Some thoughts on South Carolina: We love you! We don't want you associated with losers!
We Love You, South Carolina! We don't want you linked up with a bunch of losers!
Truly and said with love from the bottom of my heart. I am NOT kidding. This is said in all sincerity. NO SNARK HERE, EITHER.
But maybe some "strategery", instead...
A meme or framing like this might be the next step to take. For the following reasons and further objectives:
1) Sincerely send love to South Carolina. Seriously. What they accomplished as a state this morning was remarkable as all-get-out. REMARKABLE. Some say a true miracle. A phoenix-type action - that arises from the ashes of hideousness and death and murder and blood and sorrow and agony and tears. Grace, like President Obama talked and sang about very recently. GRACE. The South hasn't shown it can rise again, but it looks as though South Carolina has done so, or at least taken a big step towards that end. South Carolina is to be applauded and thanked and appreciated. We should not hesitate to criticize when something wrong has been done. We should also not hesitate to commend when something has either been done right or a wrong has been corrected. If you tell 'em when they did wrong, by all means tell 'em when they did something good. It's just the right thing to do.
2) It's not merely the right thing to do, it also REINFORCES good behavior. Psychologists will tell you more about that, and more intelligently than I ever could. But as a parent I learned that. As a dog owner I've learned that. You reinforce good behavior, and thereby encourage it to occur again. Reward. Besides, don't they deserve it? Didn't they earn it, this morning? Doubling-down on the encouragement thing.
3) It's time to reframe a few things. It's time to gently instruct and enlighten and illuminate, and help some on that other side to find their way to the light. You know how kids in pre-school are taught - "use your WORDS (as opposed to your fists)"? Let us indeed use our words. It's time to gently lead and help the other side and the advocates of keeping the flag or insisting on its continued relevance or blah-blah-blah that they're worshipping a false god. AND IT REFLECTS BADLY ON THEM. And they're nice people - so no one should think or assume ill of them. But it happens because of their behavior and what they insist upon and what they've stood by.
DO THEY REALLY UNDERSTAND WHAT IT IS THAT THEY'RE STANDING BY?
Do they REALLY understand what it is they're "respecting" and "honoring"?
Do they REALLY understand what that "heritage" about which they speak so lovingly and longingly REALLY was?
Let's drill down a little. Let's look at that, and examine exactly what it means. Let's
They need to be helped and encouraged to see that THEY, nice people that they are, shouldn't be thinking like that about emblems like the Dixie Swastika. Any more than we see all those nice swastika flags flying all over Germany these days. (And the Germans lost THEIR war, too, btw.)
4) (And here's where we get to the next phase of the overall objective) Nor do you see a lot of nice Adolf Hitler statues collecting pigeon poop out in the public squares of all the cities and hamlets in Germany, either. It's time to dismantle a lot of these statues and monuments to prominent Civil War figures. Those who
A) led the charge of the Confederate Army, which was put to work fighting for the cause of RIPPING THE UNITED STATES APART. Okay? Their side LOST. What they tried to do was treason and made them traitors. They were trying to break up the U.S. And it was, down to the very most basic basics, wanting to bring an end to America, killing it, tearing it up, breaking it apart. The non-repentants who insist on keeping those statues in place, just as they still want to see the Dixie Swastika flying free 'n' proud everywhere within public view, are aligning themselves with traitors and treason, and somehow seem not to want to recognize that the Civil War ended long ago, and their side lost. And
B) owned slaves and found nothing wrong with it - and evidently still don't. And
C) either perpetrated, helped lead, participated in, or eagerly joined the spectators of lynching more than a few blacks as free men, and God only knows what kinds of whippings and beatings and other torture were meted out to more than a few blacks as slaves.
Losers all. Literally as well as figuratively. Figuratively because calling them losers is about the nicest and least offensive labels you could give some of these folks. Literally because, once again, THEY LOST. THEIR SIDE LOST. So by sheer objective definition, it is accurate to call them losers.
And these South Carolinians (and others throughout the South) are nice people. Sweet people. God-fearing people - that's how they often describe themselves. It's really a shame to have to regard them as losers. They don't deserve that.
So why then do they really want to sidle up to the losing side and love it up and wear it on their t-shirts and hang it in their living rooms and keep that very grim and dreadful time out in the open like a festering sore that can spread its bacteria and expand the sores, or like a tubercular sneeze you don't cover with your hands or a handkerchief? They're not losers! WHY do they want to associate with such? These figures you see as statues and monuments and plaques and relief sculptures in public are officers of the traitor army, and in many cases also former slave-owners and even worse. This is NOT the kind of individual one erects a statue to. Seriously. How many statues to Hitler are there out in public display all over Germany, again? For that matter, where are the statues of Charles Cornwallis and William Howe and Thomas Gage and the other noteworthy British generals who led the King's army against the American revolutionaries? After all, the British lost that war. They were on the losing side, but you don't see any magnificent memorials and "heritage" talk about them.
One could add - "um, about that 'heritage' - can you help me understand WHY that heritage was a good thing that is to be honored and respected? Just what is it that we're 'honoring' or 'respecting'? Is it the slavery part? The lynching part? The Confederacy part? Can you explain that? I just don't get it. You're just gonna have to help me out here. Losers? Hey, YOU'RE not some loser. Why do you side with them? They lost. They're losers. What was there to support or side with? Let them fade into history and not be held up and kept alive as some sort of heroes.
It's time to help our friends who cling to the bad old days of the South to see. Finally to start taking the blinders off. You want to be proud of your heritage? Your fair state, just today, struck a monumental and historic blow that you can claim as your own, and of which you can be VERY proud. Your state proved it's full of grace, and that hearts can be healed, and the past can be learned from and then put in its proper place. And there can be true forgiveness and unity. And THAT is how the South rises again. It's certainly how South Carolina began to do, this morning.
Those statues eventually have to come down, too. And hopefully some of those streets and boulevards can be renamed at some point. The Confederacy needs to be remembered from inside a museum.
Just some thoughts, anyway...
