OK I really should not be spending time on a diary but sometimes you read something and you just have to get it out. So if I'm not around in comments, apologies in advance...work is nuttier than squirrel turds, but one of the things that gets me apoplectic is part fascination and mostly blood curdling fury at those who maintain the bullshit nostalgia of the Confederacy. To paraphrase "Sam I Am" from Dr. Seuss: I do not get it not one bit.
The title is the title from an article at The Guardian and to summarize, while thousands were commemorating what any sane people recognize as brutal and awful historic moment, others were nearby having a pity party and practicing their free dumb that their beloved Confederacy was being so callously maligned.
As thousands marched across Selma’s Edmund Pettus bridge this weekend, a small band of white people were less than a mile away, mourning the loss of the Confederacy and guarding a memorial to a white supremacist.
I was all prepared to read and move on and just deal with the fact that some people are stuck on romanticizing shit. The article includes mention that the gravesite has been the source of conflict between whites and blacks and that it has been previously vandalized, an act I in no way condone. But no, just no. Aside from trying to justify that the Selma marchers "got the confrontation they were seeking" and completely missing the point why things had to come to that, no...just effing no:
“The people in the south – the white people, who were being abused – organised a neighbourhood watch to try to re-establish some order,” he said of the nascent Klan. Slavery in the south was “a bad institution”, he said, but possibly “the mildest, most humane form of slavery ever practiced”.
“If you look at the wealth created by the slaves, in food, clothing, shelter, medical care, care before you’re old enough to work, care until you died, they got 90% of the wealth that they generated,” he said. “I don’t get that. The damn government takes my money to the tune of 50%.”
For one thing when I hear re-establish some order I can't help but hear "the natural order of things" and that natural order has me owned by someone. But really? "the most humane form of slavery every practiced" Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
I guess I didn't realize there WAS a humane form of slavery...EVER...including the kind that is still very much with us today. Does that mean the slave gets to set their own hours, choose when and if to be beaten or killed, decide if their family gets sold away and comes with a retirement plan that isn't death? "Oh I don't feel like slaving today so I'll be in my luxurious cabin eating a five course meal"
As if things couldn't get any worse, there's the next statement about "wealth". Someone said that in all seriousness. That statement is so ass backward I can't even snark about it more than it mocks itself.
This is how we still have things like the SAE fraternity. This is how we have PDs like Ferguson. This is how we take steps backward vs forward on things like the Voting Rights Act ( nevermind this being why the act was needed in the first place ). These people live in an alternate reality and one I never want to visit because again, the whole "I'd be owned by someone" thing...silly me.
The article goes on to say ( and I agree) that it would be unfair to judge the white population of Selma by these diehards. I anticipate "but they're old and they'll die out" . Not so fast. One of the crack-tavists is 25. (Maybe an SAE brother? ) Oh and crack is for crackpot not cracker so nobody go there.
We still have so many rivers to cross.