Monday, May 25, 2015

Why Does the United States Still Honor White Supremacist Confederate Trash on Memorial Day?

I hope that your bellies are full of the entrail-filled stomach linings of other animals as well as the recycled Soylent Green like meat products that are created from feeding the dead to the living at America's commercial farms and slaughterhouses.

I too will be gorging on similar food items--in addition to a BBQ pork loin purchased at Walmart that is so damn good it should be illegal--and drinking high fructose corn syrup products.

Memorial Day was a tradition inaugurated after the American Civil War by (now) freed black Americans. Black America's history is American history, even while too many of those who are invested in the herrenvolk White dream and past of America in the present are dedicated to erasing such a basic fact from our schools, libraries, and other centers of learning.

Senior historian Dr. David Blight wrote a fine essay on Memorial Day's origins for the New York Times in 2011. It is still worth revisiting on this day.

But, did you know that the Confederacy is also included in Memorial Day celebrations? Moreover, that Barack Obama, the United States' first President who happens to be black has continued with a tradition where the White House sends a wreath to the Confederate Monument in Arlington?

Germany had the good sense to confront its Nazi past. yet, in the United States, the Confederacy, a treasonous rebellion that fought for white supremacy and to keep millions of black people as human property, is still celebrated and honored.

The Confederate flag is the American Swastika, the name of the founder of the KKK, Nathan Bedford Forrest, is still on schools and street signs in the South, and the White Right still embraces the language and iconography of the Confederacy as they bemoan and attempt to usurp Barack Obama's legitimacy and authority.

One of Blight's peers, Dr. James McPherson, along with other prominent historians and academics, sent a letter to Barack Obama in 2009 in which they suggested that he stop honoring the Confederates and their white supremacist cause on Memorial Day:
Early in President Obama’s first term, a group of academics that included prominent Civil War historian James McPherson asked him to end the tradition of sending a Memorial Day wreath to the Confederate Monument in Arlington, which they felt represented “the nadir of American race relations” and “a denial of the wrong committed against African Americans by slave owners, Confederates, and neo-Confederates, through the monument’s denial of slavery as the cause of secession and its holding up of Confederates as heroes.” 
Obama opted instead to send wreaths both to the Confederate memorial and to the African American Civil War Memorial in the U Street neighborhood.
The matter of how and if the Confederacy should be honored on Memorial Day remains unresolved.

In Virginia, a group of Confederate sympathizers is upset that a local church will not allow them to fly the American Swastika during this year's Memorial Day celebrations:
John Branson is the current rector of Christ Church Episcopal in Old Town Alexandria, where Robert E. Lee worshipped and where 34 Confederate soldiers are still buried. Every year on May 24, the local branch of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, wearing their grays and bearing rebel flags, would hold a Confederate Memorial Day service. Branson says the rector before him put an end to the tradition. “The church has suggested that they take their ceremonies elsewhere.” 
One member of the Confederate group calls the change of policy “intolerant.” 
The parish still permits the group to hold a quiet wreath-laying ceremony in the churchyard but prohibits any display of Confederate regalia. “They have a full, formal color guard that they’d like to use, but they continue to display the Confederate flag, and we find that offensive,” Branson says.
Justice is so askew in America, that white supremacist sympathizers now complain that they are treated in an "intolerant" manner. Oh, I so dream of the day when that is in fact the rule in the United States.

Brother Doctor Martin Luther King Junior famously said that the arc of justice is long. Perhaps the arc of justice also has an ironic sense of humor as a black man who is President of the United States now sends a wreath to "honor" those who fought to keep people who look like him as human property, to be raped, murdered, tortured, and labor and wealth extracted from their bodies and souls in the service of white supremacist capitalist expansion and greed.

The secesh trash are likely rolling over in their graves at the thought of a black man being President of the United States. Alexander Stephen's white supremacist "Cornerstone Speech" is no comfort as their bones rot and they receive honorifics from a black man named Barack Obama, he who is the leader of a multicultural corporate democracy.

15 comments:

rainydaze80 said...

"The Confederate flag is the American Swastika..." YAAAAS!!! You took the words right out of my mouth!

Kameshwari Kate said...

The hairs are standing up all over the back of my neck and arms. Horror! I never thought of the Confederate flag as being the United States Swastika. Every time I read WARN, I am slapped with another reminder of just how white and obtuse I am. It looks like I have to go to the back of the class....again.

drspittle said...

On my morning run in a Northern Kentucky community right across the river from where I live (Cincinnati) I passed a house with a confederate flag on the porch, along with a sign about how No Ky hates heroin. American swastika is quite appropriate.

TenarDarell said...

Though I wish it were otherwise, there is probably no way to stop honoring the Confederate dead without re-learning how to wave the bloody shirt. There simply are not enough people with a proper historical understanding of the Civil War and the roiling governmental and legal conflicts which led up to it. One of our country's nasty little secrets which we don't teach well, is that the reconciliation which took place after the Civil War was based on the North gradually giving up on the South and on guaranteeing the rights of freedmen, freedwomen and Union soldiers (USCT) during Reconstruction.


However, though the Arlington wreath may not go away anytime soon, perhaps re-naming all the monuments, roads, bridges, and schools which honor Confederate officers or politicians could happen. And if the monuments cannot be removed (e.g. Stone Mountain), they can all get explanatory plaques. We also need to ensure that the next president continues to send a wreath to the African American Civil War memorial. Once a Presidential tradition, always a Presidential tradition, right?

Myshkin the Idiot said...

An artist from Florida spent his memorial day burning and burying a confederate flag. It sounds like a wonderful tradition. It was funny to see how upset so many white people were in the comments of the Grio

joe manning said...

Public display of Confederate icons is bad enough but paying homage to them adds insult to injury. It is incumbent upon the first black president to refrain sending the Confederate wreath to Arlington. The multiplicity of Confederate memorials and symbols are the stuff of the Neo-Confederacy that allows white supremacy to metastasize is all directions.

joe manning said...

I think Obama would have more fame and glory if he had refused to send the wreath.

kokanee said...

Was never gonna happen...

ciao,
Kerry
Oppose Fast Track anything. It's undemocratic, authoritarian and secret. Congress should not abdicate its authority and responsibility to a sole individual.
Oppose the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) Rigged trade deals skirt labor and environmental legislation and lock in profits for corporations.

Learning Is Eternal said...

Not shocking at all. The ante was 'upped' on Assata Shakur's bounty under this administration also. His nuclear agreements w/China, Iran... The United States of ammur'KKKa LLC. Is all about business.

joe manning said...

TPP is corporate hegemony. O will get one more chance next year to loose the wreath. It would mean so much.

Southern said...

Oppose fast track - retain sovereignty.

Southern said...

Anything tied to a FTA is evil.

kokanee said...

Yeah, no kidding. Are we so apathetic as to allow this to happen? Doesn't anyone care about democracy anymore?
So this is how liberty dies...with thunderous applause.

Southern said...

Democracy has become an illusion, while we are free to vote for whomever we like that does not mean that our elected representatives will then be allowed to effect the change that we seek - Free Election of Masters does not abolish master or the slaves - H Marcuse.


Real power is held by the financial elite and whom are only loyal to their credit accounts - likewise for our so called ''politicians'' they know full well that their role is temporary so government simply becomes a steppingstone into the lucrative corporate world.


Bottom line remains the same - we must abolish all fictional characters for they're like a Trojan horse inside the walls of democracy.

Justin M. White said...

This came up in Florida where they created a veteran's hall of fame in the state legislature. http://www.tampabay.com/news/humaninterest/are-confederate-soldiers-eligible-for-veterans-hall-for-fame/2216866