Today I was alarmed to find myself needing write this.
So let me explain something, again, about Southern culture: We honor the dead.
To my knowledge there is one, single, possibly-valid argument for maintaining Confederate memorials, and it is that regardless of their sins, it is good to remember our forebears and honor their virtues. If you are an old-school Republican governor of one the reddest of the red-states, a state so certain to swing for Trump that MAGA hats just are here, and you are old enough to have been a student at the time your university was protesting federally-mandated desegregation, it is possible you believe, you truly believe, that the dead deserve to be honored even if their politics are not in vogue with the present winds that hold aloft your political kite.
Or maybe you are just a heartless political hack, but you were raised to act right.
Or maybe it is tactically expedient for you to act right, because you are watching our democracy implode and you really don’t feel like calling up the National Guard again.
Regardless. This is my message today, directed to American citizens who still have an inkling of the virtues on which this republic was founded: It’s okay to reach across the aisle and show a bit of decency on the untimely death of a much-loved son or daughter of your own state.
You can do that.
You can be kind to people whose politics are not your own.
It is not necessary for your every act to be ruled by an ideological purity test.
Maybe if we tried more of that, we wouldn’t have quite so many cities burning just now?
Photo: American Eagle with E Pluribus Unum on a silver dollar, Public Domain.
PS: The South is terrible and backwards, please stay away or you’ll get shot by hornet-sharks or something.
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