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Guy decides to wave traitor flag at Memorial Day commemoration in Natick
By adamg on Tue, 06/01/2021 - 1:44pm
Seems some guy not only brought a Confederate flag to Natick's Memorial Day service (held at a monument to the town's Civil War soldiers on the town common), he "moved to the front of the crowd" to make sure everybody got a good view of just what a loser he was.
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Comments
White Power Flag
The Stars and Bars, aka the Confederate Battle Flag, is a white power flag.
It should as reviled as the flag of Nazi Germany. F*** everyone who flies that flag or has it as bumper sticker on their cars.
In a lot of ways you are correct
But not entirely. Example, the remove of the Confederate memorial on Georges island was extremely short sighted. The Confederate army was primarily made up of poor southerners, not rich slave owners. Most of which were forced into services via the Confederate Conscription Act.
People forced into battle shouldn't be entirely dismissed because of the people which forced them into service.
Nor should their service be honored
Nor should their service in the cause of rebellion be honored, especially not at an observance intended to honor their opponents.
I’m talking about the flag...
...and those who wave it today. Not soldiers who were conscripted and died 155 years ago.
We can acknowledge that German soldiers in WWII faced a similar conscription and mourn the loss of life without displaying a Nazi flag.
Short sighted? Hardly
That wasn't a contemporaneous monument. It was put up by the Daughters of the Confederacy decades after the fact to support the Lost Cause. It had no business at all in Boston, one of the centers of the abolition movement, home to a senator who was nearly beaten to death by a South Carolina congressman on the floor of the Senate, a state from which nearly 13,000 men left and never returned in defense of the Union.
You want to celebrate a traitorous movement that led to more American deaths than any war before or since? Do it in whatever Southern hamlet the dead men came from, not here.
Nobody said that buddy
So you have ZERO sympathy for an 18 poor kid who was forced into serving and ultimately died.
I have plenty of sympathy, pal
But I have no sympathy for the Confederacy, and that's what that monument was celebrating, not some draftee.
Adam, why won't you think of
Adam, why won't you think of how harmful your words are on the parents of those 18 year olds who died for the Confederacy? They can see this, you know.
Georges Island monument
The fact that Georges Island was a POW camp for Confederate soldiers, and that some of them died there, is worth noting on a sign or plaque. It's part of the place's history and will be of interest to visitors.
We have monuments to fallen British soldiers at various places along the Battle Road now.
(Boston was also home to Italian prisoners of war during World War II, though not at Georges Island. Some were camped at nearby Peddocks Island.)
You know perfectly well...
...that's not what the Daughters of the Confederacy were after.
Yes, there should be *some* marker
just not *their* marker. It's a state and national park, so any future marker should belong to either DCR or the National Park Service.
It's been a while since I've been there
but I'm pretty sure it's mentioned on one of the placards in the visitor center there.
A subtle point often lost
If the wealthy southerners had not fooled, lied and spewed a Hell full of lies, falsehoods, "alternate facts" then the majority of the Confederate Army would not have existed. Hence the Civil War would never have happened.
The Civil War was based on maintaining slavery. Slavery that was controlled and owned by the leaders and wealthiest of the south.
Twenty Negro Law: A get out of army free card for any white male owning enough slaves. Still left the poorer people - even ones that might own one slave - to be used as cannon fodder for their political, academic and religious leaders.
Seems that the spirit of the liars of the Confederacy thrives once again. Calling for a military coup comparable to Myanmar is proof.
Not sure Myanmar was a coup exactly
It's regularly called that, but when the military junta wrote the constitution they enshrined power for the military in a number of ways. I'm pretty sure one of those things was the ability to take over the government in times of unrest. Whenever I see it referred to as a coup I wonder if that's the right word since they were following a constitutional process. I know that the reality is people just use the word to mean a takeover by the military, but it at least implies that there was an illegal or extrajudicial overthrow which didn't really happen there.
Maybe but maybe not?
That assumes that the judgement their military made, if you want to call it that, is legitimate. If their military is falsely and fraudulently claiming that the election they have overturned was fraudulent in order to follow the constitutional process you described, then it would absolutely be a coup.
That's putting a very, very
That's putting a very, very fine point on things. The Myanmar constitution does say what you claim, but the military manufactured a controversy about the elections they lost and then used their own lies as justification to seize power under the constitution (sound familiar?). There was no unrest and nobody found any of the fraud the military alleged, and very few people in the country actually believed it. Their actions violated the spirit of the law; they may have stayed in a grey area about the letter of the law but only because it gave the military unchecked latitude to define for themselves what counts as a crisis.
Technically correct may be the best kind of correct for a bureaucrat, but I'm not a bureaucrat. It was a coup.
I realize that
I'm not trying to justify what they did or the validity of their claims. It's just that when I see the word coup I'm picturing the overthrow of a sitting government. When the junta allowed their constitutional "reform" there was a lot of it that was window dressing which left the military largely in control of the country. That makes it a bit hard for me to see it as dramatic a change in government as the word coup implies. I point it out not to be technically correct, but more as a reminder or lesson that the military never really relinquished their power there.
That said, compared to the last two significant periods of unrest ('08 & '89 IIRC) it's going to be a lot more difficult for the junta to control things with the technological ability to get and disseminate pictures, videos and testimony to what's happening there.
I think the word you want...
...might be "autogolpe" or "self-coup"
More specifically
The Confederate flag was that of the enemies of the Natick veterans being honored - the flag of the ones who tried to kill them.
How incredibly stupid some people can be.
The Stars and Bars, aka the
I think you're missing a little subtlety here. The flag that most people think of as the "Confederate Flag" was not the flag of the Confederate States of America. It was a battle flag.
Its re-introduction into common usage in the years after WWII was entirely related to 20th Century white supremacy (as tblade pointed out) and nothing to do with the Confederates of the Civil War (except indirectly).
Perhaps, historically, you're right
But the people who would wave the flag show no such subtlety, so, personally, I'm fine calling it a "Confederate" flag, because it was one, even if not the main one, and simply calling it a 'white supremacy" flag ignores the historic link between the failed Confederacy and today's white-power neo-Nazis.
I didn't mean to imply that
I didn't mean to imply that it shouldn't be called a "Confederate" flag. I was just replying to tblade and perruptor's conversation and pointing out that the flag's current (post-WWII) cultural meaning is much more related to modern white supremacy than to the Civil War. Yes, there is also a historical connection to 19th-Century white supremacy, but its current (last 70 years) usage is primarily a function of white supremacist reactions to the civil rights movement as opposed to, say, explicit support for chattel slavery.
In fact, you're wrong
According to the Globe, he flew the actual flag of the CSA, not the stars and bars.
The Stars and Bars is not the Confederate battle flag
The Stars and Bars was the first national flag of the Confederacy. It resembles the flag of Georgia. Wikipedia describes it thus:
"Three horizontal stripes of equal height, alternating red and white, with a blue square two-thirds the height of the flag as the canton. Inside the canton are seven to thirteen white five-pointed stars of equal size, arranged in a circle and pointing outward."
Still worse
The ceremony took place at a memorial commemorating the Massachusetts 55th Infantry Regiment.
Overt and aggressive hate speech
In case it wasn’t clear that the Confederate flag was being used as an act of hate speech, the perpetrator made it a point to go to a Union Army memorial for Black soldiers.
Shocking.
Memorial Day
Memorial Day, originally May 30 before Monday holidays were the rule, was specifically created in 1868 to honor those who died in the Civil War.
Well into the 20th century, several of the southern states refused to observe any holiday on May 30, and instead observed "Confederate Memorial Day" on April 26. Wikipedia says that it's still observed in 8 states, although on varying dates. In three states it's still an official state holiday.
So yes, this flag is particularly inappropriate at a Memorial Day celebration. They can wave it on April 26, or a nearby Monday instead.
Not to be
Yer internet tough guy
But someone might have had a word with that fellow and explained to him the error of his ways.
Super old dude
I just saw (but was unable to hear) a clip on TV about the incident. The man was so old he could barely stand on his own accord. (Not saying there shouldn’t be a conversation about appropriateness or there is an excuse for his behavior.)
Furthermore, and I mention this only for the sake of being complete, the flag wasn’t the traditional Stars and Bars battle flag. It appeared to be the the third national flag of the Confederate States of America (which is a white flag and features the Stars and Bars in the canton, or the top left corner of the flag).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America
Why?
Why is this distinction so important to you that you insist on belaboring the point? In what way is it meaningful with regard to either the intent or the impact of this action?
Point of clarification is all
.
Why did nobody else grab that
Why did nobody else grab that flag and stomp on it? Lots of people saw this happen. Are we really so conflict-averse?