I’m losing my patience with the sudden anti-Confederate Flag hysteria that seems to be infecting everyone, everywhere.
Some of us who live in South Carolina and were glad to see the flag come down from in front of the State House would like to remind you:
- We didn’t think up that resolution two minutes ago. This has been a long and peaceful democratic process that has unfurled in stages. The late unpleasantness was a catalyst for something we’ve been thinking about for a long while. There’s a reason we aren’t the riot state, and don’t you go trying to provoke something. We don’t want to be like you hysterical other people.
- For goodness sakes you are exhuming bodies? What is wrong with you people? The solution to an incomplete history isn’t to erase history, it’s to fill in the blanks.
If you are charged with the display of a Confederate flag, by all means employ a bit of subsidiarity and decide whether it is sending the message you wish to send. But get your nose out of other people’s business. It’s a free country. Or was.
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Also I am exceedingly irritated because I went to Charleston determined not to write another book unless a certain editor presented me with an irresistible idea. All this hysteria is confirming that she did indeed come up with a good and necessary topic. And this annoys me, because what I really want is to clean my desk. Except that now, there’s this book. If people could calm down and forget about all this stuff, it would make my life much simpler. Maybe then my desk could be clean. Thank you.
Artwork: Kurz & Allison, Chicago, Art Publishers, 1890..Brian0918 at en.wikipedia [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons
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