is evil and of those racist Democrats, or the flag is a sign of Real America and must be preserved. Once again, Freepers amaze me with their ability to take both sides of an argument and make them both awful.

As is often the case in the chaos following a sudden policy shift, Freepers are not arguing between the two sides, they more talk past each other. Though if you want empty sniping, just check CodeToad and bert.

So alas, minimal infighting. But lots of crazy!

Daveinyork tries to explain why this shouldn't matter to Freepers:

It’s a Democrat flag. Let the Dems burn their own flag.

Arm_Bears wants more Republicans to put out laughable revisionist history:

The racist legacy of the DemocRAT Party has been successfully transferred onto the Republican Party simply because “leaders” in the Republican Party are too intimidated to stand up and set the record straight.

Mamzelle explains the 50+ year legacy started with a Democrat:

The flag was put on the capitol *dome* in 1961 by Democrat Fritz Hollings, as a defiant gesture against integration. A lot of people think the flag was flying since Reconstruction.

Not so. Then a Republican got the governorship and the flag was moved to a Confederate Memorial.

It's totally a Democrat racist flag--to be flying on the capitol grounds.

There is no reason for a Republican to waste one bit of effort trying to keep the flag on the capitol grounds. But I do fault the GOP for behaving as if it is a conservative issue!

I am unclear what AppyPappy is talking about...

It means “We are going to continue to send government agents to kill and imprison your sons and daughters but don’t worry, we took care of that flag”.

"Southern Sympathizer" Tupelo is feeling used by the GOP:

I am sure the Republican party establishment set down and had a long reasoned discussion before they decided, they no longer needed Southern Sympathizers like me.

I am sure that after this long reasoned discussion, they came to the conclusion that by alienating an unknown percentage of these hated southerners, they could convince at least another two or three percent of the sainted black voters to pull the lever for them. Hell, even one percent of that thirteen percent of the population should carry them right in to the presidency, and a huge majority in congress. Then Happy Daze will be here again.

Sooth2222 weakly tries to tie this to the Clintons, which seems to make some Freepers feel better, at least:

Has Hillary condemned the use of the Confederate flag by her husband's campaign? (If not, we'll just assume she was in favor of it.)

Altura Ct. calls for White solidarity:

Too many whites kowtow to the race industry. Is there a line to be crossed or will they just keep backing up?

The Marxist will and are demonizing the founders and history of this nation. It is only the whites who concede that white history is evil and are the oppressors of the world that for the time being are left alone. It doesn’t take much imagination to see where it all leads. Once they are through with all things Confederate do the quislings honestly think they will stop there?

greene66 seizes on this issue, like so many others, as an example of why he totally hates America, everyone!!!

I was well into adulthood before I ever even encountered the notion that the flag somehow represented “racism,” which I viewed as an idiotic contention. It represented regional pride, and a certain ornery rebelliousness towards faraway masters. Whatever the case, I never actually flew the Confederate flag, nor put a bumper-sticker on my car or anything like that.

Seeing this media-fueled ‘wilding’ by the Left, and as usual, the GOP’s toadying surrender, fills me with so much unspeakable anger and disgust. The darned Confederate flag hasn’t even been a big fixture in my life for years. But right now, I see it as a more valid symbol of my life and my existence than the American flag, as America itself has come to squander everything that once made it so honorable. An America that votes for marxists like Obama, and embraces sick degeneracy like homo-marriage is no longer a country I can look up to or want to regard myself a part of. I haven’t flown the American flag for two years now, and I truthfully don’t ever expect to again. It’s time I should re-adopt the Confederate flag.

FirstFlaBn is sure this is a Democratic conspiracy to get out the vote a year and a half from now:

Beyond the normal race hustlers, the flag frenzy is about the Dims trying to find a way get blacks to turn out for Hillary at a rate close to what Obama got. Grievance politics is their specialty.

mrsmel just gibbers about eternal votes:

I can't speak for North Carolina, but in Mississippi we voted on this issue, and some 60% of us voted to keep the flag. I don't believe we should have to hold another vote everytime some race-baiters want to stir up sh*t by rallying anti-whites and using the flag as their rallying point. That would be multiple times per year. Then if they ever won a vote, it would be definitive and eternal, just like Roe v Wade has been. "The issue is settled".

gusty rejects history, and explains what he 'prefers.' And then in comes the Deliverance analogy...

“The switch of the white southern voter who once supported segregation from Democrat to Republican meant a Southern sweep for Nixon in 1972 and Reagan in 1984 and more sweeps for the GOP beyond that in congressional races”

Wow, with friends like you, who needs enemies. Nice of you to reinforce one of the Left’s favorite characterization of Conservatives as racists. I myself prefer the rise of the GOP in the South being a result of the movement of business to the Sun Belt due to air conditioning and Northern Liberal economics. A creation of a large managerial class in the South. Take Deliverance as an example. Jon Voigt and his companions represented the new GOP future, while the mountain men were the racist Democrat past. The new GOP South is dressed in khakis and golf shirts, it is not the overalls of the old racist South.

GOPJ personally witnessed the real racists in the South:

I lived in the Jim Crow South.

ALMOST without exception racist democrats stayed democrats. The people who switched were the people who had moved from the North years before and were forced to become democrat because the South was a one party system.

At that time if you registered Republican you were throwing your vote away. Northerners felt they could vote for the least offensive democrat if they became democrats. Staying Republican while living in the deep South one party system (back then) meant every person you voted for lost.

CodeToad goes with the main Freeper line in favor of the flag - the slippery slope:

The “confederate flag “ is not the prize, the prize is the US flag.

Once the liberals have everyone accepting of demonizing a long standing flag, they will immediate go after the US flag.

We have freepers here that think the Nikki did the right thing. Right, MinuteGal?

aomagrat efficiently incorporates an already well-defined paranoia:

Once guns are successfully labeled as racist by the liberals, the second amendment will fall as fast as the Confederate flag did.