By Nate Strauch, More Content Now
There’s something sickly poetic about the northern media telling southerners they’re not allowed to have their Confederate flags anymore. It’s not irony, though I’m sure there’s a good word for it: The North overruling the South on a beloved symbol of the South’s refusal to be ruled. A better writer would know the word.
The issue is cultural at its root — an issue of two countries within one that share a language but don’t speak with the same voice.
One’s powerful, the winner of the war and the keeper of what it believes to be the nation’s standards. The other is slower to react and to judge and jump to conclusions when tragedy strikes. The concept of the individual is held sacrosanct, so it’s easier to separate the actions of one person from the rest. The South is more sit-on-the-porch-and-reflect-with-a-pipe and less vape-and-vaporize-what-you-don’t-understand.
And understanding really is the rub. When two groups of Americans can look at the same object and see two totally different things, who’s right? Is the flag racist or inspirational? It’s a Rorschach test for culture.
We already know what the majority sees in that particular red, white and blue ink blot, because it’s splashed across the pages of newspapers, the screens of cable TV and the Facebook feeds of amateur thought police everywhere. The Confederate flag is offensive to some, so it’s gotta go. Our cultural battles are being fought on the terms of the least common offence-taker — he who findeth the most offense maketh the rules of engagement.
So how is this cultural Civil War going to end? Like most of them, I’m afraid.
When Capital-C American Culture decides a particular thought or object should be banished into the wasteland of offensiveness — along with all the other words and pictures and people upon which the Yankee elite frown — those who “cling” to their newly offensive culture are pushed to the fringe of society. Their “Society Participation License” is revoked.
We’ve seen it happen before, and happen increasingly often in our ever-more sensitized nation. Crack a questionable joke, react negatively toward someone’s lifestyle, or dare to question the media’s agreed-upon consensus on an issue, and off you go to offenders’ segregation, where anything you say can be used against you because you’re a fill-in-the-blank.
But shunning a person or even a subset of people for the way they think is one thing. This whole business with the Confederate flag, I fear, is something else entirely.
They’re taking a revered piece of southern history and adding it to the book-burning pile of things New Yorkers find disagreeable. And, in doing so, they’re not just picking on a specific personal belief or policy prescription; they’re taking millions of people who share a culture and calling them racists for simply celebrating their heritage. They’re saying, as if history taught them nothing, “Only the way we see thing up here is relevant; the way ‘y’all’ see them is not.”
It may be an effective way to get what you want — “One True Way to Think” worked for Stalin for a time, I guess — but it’s not the way to unite an already deeply divided nation. And it’s a strategy that will only further alienate southerners from the rest of the country.
The northern media loves to talk about empathy based on sexual orientation or race or income level. How about they try and practice a little empathy when it comes to geography?
Nate Strauch is a columnist and reporter with the Herald Democrat. Email him at nstrauch@heralddemocrat.com. Follow him on Twitter @NStrauchHD.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: The cultural Civil War