Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Bring Them Down

I am delighted by the destruction being visited upon Confederate monuments in the South.

I can't think of any other place in the world where a losing side is so celebrated.

Look world, we had this war and got our butts handed to us! Hurrah for the South!

I've been thinking about what it must feel like as a person of color to see a bunch of white fuckwits trying to defend these statues with talk about heritage.

So yeah, let's look at that heritage.

To adopt the distorted Southern perspective you would need to do the following:

In order to be proud of losers you want to romanticize them as much as possible. To do this, make sure the local history books are filled with stories of how noble and gentlemanly they were.

You'll need to have an organization like the United Daughters of the Confederacy which will offer prize money to the young lady who can write the best essay about the bravery of her great-great- great grandpappy who fought the rebel scum with dignity.

To reinforce the romance of the old South you'll feature a yearly Springtime event where families get into their cars and drive out to the plantations to see the dogwoods and azaleas in bloom. To highlight the wholesomeness of this event you'll have a bunch of young white girls in hoop skirts, gloves and bonnets smile and wave at the passing cars. (Aren't those delicate Southern belles the best? So feminine. So unthreatening.)

When giving tours of said plantation houses you focus on the splendor and charm of the Big House. At no time will you allow the visitors to wander off out the back where the row of rundown shacks are located. If a visitor does manage to escape out there you'll laugh musically, redirect them to the official tour and mumble something about "tool sheds."

When teaching Southern history to older students you'll stress the fact that less than 1% of all wealthy people in the South owned slaves with the takeaway being that the Civil War couldn't possibly have been about slavery. You'll ignore the fact that during the time even the poorest of white trash had higher status than black folks and that every white person in the region benefited from an economy that thrived off of slave labor.

You'll use special terms to refer to this period of time. It wasn't a "Civil War" it was the "War Against Northern Aggression". It wasn't about the spread and existence of slavery, it was about "States Rights." Never mind if those rights let one type of person own another or let lawmakers draft discriminatory legislation which disenfranchised black people from sharing white spaces and having the right to vote.

When choosing a bumper sticker for the back of your pick up truck you will add the one with the Confederate flag that says, "Heritage, Not Hate." You will abruptly change the subject when an outsider asks why no black people fly or embrace this flag.

To avoid awkward mental exercises, you'll surround yourself with  like minded company. This will allow you to regularly proclaim that The South Will Rise Again! As everyone around you "gets" what you are saying you will be saved from having to explain exactly what this means or what it would look like.

Follow these tips and you'll be fantasizing over the character of the losing side in no time!
*****
Please tune in next time as I explore why so many members of the "master race" seem to be paunchy, weak chinned, illiterate, omega males with shithouse tattoos.

No comments:

Post a Comment