Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

I did not have this on my fuck 2025 bingo card.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

Nothing worth doing is easy.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

Washington Post’s Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

‘Museums aren’t America’s attic for its racist shit.’

When they say they’re pro-life, they don’t mean yours.

In after Baud. Damn.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

I really should read my own blog.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Later Night Open Thread: Everybody, Up on the Bandwagon!

Later Night Open Thread: Everybody, Up on the Bandwagon!

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Yeah, yeah, kumbaya, m’lord. I try not to quote Mr. Pierce relentlessly, but…

… Now, of course, we will hear a lot of ahistorical braggadocio about how it was Republicans who freed the slaves, and passed the civil rights acts in the 1960s, Party Of Lincoln and all that. And we will hear about how great we are in general because we have all come together to agree that, in 2015, we decline to further glorify the symbol of a bloody insurrection launched in defense of chattel slavery. We rock. We are so very awesome. I give it a couple of weeks before the conventional wisdom congeals that we have “moved past the controversy” and we can all get back to gutting the Fair Housing Act and undermining voting rights and performing all the rites and rituals that have come to mark the Day of Jubilee.

Of course, there’s gotta be a Celebrity Houldout looking for hate-clicks…

Reader Interactions

40Comments

  1. 1.

    Mandalay

    The most embarassing pile of hogwash so far from our profiles in cowardice:

    Walker acknowledged Saturday night that the shooting was committed by “a racist and evil man” but withheld an opinion on the Confederate flag.

    After Haley’s statement on Monday, Walker tweeted that he supported her decision.

    His aides insisted that he had arrived at his position days earlier but declined to weigh in because he did not want to distract from the period of mourning.

    Just pathetic.

  2. 2.

    jl

    TPM blog has had a very good series of posts on the history of the Confederate flags and the use of one of the battle flags as a regional symbol over last couple of days, which I highly recommend.

    I’ve known for a long time that the stars and bars is not the Confederate flag, it is the battle flag of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. What I did not know before was that its adoption as a symbol of ‘Southern Heritage’ was relatively recent, and was introduced by dead ender racists in the twentieth century. Most recently, it was pushed as a protest against federal efforts to integrate the south and enforce voting rights for blacks.

    So, we have a manufactured myth masquerading as history, once again.And what a surprise that ignorant and arrogant reactionaries and grifters like Coulter, Kristol and Lowry are lecturing liberals, and warning right thinking white southerners about their history being erased. They are afraid the manufactured reactionary web of lies is going to come crashing down around their heads.

  3. 3.

    NotMax

    May we for a moment harken back to Alexander Stephens (the new V.P. of the CSA) Cornerstone Speech? (emphasis added)

    The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away… Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it—when the “storm came and the wind blew, it fell.”
     
    Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.

  4. 4.

    jl

    @NotMax:

    Interesting connection to the TPM post on the final official flag of the CSA, popularly known as the

    “The White Man’s Flag”
    TPM, Josh Marshall

    ‘ …Thompson designed the flag and editorialized on its behalf repeatedly in the paper he edited: “As a people, we are fighting to maintain the heaven ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race; a white flag would thus be emblematical of our cause.” ‘

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-white-mans-flag

  5. 5.

    Betty Cracker

    I´ve got wingnut relatives who fly the rebel flag on their property. Republicans, of course. I´m dying to hear their views on all this, particularly the GOP´s turnabout. But I am waiting for them to bring it up rather than introducing the topic myself since I generally avoid talking politics with them. It surprises me that they haven´t mentioned it yet. Still processing the whiplash, I´m guessing.

  6. 6.

    EconWatcher

    So it looks like we’re finally going to be rid of this thing as an official symbol–only 150 years after the end of the Civil War. Impressive progress. Lightning speed.

  7. 7.

    David Koch

    Nikki Haley was born in South Carolina. She more American than Ted Cruz.

    For over 200 years the wingnuts/no-nothings/nativists have used the “they won’t assimilate” card against every group (French, Catholics, Irish, Italians, Jews, Blacks, Latinos, Muslims) and yet it is them that can’t let go of a 150 year old treasonous flag and failed culture.

  8. 8.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @jl: I’ve always associated that flag with the Christian Flag, probably because I associate the latter with the Southern Baptists.

  10. 10.

    The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge

    Insofar as the Confederacy ever had an official flag, it was first, last and always The Stars and Bars, not the Beauregard Flag, which is in the process of being removed from some public places, including possibly the Mississippi state flag.

    Meanwhile, the actual Stars and Bars flies over the Mississippi Governor’s mansion, and has been adopted as the Georgia state flag. Apparently this is going to slide under the public radar.

  12. 12.

    Betty Cracker

    @The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge: Several years ago, some goobers put up a giant rebel flag* not too far from where I live, close to the intersection of two major highways. It has been controversial for years, but it’s on private property, so there’s apparently nothing anyone can do about it — legally.

    Anyhoo, the controversy was reignited by the general rebel flag debate following the domestic terrorist attack in the AME church. I’ve been following the renewed debate on the nearby flag in the local paper and its comment sections and have thus been subjected to so much flag-splaining that I automatically bristle when anyone utters the phrase “Stars and Bars” in my presence. But your remarks were on point and raise a good question.

    *The battle flag or Beauregard flag, as you called it above, I mean. I’ve heard it called the “rebel flag” all my life, so I’m going with that…

  14. 14.

    dianne

    I’ve been waiting for a response from the Republicans who revere this flag and are now being told that it’s a Democratic flag, actually. The powers that be are passing it around like it’s a hot potato and no one seems to want to own it anymore. How easily they were thrown under the bus by their overlords. The Southern Republican way is to not step out of line, to go along in lockstep with whatever their betters proclaim but I will be surprised if this is allowed to stand. Heads are quietly spinning out in Foxland.

  16. 16.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Betty Cracker: Rachel went on and on about it last night. That’s a fiberglass sculpture of Nathan Bedford Forrest on private land near Nashville. The thing was actually sculpted by James Earl Ray’s attorney, an unreconstructed white supremacist.

    Yes, I’m up unusually early. No, I don’t like it.

  18. 18.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Mandalay: I have to smile at Walker’s excuse for not having an opinion about a pressing issue. So when he’s President (will never happen), will he decline to express opinions on controversial matters to not distract from mourning or anger or whatever? Wisconsin can keep him.

  20. 20.

    Zinsky

    There really isn’t much difference between modern Republicans and the “Lost Cause” rebels who engaged in terrorist and seditious acts during Reconstruction after the Civil War. These wankers are still fighting the Civil War. Pathetic.

    They claim to be Christian but don’t show any comprehension of a fundamental tenet of Christianity – forgiveness. They have no capacity for it. In my view, that makes them inherently unChristian and wrong.

  21. 21.

    qwerty42

    @The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge: …Meanwhile, the actual Stars and Bars flies over the Mississippi Governor’s mansion, and has been adopted as the Georgia state flag. Apparently this is going to slide under the public radar.
    It was the only way to get rid of the other one. And (supposedly) contributed to the defeat of Georgia’s last Democratic governor. But there is agreement between the parties that the old one won’t be back.

    So there’s that.

  23. 23.

    greennotGreen

    @BillinGlendaleCA: You guys may have seen the NBForrest “sculpture” on Rachel, but I see it when I drive by on I-65 coming into Nashville. The picture doesn’t do it justice – you should see it in all its glory surrounded by confederate flags.

    Yes, it’s private land. Yes, the owner is a racist prick. There has recently been discussion of planting trees in the right-of-way to obscure it, but the owner says he will just put up taller flag poles. I say let him try.

  24. 24.

    Sherparick

    Ann Coulter is talentless grifter and troll. Her Dad was a union busting executive at various mining companies in the 1970s and 80s and she got her start at that cesspool of modern conservative snark and racism, the Dartmouth Review, in the 1980s. Of note before she started her career as a right wing grifter she clerked for Clarence Thomas (although apparently her love for the Confederate Battle Flag is something they do no share given his recent 5-4 opinion stating states don’t have to put it on their license plates.

  27. 27.

    Chris

    @dianne:

    I fully expect this – “it was ALWAYS a DEMOCRATIC flag!” to become their new mantra by the end of the month.

  28. 28.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Sherparick: Hey now, Ann Coulter is not a Dartmouth product. (We have Laura Ingraham and Dinesh D’Souza to answer for, which is bad enough.) IIRC she’s Cornell.

  29. 29.

    chopper

    I give it a couple of weeks before the conventional wisdom congeals that we have “moved past the controversy” and we can all get back to gutting the Fair Housing Act and undermining voting rights and performing all the rites and rituals that have come to mark the Day of Jubilee.

    really, it’s that the goopers are trying to make it all about the confederate flag so they don’t have to talk about guns. anything but gun control.

  31. 31.

    Matt McIrvin

    @dianne: Actually, trying to pin old-school segregationism on modern liberals because it was associated with the Democratic Party is an old rhetorical trick of Republicans.

    They seem to be able to hold this view simultaneously with warmed-over Dixiecrat sentiments; compartmentalized thinking is necessary.

    I’m sure “liberals took away our rebel flag and it was a Democrat flag anyway” will be the dominant narrative before too long, kind of like the way liberals like to claim (not very accurately) that Obamacare was a Republican idea.

  32. 32.

    Matt McIrvin

    @The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge: That Georgia controversy some years ago was such an excellent case study in an overtly offensive symbol being replaced with an ain’t-I-naughty dogwhistle. They replaced the Confederate flag with the Confederate flag, and nobody seemed to care much. Well, the Stars and Bars wasn’t as much of a 20th-century segregationist symbol, I guess.

  34. 34.

    Boots Day

    Saw this via Twitter, from Rich Lowry:

    The fact is that if anyone banging on about the Confederacy at the moment on Twitter were born in the 1840s in the South, outside of a few select areas, they, too, would have fought for the Confederacy. (UPDATE: It should go without saying that this isn’t true of blacks.)

    Yeah, it should go without saying, which is the only reason you didn’t say it, right, Rich? The fact of it is that the only way any of this Confederate nostalgia can make any sense at all is if you think black people weren’t and aren’t Americans.

  36. 36.

    Another Holocene Human

    @jl: Coulter is a Yankee from Connecticut. (If she is not a Yankee’s Yankee then feel free to respond and correct me… in which case she’s worse, a Brooksie or Richard Cohen, Catholic edition)

    It’s not ignorance that drives her. It’s evil.

  37. 37.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Zinsky: They don’t love their neighbor. Jesus said your neighbor is in an ethnic group you’ve been taught to hate

    They don’t follow Christ

  38. 38.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Boots Day: Exactly. White northerners talk about “Southerners” as if blacks don’t exist. Or just don’t count.

  39. 39.

    Chris

    @Boots Day:

    The fact is that if anyone banging on about the Confederacy at the moment on Twitter were born in the 1840s in the South, outside of a few select areas, they, too, would have fought for the Confederacy.

    Actually, there were big chunks of the South (primarily the areas we’d now call “redneck”) that didn’t have the slightest fucking interest in going and dying for the slaveowners’ war. West Virginia is the most blatant and well-remembered case, but the same was true for much of Eastern Tennessee and the western parts of Georgia and North Carolina. (Eastern Tennessee, IIRC, is one of the few regions of the South that remained a Republican stronghold after Reconstruction).

  40. 40.

    samiam

    Guaranteed this will only solidify and drive underground the use of the confederate flag symbology among certain groups and whackjobs. It will become cool for mentally disturbed potential terrorists like the Charelston guy or otherwise confused youth to have confederate flag parties or whatever. There will be a whole underground economy in confederate paraphernalia.

    So it’s a 2 steps forward 1 step back kind of thing.

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