From Amazon's list of "Movers & Shakers in Patio, Lawn & Garden." It illustrates one of the reasons we were concerned that going after the Confederate flag might prove counterproductive. The flag has moved up in Amazon sales rank to 142. It was 239,216.
Going after such things as the Confederate flag is more than a political move. It challenges some people's personal identity - misguided as it may be - and can activate an anger that was formerly contained to a bumper sticker.
When every national liberal politician and media personality starts a scolding campaign against the south, it can merely hype the the meaning of the symbol to many. Best to leave it to South Carolina to deal with while northern time is better spent building a working class white and black coalitions on economic issues that will make the flag irrelevant.
3 comments:
Your point is well taken.
People defend symbols so that they don't have to deal with real issues.
People attack symbols so that they don't have to deal with real issues.
It ends up being a dance which accomplishes nothing.
Said no black person living in South Carolina ever.
On a related subject, when Nixon visited Mao it seemed a meeting of an historical icon with a hack politician, but it is now clear that Nixon was the more transformative figure. He gave us the Southern strategy, took us off the gold standard in order to sustain the MIC, established presidential deference to the national security state, Nixon's Court instituted plutocracy in Buckley v. Valeo. Nixon established the president as daily decision maker of who and what to bomb. Nixon ended the ceremonial link to the democratic past in instituting President's Day. Nixon reduced the presidency to fundraising and reelection, leaving governance to the interns. Nixon not only went to China, but sent his would be successor vice president to Las Vegas to join the rat pack.
The successful counter-revolution was called the Reagan Revolution by mythmakers, but Nixon's exit after Watergate was a perfect cover story. After him (except for the failed Carter democracy restoration project) the presidency would always be one firmly rooted in secret government, for which Nixon wrote the manual, from Iran to the Bay of Pigs. It is fitting that an actor like Reagan, playing the role of the iconic President, got all the credit, because Nixon wrote the part, including for similarly charisma-challenged members of the dynasty that originally recruited him into politics (Prescott Bush). Nixon was in power about as long as Mao, but whereas Mao's system was revised by capitalism, Nixon's has transformed the world.
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