Flags of our Failures

      I have spent some time this week thinking about the confederate flag and the perfect storm of controversy it sits at the center of. On the one side, you have those who want every symbol of the civil war era south banned, so we never have to look at another stars-and-bars again. On the other side there are the folks buying those flags off the shelves, and the folks raising the prices on the same. There is even talk of wanting to ban gone with the wind, although that whiffs of troll to me. And a lot of this came to a head because of the tragic shootings in south Carolina. 

      Now I don't have any stronger attachment to that particular symbol than seeing it emblazoned upon the roof of a 1969 dodge charger, and it's not used there as a symbol of hate, so much as a symbol of a lifestyle and culture. And I have a stronger attachment to Daisy's short shorts, than to the flag on the General's roof.

      But banning the confederate flag doesn't do the right thing. It doesn't do enough.

      To start, we need to ban all things that remind us of that era. Movies, books, we need to stop acknowledging there was ever an Abraham Lincoln, and stop teaching this stuff in school because someone might be offended, or some whack-a-do might go shoot people.

       But for the love of all of us, we can't stop there. We need to ban cowboy movies, western hats, boots, and shoot all the horses so we can bleach the western expansion out of our history, because it's insensitive to indians.

      And then? Obviously Schindlers List, the Indiana Jones movies, and anything with Nazis, because no one wants to see effing Nazis. Sound of music, too. Full of Nazis, chock full.

       And then we remove the monster movies, because those are insensitive to monsters. They make giant lizards out to be soulless city-killers, and vampires out to be sparkly bookselling freaks (that was supposed to be bloodsucking, but I am NOT correcting it)(sometimes autocorrect is just correct)

      In case my sarcasm has not been absolutely transparent, let me make my point plainer. I don't think anything in history had ever been made better by ignoring or hiding it. If you hide the symbols from view, get will just fester in people's minds and erupt in New, unexpected directions.

      You ever see those fish on the backs of cars, and wonder..." why a fish??"

      Well, early Christians were persecuted, fed to lions, stuff that made a cross an unwise fashion choice. But they could use a fish symbol, the ichthys, to communicate. Hiding a symbol doesn't kill a belief. If anything, persecution strengthens beliefs.

      And before you get bent out of shape that I am comparing Christians to slave owners, just SHAME ON YOU. Stop reacting, start thinking, consider the parallelism

      Oh, and we need to ban the cross, too. And anything else that makes us think of the atrocities committed by Mel Gibson. I'm not buying passion of the Christ until he releases the alternate ending.