Yesterday while driving near Plymouth, MA I saw a pick-up trick with a large confederate flag attached to the bed. The flag must have been at least four feet across. The truck had Mass plates. I’ve seen very little confederate paraphernalia of any kind in all my time in the north, and I’ve never seen any kind of a flag that big on any kind of vehicle ever.
Reader gogol’s wife writes that she saw the same thing in Connecticut:
I saw a car the other day that had a Confederate flag and a sticker saying something like, “Keep the change, I’ll keep my guns and my liberty.” I looked to see if it was a Connecticut license plate (because the combo of a Confederate flag and New England can only mean one thing), but the name of the state had the phrase “Communist state” pasted over it.
Not sure what’s going on in this country sometimes.
Alexandra
The sheriff is near.
HinTN
Some damn redneck fool from my neck of the woods came up your way for the well paying job that all the takers down here took took.
David Hunt
I personally hope it’s a manifestation of these twerps lashing out as they perceive themselves losing more and more power.
gogol's wife
@HinTN:
No, I think these are native New Englanders. The CT legislature passed some reasonable gun laws, so we’ve become a “Communist state.”
rikyrah
Some White folks have lost their damn minds..
see?
that was simple.
flukebucket
I have been told that there is a rather substantial confederate presence in the New England states but since my most northern journey has taken me to Charlotte, NC I could not verify it :-)
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
All the freaks are letting their flags wave proudly now, because they’ve been emboldened, between the Martin…ahem, sorry, the ZIMMERMAN verdict ,the Supremes declaring Racism a thing of the past by a vote of 5-4, and the continued persistence of the Sheriff being a-Near. They apparently see no reason to hide what they are now, after seeing so much of the country basically echoing or sympathizing with said sentiments.
shortstop
@gogol’s wife: Probably. But even so, HinTN’s statement was a work of art.
SFAW
Doug –
MA has always had a major redneck streak in it. I think it peaked around the time Barbara Anderson (Citizens for Limited Taxation) made her push for Prop 2 1/2, etc. Maybe it was later in the 1980s, after Saint Ronnie was in office. But, no matter the actual era, it’s there, and will continue, until Dumbfuckistan secedes, and they all move there.
And, I realize it’s a nit, but I believe it’s the Confederate battle flag, which, to my mind, is significantly more treasonous than just some run-of-the-mill state flag.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@David Hunt:
Even if it is the last throes of dying prejudice, it’s still large and scary enough to poison the well and scorch the earth for the near (and possibly far) future. And that worries and depresses me.
gogol's wife
@shortstop:
Yes, it was.
aimai
Read Confederates in the Attic, if you haven’t already that is. He has some fantastic observations on the historic flipping of states and regions that were Union to a retroactive pro-southern stance and the rise of the “rebel flag” as a free floating signifier of defiance rather than its more obvious meaning of repression and slavery. In the end: nothing surprises me when it comes to the stupidity, self aggrandizing victimhood, and overall whiny ahistorical weepiness of (some) of my countrymen. These assholes would rather be associated with the losing side of a war to enslave black people than imagine themselves to have no connection to violence and militarism at all. Displaying this stuff a kind of hate crime: a political act as hanging a black person in effigy–its a hate crime against the Union and against all our citizens but it masquerades and hides itself as mere cheap sentiment. The people who drive around with these flags imagine themselves courageous iconoclasts, heirs to a martial tradition of independence and rebellion but they are really just fearful, weepy, cowards who want a political program of racist repression but prefer to hang out flags and slogans than risk fighting another losing battle.
Tonybrown74
@Alexandra:
One and done!
Long Tooth
Nascar runs an annual race at Sears Point Racetrack in Sonoma County, Ca. every year. Wise drivers avoid the roads leading in if possible, as traffic is always bumper to bumper over that weekend. Years ago I was caught in it a couple of times. There is a huge meadow across from the track, and back then it was filled with hundreds of ticket holding RV owners. There was a ton of confederate flags attached to the RV’s, or leastwise enough to make a striking impression. Understand, even a confederate decal on a car is a rarity around here. I can’t recall having ever seen the Stars & Bars flying anywhere. But back then, that meadow might have passed for the campground of the Stonewall Brigade.
HinTN
Igogol’s wife: It’s small comfort to think we don’t have a monopoly on teh stupid.
low-tech cyclist
I used to see a fair number of Confederate battle flags on this and that, here in southern MD. But after 9/11, the U!S!A! roar kinda drowned that out, and you didn’t see them after that.
Much to my surprise, they haven’t made a comeback around here. I can’t remember the last time I saw a car with a Confederate flag insignia of any sort.
But the bumper sticker – “I’ll keep my guns and my freedom, you can keep the ‘change’,” appeared pretty quickly around here after Obama’s inauguration in 2009. I wanted to ask those people if that meant that I could have the tax break that Obama’s stimulus was giving them, that I’d be happy to keep that ‘change’ for them! But you can’t exactly ask that of someone while driving 70 mph on Route 4.
Hunter Gathers
I see many Traitor Flags in my little corner of Illinois. It really pisses me off. As far as I’m concerned, flying that flag should carry the penalty of having ‘Inbred White Trash Bigot’ tattooed on the perp’s forehead.
dan
Saw a giant hummer driving around (twice) yesterday with a HUGE Gadsen flag (Don’t Tread On Me). On Lawn Guyland.
SFAW
@Hunter Gathers:
Just make sure the “B” isn’t backwards this time.
aimai
In re the specifically MA aspect–some of the worst offenders are actually out of staters–the guys who perennially attack equal marriage and our public schools are literally from out of state. There’s a high tech/moneyed class in the suburbs who are not MA natives by any means. Then there’s an old, urban, ethnic white racism which has historically been completely uninfluenced by and unaligned with white southern imagery. The appearance and display of a confederate flag around here is still pretty unusual and shocking, if only because NE classissism and clannishness make us despise the south as hicks as well as racists. But images and signs leap around these days, thanks to facebook and a lively interaction between teens and celebrity that is not at all local. So I wouldn’t be surprised at various things, like the confederate flag, being adopted for a wide variety of causes without any regard for its actual historic meaning.
Comrade Dread
Sherman didn’t do a good enough job.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Birtherism seems to be making a comeback in the last couple weeks, too. I’d like to see Tom Brokaw and Chuck Todd and the other liberal NBC preachers of the “President Obama needs to reach out” gospel to explain how Obama is responsible, but they probably wouldn’t bat an eye.
SFAW
@dan:
You sure that wasn’t a picture of Weiner’s wiener after Huma got done with him? (Well, I guess that would have been the “Join or Die” flag. Oh well, another failed joke. Shit.)
No, I don’t want to start another “Weiner’s an asshole” thread.
schrodinger's cat
[email protected]
Haven’t seen any Confederate Flags around here in the sticks of MA yet. I did see a Gadsden Flag outside a house on the way to my friend’s house, who lives outside of Rochester, when I was there last year,
ranchandsyrup
I was “back home” right around the time that Brad Paisley and LL Cool J released “Accidental Racist” and I noticed some differing justifications.
One camp claimed that they don’t care/didn’t realize that their southern pride could be interpreted as racist (like Brad Paisley claimed) but swore up and down that they didn’t intend any offense.
Another camp figured that if they’re gonna be viewed as racists, they may as well own it (but felt victimized because they still didn’t think they were racist).
Tata
I saw the same thing Doug saw, only in New Jersey. I took pictures.
Mnemosyne
@Hunter Gathers:
Just out of curiosity, are you downstate? (Though my Oak Park-bred husband informed me this week that anyone who doesn’t live in Cook County is “downstate” as far as they’re concerned … )
My dad had some redneck hunting buddies (no, seriously, one of them answered to “Redneck”) but I think they were out in the exurbs somewhere.
SFAW
@Comrade Dread:
Preach it, brother.
Daffodil's Mom
Sarah Palin was allowed (if not encouraged) to unleash this. How many more innocent people will suffer, if not die, before the last of these monsters die off? If they ever do, that is. Sure won’t happen in my lifetime.
And yes, this Godawful flag was not any official Confederate flag at all — but it sure did appear in a whole lot of places right after Brown v. the Board. Funny, that.
schrodinger's cat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Its like our trolls, they have run out of material and are recycling the same old same old.
Roger Moore
@Long Tooth:
Ob nit: that wasn’t the Stars and Bars you were seeing there. The Stars and Bars was a flag based on the Stars and Stripes, with the same general layout but with just two red and one white stripe (the “Bars”) and a varying number of stars in a circle on the blue canton (the “Stars”). The flag everyone is flying is the Confederate Battle Flag.
David in NY
I would like to go to South Carolina some day, but they’ve got to get that damn flag away from their Capitol first.
SFAW
@Mnemosyne:
Do they have a license to hunt rednecks? If so, where are they available? (The licenses, not the rednecks.)
Ripley
Entropy.
Hal
I live in upstate NY and have seen a few of those flag stickers, a couple impeach stickers, and one truck with silver balls dangling from the hitch.
Also several “you can’t be pro choice and Catholic” stickers, but I digress.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@low-tech cyclist:
Come up over the Mason-Dixon line to South PA. We’ve got plenty.
aimai
I’ve seen a few of those Gadsden flags here in MA. I think they signify the same thing (teaparty racism) as the confederate flag but are more palatable because of their pre-civil war imagery. For the people who show them they are non racial signifiers–they speak to the illusion tha tthe tea party reflects a “real” and “original” American revolutionary spirit. Obama is a “dictator” and a “would be king” and “elite” in the imagined mold of George III. The fact that this stuff comes up primarily in the context of the revulsion against Obama as a black president can be hidden even from the person flying the flag. If they were displaying the confederate flag they wouldn’t be able to hide the racism from themselves. So I definitely get the sense that the gadsden flag, although claimed by the southern wing of the teaparty as well, is used a lot up north as a covert, unraced, way of being anti-dem and anti-obama without all the race baggage.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Pick up driver “My family is a REAL Amurican’ family, yes sir! My ancestas’ fought with the 10th Main and Gettysburg and saved this country! That’s why I am flying this Confederate Flag”
kc
I live in SC. I’ve seen plenty of letters to the editor in local papers from assholes who retired down here from up north and want it known how much they respect confederate “heritage,” and also don’t want to pay any more socialist taxes like they have up north.
kindness
Bic lighters and charcoal starter are cheap.
kc
@kc:
I might add that based on my unscientific observation, half these fuckers, if not more than half, are living high on the hog down here on their municipal and state government pensions from the socialist north.
hoodie
I grew up in Georgia in the 70’s, and I didn’t see as much confederate paraphernalia then as I do now. If southerners ever had a basis for calling it heritage rather than hate, it’s sure long gone now (that argument was always bullshit anyway). It’s become kitsch detached from its historical roots, and now is an equal opportunity token for any and all racists and xenophobes. I’ve met guys from upstate NY who have rebel flags in their basements but wouldn’t know Lester Maddox from Greg Maddux.
srv
I thought the Battle Flag went to the victor.
kc
@dan:
That’s why God invented EGGS.
SFAW
@hoodie:
That’s cause Lester never made it out of
KKKAAA. I think he was on the Tides.libarbarian
LOL.
My cousin’s husband’s family has lived in CT for generations and has NO southern heritage. His cousin drives around with a big-ass Confederate Flag on his truck. It’s pretty much what you think it is.
shortstop
@Roger Moore: And it was abandoned for the later flag because it was too easily mistaken for the American (I know I could have said “Union,” but I’m feeling feisty) flag on the battlefield.
Long Tooth
@Roger Moore: Believe it or not, I’m a Civil War guy. Used to be a Civil War nut. I was aware of the different flags, but mistakenly believed that the Stars & Bars referred explicitly to the better known Battle Flag. And it doesn’t, as you well knew. All those years I had it wrong. Thanks for the flash.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
Shit, Doug, this is a pretty common sight in the Rust Belt. A higher percentage of Michigan men volunteered to join the Union military than did the men of any other state in the Union. After industrialization kicked in, we were inundated with the unskilled offspring of unreconstructed Confederates. There’s a little suburban (Wyoming, MI) industrial neighborhood tucked in hard against the southwest side of Grand Rapids called Godfrey-Lee (known only as Godfrey before the Great Migrations). The kids there go to Lee High School. Their mascot is the Rebel. Until quite recently, you’d see the marching band and cheerleading squad carrying the Confederate battle flag during games.
Johnnybuck
@SFAW:
Hard to hit the curveball with an ax handle.
The Moar You Know
We gotta get you down to Southern California and take you on a little trip out to the desert east. You’ll see that shit every fifteen minutes.
Recent developments encouraging racist blacks and Mexicans require white people to act in a fashion that may appear racist. These white people assure me they are not, however.
BruceJ
@dan: @Roger Moore: @Roger Moore:
It’s not a surprising error to make, as most Americans aren’t all that up on the subtle distinctions in the flags of our enemies.
shortstop
@BruceJ: Well played. The Union forever — hurrah, boys, hurrah.
BTH
Someone lawyer from Alabama got a job offer in Massachusetts, and moved there.
Someone young buck from Mississippi met & married someone from Connecticut, and moved there.
Why exactly are you implying the northeast should have a strictly enforced, conformist and homogeneous culture? I thought we worshipped an awesome god in the blue states. Well, by we I mean you- I’m an atheist. But still…
maurinsky
I grew up in rural eastern CT, and many kids I went to school with embraced Confederate flags. This in a town that had maybe 8-10 black people over 3 families.
jo6pac
See the same in Calli.
J.D. Rhoades
@kc:
Yep. And that Medicare they want the gummint to keep its hands off of.
Roger Moore
@BruceJ:
Yeah, I guess people made a similar mistake about the Japanese flag in WWII.
Ted & Hellen
Please.
It’s one dude out of how many hundreds of thousands on the road that day in Mass?
I live here. You don’t see that shit…ever.
Did you make this up, DougJ? You’re…you know…known for that sort of tomfoolery…
Scott Supak
I see this all the time up here in my corner of what we call “Upper Appalachia.” In my case, central NY, my congress critter is a tea bagger backed by the many racists all around us.
SFAW
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
My High School was South, we were the Rebels, our hated rivals were North. I don’t recall if we used the Battle Flag as our emblem.
The semi-interesting thing is that my hometown is – or was, when I was growing up – about as liberal as they come. But that was in the 1970s, before the Southern Strategy became the raison d’etre of the Grand Old Treasonous Party, so Teh Crazy was limited to a few.
If I were there today, and they still had that moniker, I’m not sure what I’d do about it.
hedgehog the occasional commenter
Haven’t seen Confederate flags in the Denver Metro. (Or I’m not observant enough). I have seen Gadsden flag bumper stickers; a friend of mine lives across the street from someone who’s been flying a Gadsden flag off their front porch for some time now.
Grover Gardner
Southern Oregon is pretty rife with Confederate-flag flyers, but I’ve noticed more than usual, and more brazenly displayed. They used to be plastered to bedroom windows, or as stickers on pickups, but we noticed house in a nearby neighborhood flying one on a very tall flagpole, and a pickup with a huge one mounted on a pole in the bed a few streets over. It’s discouraging. But then, now that the libraries here are about to be closed again, it’s part of generally discourging trend. :-(
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
Whatever it is, I’m absolutely certain it has nothing to do with the race of the President.
StringOnAStick
This crap is apparently why I have spent hours today looking up how to immigrate to New Zealand. We’ve got job skills they want, but we are both approaching our 56th birthdays, and once that day passes for both of us, it will be impossible without suddenly winning the lottery. Something to think about I guess.
justawriter
Once I saw a crappy old pickup truck held together by rust and NRA stickers that had a bumper sticker that said “Kiss My Rebel Ass” and displayed the traitor’s rag. I really wished I would have had a “GAY PRIDE” sticker to slap right next to it.
Jennifer
Not too complicated, actually.
Reagan threw the mentally ill out on the streets knowing that they needed to reproduce if there was to be any chance for the Republican party to thrive. Thirty years later, his plan has come to fruition.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Weirdest confederate bumper sticker was a few years ago in Paris. An older American sedan, early 80s vintage I think, French plates with a confederate flag and an anti-Obama bumpersticker
StringOnAStick
@hedgehog the occasional commenter: I’ve seen confederate stuff in Denver, I even saw it on a car in Boulder last month. Then again, Boulder is where Soldier of Fortune magazine is, or was based; can’t be bothered to check.
I recall a friend who is in her mid-40’s now telling me how she had loved that stupid TV show as a kid where the car was painted in that pattern, and how her mom had to take her aside and explain that the whole “General Lee” as a hot car meme was offensive. Funny thing is that now her parents are both frothing wingnuts.
dlw32
Its not new… Going to High School in NE PA in the 70’s, everyone had a rebel flag sewn onto their jeans jacket and many, many of my “peers” spoke with southern accents. I used to tell them that their state fought for the Union and we WON!
One of the many reasons I despised high school.
SFAW
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Now THAT is surprising.
SFAW
@StringOnAStick:
The mother probably found it offensive because it was defiling the name/memory of Saint Bobby Lee.
drkrick
The flags are annoying, but the truth in labeling saves me some time.
Matt McIrvin
A couple of years ago there was a guy I occasionally saw driving around Haverhill, Mass. (far outskirts of the Boston metro area, on the border with NH) in a pickup truck with a big US flag and a big Confederate battle flag fluttering behind the cab on opposite sides. I don’t remember where his plates were from but I think he was local.
The Moar You Know
@SFAW: Why? France is one of the more racist countries on the planet.
Mike in NC
The clowns with the Sons of Confederate Veterans license plates are quick to tell everybody, “It’s about heritage, not hate”.
Horseshit.
SFAW
@The Moar You Know:
I was being ironic or some such.
Something to do with the idea of a Traitors’ Flag and hating Obama. (You’ll also notice I didn’t include France in the blockquote.)
ETA: I guess I could have, alternatively, written “Quelle fucking surprise.”
LanceThruster
I fear that types like this feel that everyone who doesn’t agree with them belong in the refresh the ‘tree of liberty’ category.
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. ~ Thomas Jefferson
Mike in NC
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That means Donald Trump must have a new TV show coming out.
opiejeanne
@Long Tooth: in the 90s there was a house in Hayward that flew the confederate battle flag as well as the Alabama state flag on a flagpole in the front yard. The house was in the exact condition you would expect.
SFAW
@Mike in NC:
Fixed
Matt McIrvin
…And, yeah, technically even calling it “the Confederate battle flag” is not quite right; it’s a variant of the Army of Northern Virginia battle flag, but rectangular instead of square like the original flag was. I read somewhere that there were a few Confederate units somewhere that used the wider version, and there was also a Confederate naval jack that had that shape (but used a different shade of blue).
But it’s largely a 20th-century invention.
Tone In DC
@drkrick:
Definitely saves some time in this area. Lots of Gadsden and battle flags around here since late 2008.
Can’t imagine why.
Roger Moore
@StringOnAStick:
Boulder is where a lot of magazines are based. I think there was quite a while when it was advantageous to base magazines in the physical middle of the country because it gave better worst-case mailing times.
Mike in NC
@kc:
I saw exactly such a letter in the local rag last week and couldn’t resist replying with the General Sherman note. Drew much unhappiness from the neo-Con(federate)s. Inevitably those people are 65+ and don’t give a rat’s ass about the quality of schools, roads, water supply, etc.
David in NY
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Yes. People forget that the Northern Migration was not only blacks, but a lot of whites, too. I lived among them growing up in Lansing. They brought their culture with them.
Not to say that (notwithstanding Michigan’s part in the Union effort in the Civil War) Michigan was ever short of racists. My grandmother was a real liberal, and not a racist. She told me the story of her son who died of TB about the time I was born. Secondary to his TB, he suffered from Addison’s disease, which darkens the sufferer’s skin, and he got turned away from the Hotel Olds in Lansing on the suspicion that he was black. I’m not sure what her views on race were before that, but I know what they were after.
ed — well, actually, I think that she quit the DAR after the Marian Anderson business, so I think she was always pro-civil rights — Eleanor Roosevelt her heroine.
Patricia Kayden
Once in a very blue moon I may see confederate flags affixed to cars in Southern Maryland, but doesn’t matter in such a blue area. Also, once in a blue moon, I’ll see an anti-Obama sticker. Makes me smile since I cannot imagine placing an anti-Palin or anti-Romney sticker on anything belonging to me. I don’t want their names affixed to my property.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@SFAW:
We had a South High in GR until ’67. They were the Trojans- but who knows, they might have been the Rebels had we a North High. Gerald R. Ford captained their football team in the early ’30s.
Funny thing about Lee High: It’s very Hispanic now. I’m looking forward to the day they dump the Rebel and become Lee Chivas or Lee América.
Davis X. Machina
See it all the time in rural Maine. In this town, where one male in 7 — not one in 7 draft-age males, one in 7 period — didn’t come back from the Civil War, it’s particularly jarring.
There are no other culturally normed ways to say “Liberals, city people, and folks who understand subject-verb agreement all suck!”, I guess.
Maine is, after all, home to Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the redneck Olympics.
Woodrowfan
Virginia has tea-party license plates now, yellow with the snake on it. They’re almost always seen on some gas-hog huge SUV or over-sized pickup, although I did see one on a mini-Cooper.
RSA
I lived in MA for five years and don’t remember seeing any Confederate paraphernalia, though (1) it was a long time ago, (2) my memory may be failing me, and (3) this was near Amherst, and I didn’t spend huge amounts of time in the more rural areas of western MA. (Aside from living in the evocatively named Belchertown.)
It doesn’t surprise me that that stuff would be popular in blue areas of the U.S. The Confederate culture seems to thrive on a view of itself as a noble, downtrodden minority; might as well be in a place where the minority part is true.
Mike in NC
You want to know who the real bad-asses are? The idiots who display the rebel battle flag with the pirate skull-and-crossbones superimposed on it.
Roger Moore
@opiejeanne:
The flagpole must have been very tall if you could see it over the piles of rusted out cars in the front yard.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@David in NY:
Yeah, the KKK was strong in Michigan in the 1920s, and you still see the remnants in central Lower Michigan, from Marshall, through Lansing and up to Flint and Saginaw. GR is conservative, but I’ll give the credit to the Dutch Calvinists of this area for not hitching up with the revived Klan after WWI.
Roger Moore
@Patricia Kayden:
You might feel different if they had won the election.
SFAW
@Davis X. Machina:
Was at a ceremony in Portland this weekend, the ME National Guard 133rd is heading over to Afghanistan. Angus King talked about Chamberlain, said that a friend (i.e. of King’s) once characterized Chamberlain as having saved Western Civilization. (The idea being that, if Chamberlain hadn’t held Little Round Top, the Union might not have stopped Lee, the Traitors would remain as a separate country, and the UNITED States would not have acted as a unified nation for WWI and WWII.)
I am about as far from a Civil War expert as can be, so I don’t know how hyperbolic that statement is. But it was certainly good to hear someone extol the virtues of the Union for a change. [Of course, Paul LePage was also there, but he didn’t say anything stupid/assholish (for a change).]
raven
The confederate flag was all over in Vietnam, imagine how that made the brothers feel.
David in NY
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): You know, my Great-Grandfather volunteered in 1862 in the Michigan 23rd infantry, and was mustered out after Appomattox. I have no idea why he joined up, or what his views on race were, and I’d like to know. His diaries are back in Ann Arbor, so when my retirement schedule kicks in, I’ll have to take a few days to find out. (I was going to take a swipe at the Dutch, for their conservatism, in my earlier post, but realized I had no idea of their views on race. Their old Church in Flatbush in Brooklyn has an all-black congregation, so there’s that.)
Mike in NC
@RSA:
Hollywood propaganda is partly to blame; siding with the “underdog” has long been a staple of movies. It started with “Birth of a Nation”, then there was “Gone with the Wind”, plus dozens of less well known films.
Davis X. Machina
@SFAW: Couple of my old students are shipping out… here’s hoping for a totally boring deployment for them.
SpotWeld
It’s a lot simplier than that.
It’s a person who loves the idea of getting away with something. It’s someone who (and this can be a person of any background) would play “not touching you, not touching you” up until thier sibling on the back seat takes a swipe at them. At which point they cry bloody murder to mom and dad and demand a cookie.
And, by the way, years later at the family reunion, this gets told as the story of how you always beat them up in the back seat.
raven
@Woodrowfan: You know that “Don’t Tread on Me” was the logo for what was called the “People’s Bi-Centennial” back in the day.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@David in NY:
Heehee…Christian Reformed Dutch are okay as far as race goes. Hardcore Dutch Reformed, though…Well, they don’t single out black people. They just don’t care for anyone who isn’t Dutch and Calvinist.
SFAW
@Davis X. Machina:
Friend’s daughter and son-in-law. I’m an atheist, but I’m doing the atheist equivalent of prayer for their safe return in a year.
Patricia Kayden
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
Yes, but now Republicans are mixing up Arabs and Hispanics (because all brown people look alike, I guess)
http://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/Politics/republican-congressman-arab-terrorists-pose-hispanics/story?id=19917704
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@Jennifer: Ah hah! now it all comes together.
PS You win my share of the internets today.
David in NY
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Well, my family had anti-Dutch stories, so it may have been reciprocal. (My Dad, who worked in a small-town bank up near Cadillac in the ’40’s, was still pissed at being cheated by a Dutch farmer when I asked about the odd name on a tombstone in the town cemetery fifty years later.)
SFAW
@Patricia Kayden:
No, they just get confused because some number of Hispanics have the same name as that Jewish Ay-rab guy that they profess to follow.
Roger Moore
@Patricia Kayden:
And neither of them are likely to be voting Republican anyway. I wouldn’t be surprised by any racist thing a Republican said to a crowd in Simi Valley.
Darkrose
When I lived in Salem, MA, my route home usually took me through the Peabody town center. Directly across from the memorial commemorating the town Civil War dead there was frequently a pickup truck festooned with Confederate flags.
nastybrutishntall
@aimai: I also remembered seeing big expensive pickup trucks in MA (left in 2003 after most of my life there) with dudes inside listening to country. Usually Dittohead “small businessmen”. The “I got mine jack” demo, who identify their success with whiteness (and are to some degree not wrong, though not for the reasons they believe).
Betsy
I live in the South and the last Confederate flag I saw was waving rom a house window in a little rusted-out town in the Mohawk Valley of New York State. Those folks may not have seen a black person in years.
Roger Moore
@Betsy:
Except on their TVs. I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but the Sheriff is Near.
opiejeanne
@Roger Moore: Tall enough. IIRC, the majority of wrecked cars were in the side yard. Weeds were the main component of the front yard, which is not too smart in the hilly areas.
Ruckus
Saw, during my walk into the VA for my appt. a Volvo, in a handicapped parking spot, with a bumper sticker in the back window,
“Lord Help Us End Obamacare”
Glad I was late or I might have gotten into an altercation with a stupid asshole. Of course 5 minutes later I was sitting down near an old codger complaining about people getting $200/month in food stamps. It sure was nice getting out of the house.
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
Evidence not clear.
I believe they didn’t have minds to lose. I think they have been stupid assholes all along.
TerryC
@justawriter: “Once I saw a crappy old pickup truck held together by rust and NRA stickers that had a bumper sticker that said “Kiss My Rebel Ass” and displayed the traitor’s rag. I really wished I would have had a “GAY PRIDE” sticker to slap right next to it.”
Did that once. Saw a pickup with a White House on it and a black man hanging from a noose over it, with the caption: “I have a dream” on it. Was able to peel of my Rainbow Traverse City sticker and paste it over the dream sticker—hoping it would take the owner days to see it. And, yes, it was at a Civil War Reenactment.
bmoak
@Scott Supak: I prefer North Pennsyltucky myself. I see at least one Confederate flag every day.
lojasmo
Got unfriended by a hick cousin for giving one of her facebook friends a hard time for having the CF as her avatar…because I have to be tolerant and openminded to everybody.
Good.
nineone
On the positive side, it makes it much easier to spot these losers. Don’t retreat, y’all.
Ruckus
@StringOnAStick:
Same age when I was looking and was what kept me from going as well.
Ruckus
@Mike in NC:
It IS about heritage.
The heritage of hate. They been doing it for a long time.
Chris
@kc:
Figures. The biggest assholes are always the converts.
Citizen Scientist
I’ve seen a fair number of Confederate battle flags over the years here in southern/southcentral PA. Many of them are in the form of license plates, flags waving from the backs of pickups, or even window stickers/graphics. Ignorant people round here who think they’re ‘country’ seem to gravitate towards it. Makes me so mad whenever I see it.
I do recall the time a couple of years ago when driving in southern Delaware, a real man with a tiny penis and huge pickup was just barreling down the highway with 2 large CBFs flying proudly off the upright exhaust pipes of his truck. I still regret that I didn’t ram him off the road that day, as my car’s transmission died soon after.
MCA1
@aimai: Winner. That’s exactly right, IMHO. It pisses me off, frankly, in a way that the display of the Confederate battle flag doesn’t. The latter is almost comical in its connotation of sophomoric, fratboy victimhood and as a signifier of incredible ignorance. The former, though, that’s a flag and a slogan actual patriots and thinking Americans who know more than zero about our country’s history want to be associated with. That it’s been co-opted by these Get Your Hands off’n Mah Medicare morans is annoying.
Chris
@lojasmo:
That’s never happened to me… I usually unfriend them long before it gets to that point.
(Okay, maybe not cousins. Them, I just block from minifeed and ignore).
Incitatus for Senate
@RSA: Belchertown used to be a complete shithole, it has improved significantly. My family moved there from England in 79 when I was 11. Rednecks, Jesus freaks, insular ignorance and incredible stupidity. It was horrifying, like I had gone back in time a hundred years and moved to a third world country. Thank FSM my parents could afford to send me to a private school.
russell
i live in way eastern MA, north of Boston. the town was founded in 1639. the first regiment of volunteers mustered after the attack on fort sumter apparently came from the town where i live. that’s the local lore, anyway.
the fourth of july is a big deal here, and on the fourth i saw some fucking yahoo driving around in his big ass pickup with an american flag flying from one side of the bed, and the stars and bars from the other.
i have no freaking idea what was going through the dude’s mind, and i’m not sure i ever want to know. it sure as hell took the fun out of my day, though.
for the life of me i can’t see what there is to celebrate about white supremacy, insurrection, and bloody fucking war.
i’m ready to secede and join the canadian maritimes. they have their issues, no doubt, but his kind of ignorant assholery is not among them.
J.D. Rhoades
They do it for the same reason they do most things: because it “pisses liberals off.” They’re all about the spite and the futile, stupid, ultimately meaningless gestures that make them feel like they’ve scored a major blow for freedom, when all that’s really happened is they’ve made themselves look like Cletus the Slack Jawed Yokel come to life. They’re a small and silly people.
Ahh says fywp
@kc: Congrats, being a lotax state makes you a piece of shit magnet. This is where you draw the undesirables and narcissists away from other, saavier states to yours.
I should know. I live in Florida.
Ahh says fywp
@ Incitatus for Senate: Wait, you mean that Belchetown, aka that place you pass on tge bus in between civilization, isn’t an irredeemable craphole where dreams and human dignity go to die?
The more you know, huh.
At least Clinton, MA is still a festering pit of human garbage and I dont need to modify my entire world view, right?
JoyfulA
@Mike in NC: Once I was sitting around an old country store in SC (long story) chatting with some good old boys, and I started explaining Pennsylvania income taxes, which don’t tax Social Security, pensions, or any type of retirement income. I had them all talking about moving up here.
Betsy
@Ruckus: $200 a month? I would have asked him because I would love to know how anyone qualifies for $200 a month in food stamps.
As far as getting out of the house — lord, I know what you mean.
Betsy
@MCA1: I agree and I used to really like that flag. Would still like to fly it at Pro -choice events. :)
Janefromhell
@dan: bet that guy got laid.
I Heart Breitbartbees
@Betsy: I also live in the South, and the last Confederate flag I saw was sometime in the last week or two. They’re quite rare, but quite rare multiplied by city equals a good chance of seeing one. Should I desire, I would qualify for both Sons of the American Revolution and Sons of the Confederacy. Three guesses about which one I would actually join. The dumb bastards should remember who lost and why that was a good thing.
different-church-lady
We’ve always had a strain of “northern redneck” in New England. It’s just Fox and the interwebs have emboldened them lately.
Batocchio
For what it’s worth, I saw confederate flags in CT in the oughts and witnessed some pretty racist crap in Maine in the 90s (racial slurs toward black students). A friend of mine encountered some ugly crap in CT or Mass, I forget which. It’s by no means uniform, but small town New England can be pretty bigoted, unfortunately. (The most racist crap I’ve witnessed was in the South, but bigotry is hardly limited to one region, even if it comes in different varieties.)
M.C. Simon Milligan
@Batocchio: I’ve seen some racist crap everywhere I’ve ever been, but I was astounded when I first moved out of the south to encounter people who had never had to, and could not imagine having to, actually deal with a person of color. There’s some whack ass shit in the south, but if you can’t handle working with and around black folks you simply can not function outside of – maybe – the deepest hollers.
I’ve lived most of my life in the mountains of eastern Tennessee and I’ve always chortled at the Nth generation hillbillies who fly the Confederate rag in places where Rebs had to travel in groups of fifty to avoid being bushwhacked by the locals. Heritage my ass. Your ancestors didn’t like black folks. Sure. They didn’t like any damned body who wasn’t close kin (and liked them a bit too much if you know what I mean). But they fought for the Union nearly to a man. My ancestors were Republican politicians and sheriffs on the Cumberland plateau who voted to secede from the state back then and saw Andy Johnson off to Washington to represent them with the real government when that failed. Of course their kids helped found the god damned Klan so… well, fuck heritage yo.
I’ve always wanted a flag from one of the renegade Appalachian republics like the State of Scott, the Republic of Winston, Nickajack or even the State of Franklin. But alas, none of those rump states ever actually got around to, y’know, designing a flag.
Matt
So let’s review:
* flag celebrating treason against the United States in the name of white supremacy
* dissing the name of his own state
Remind me again how bad RWNJs thought “god damn America” was from Rev. Wright, and maybe point out how this guy *isn’t* expressing a far stronger sentiment? Deport his silly ass, if he really thinks this country is so terrible…
Matt McIrvin
@russell: You may have seen the same dude I did.