Civil War

The Chickens Have Come to Roost: The Assassination of Donald Trump

~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

July 16, 2024

I remember my first presidential candidate assassination attempt. I was a second grader in Boca Raton, Florida in May 1972,  when we heard that Alabama governor George Wallace, a Democratic candidate for president, had been shot by a 21-year-old man dressed in red, white, and blue. I remember that Wallace was known to be a white supremacist. At 8, based on my Sesame Street education, and love of the Mod Squad, I knew that was a bad thing. Wallace, survived, although paralyzed, and George McGovern went on the be the Democratic nominee, only to lose to Tricky Dick Nixon.

The Wallace shooting has been on my mind as I watch the coverage of Saturday’s attempt on Donald Trump’s life with my 9-year-old daughter. “This is your first political assassination attempt, Cozy,” I told her. “I’m sure it won’t be my last,” she replied. She already knows how America works.

I remember where I was when I first heard that John Hinckley had shot Ronald Reagan in 1981 (in my Gran Torino in the parking lot of Redan High School) and when I heard that Charles Manson acolyte Squeaky Fromm (and another woman 17 days later) tried to shoot Gerald Ford in 1975 (in my rec room in Stone Mountain, Georgia). I was only 4 when Sirhan Sirhan shot Democratic candidate Robert Kennedy in 1968 and in utero when his brother, President John Kennedy, was assassinated in Dallas in 1963. The shooting of American politicians will mark my life, from womb to tomb.

When JFK was killed in 1963 by a gunman from an elevated position 266 feet away, it shocked a nation that thought it was beyond political violence, even though three previous presidents had been assassinated (Lincoln, 1865, Garfield, 1881, and McKinley, 1901). Black nationalist civil rights icon Malcolm X created a firestorm when asked to comment on the murder of Kennedy. “Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they’ve always made me glad.” The response was fierce and the Nation of Islam, the group X spoke for, sanctioned him for speaking ill of the president loved by so many black Americans.

But Malcom X’s sentiment is worth considering. In The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Minister X explained his comment as a form of social karma. That an administration, and a society, that had foist so much violence on its citizens, especially on black people, should not be shocked when that violence bounces back on them. You reap what you sow. And America has a long history of launching violence into the world, and defending the violent. Live by the gun, die by the gun.

So when Trump was shot by a white kid, a registered Republican, and a gun club member, with his dad’s AR-15, I heard those words. The chickens have come home to roost.

America loves violence and nobody loves the language of violence more than Donald J. Trump. We don’t have to go down the sizable list of offenses (but him asking if the BLM protesters could be shot in the legs in 2020 is a favorite). Trump Saturday, with a barely winged ear, chanting “Fight! Fight! Fight!” with clenched fist, was part of his faux macho man performance. Ever the showman, under the dog pile of Secret Service agents, he was probably thinking, “I need a fundraising meme!” Fifteen minutes later, the image was everywhere. Trump looking like 50 Cent. “My body eats bullets.”

The shooting of Trump is a horrible event for so many reasons. While this nation was founded in bloody revolution, we solve our disputes with ballots not bullets. The worst liberals (including some friends) publicly wished the kid was a better shot. The worst conservatives saw the hand of nutzo conspiracies that blamed Biden, antifa, the “deep state,” and (surprise) the Jews. The shooting was seen as “evidence” of whatever your binary us vs. them political position. Many, on both the left and the right, we were convinced that attempt, that killed a father in the crowd, would guarantee a Trump victory and whatever glory/hell that creates. “America is saved/doomed!”

The violent rhetoric of Trump (much of which I’ve written about here) is not exactly balanced out by peace and love vibes from Democrats. On Monday, when NBC’s Lester Holt interviewed President Biden, Holt asked the President about his rhetoric toward Trump. ““It’s time to put Trump in the bull’s-eye.” Biden, instead of apologizing or engaging in a heartfelt conversation about the overly violent nature of political speech, played a moronic game of what-about-ism. “Look, I’m not the guy that said I want to be a dictator on day one.” You’re not helping, Joe. Take a nap.

After the Trump shooting, “Civil War” was trending on X (Twitter) and the dark web I monitored over the weekend was full of “keep your powder dry” posts. But the ray of hope may come from Trump himself. After his brush with death (and we were millimeters from his head exploding in that Pennsylvania field), the former president allegedly tore up his original fiery speech for his crowning Thursday at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. He could return to his “Crooked Joe and Them Evil Democrats” stump speech template, full of rambling stories about sharks and Hannibal Lector. But maybe, just maybe, Donald has had a come to Jesus moment (the real Jesus, not White Republican Jesus). Perhaps this Thursday’s speech will be his version of Obama’s brilliant 2004 Democratic Convention oratory, when Obama said, “There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America — there’s the United States of America.” After naming misogynist MAGA sycophant J.D. Vance as his running mate, I don’t hold out much hope, but you never know. A new Trump could urge calm amid Terrordome-like political chaos.

We desperately need leadership that says, we are not red or blue, just beautiful and varying shades of purple. We need a chorus of voices that says all this political violence is endlessly counter productive. We need credible messengers to tell us there is a better way and show us how to do it. If not, we’re done.

I Remember America: It Was a Good 248 Years

~ Randy Blazak ~ 6 Comments

July 4, 2024

There have been red flags along the way; the Civil War, Watergate, Rosanne Barr singing the national anthem at a Padres game. America has always been an idea more than a reality. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” referred to a small group of white men in 1776, some of whom owned slaves and none of whom (except for Thomas Paine) thought women should have a vote. America was a work in a progress. It wasn’t until the arrival of an orange-hued huxter that this grand experiment went completely off the rails.

When Trump and his mail order bride came down the golden escalator in 2015, no sane thinking person thought this malignant narcissistic game show host could become the leader to the free world. Trump was a buffoon with a string of bankruptcies. (You have to be a special kind of moron to bankrupt a casino.) But his rough justice brand of racism (“Mexicans are murderers and rapists”) spoke to the victims of globalization and, while he lost the popular vote, he managed to sneak in to the high office. Thus began the campaign to hijack the no-longer Grand Ol Party and dismantle the guard rails of democracy.

If the 2022 Dobbs decision, that ended women’s bodily sovereignty, was a sign that this was democracy’s sunset, the July first Supreme Court decision in Trump vs. United States, that gave presidents absolute immunity, was our lights-out moment. Goodnight, John Boy. The President is now officially above the law. Trump will claim that he is now immune from all indictments, past and future. If re-elected, he becomes Caesar.

The once revered Supreme Court has gone down this road before. In 2000, the court literally stopped the counting of ballots in Florida and handed the presidency to George W. Bush. But the Federalist Trump Court, stacked with his three nominees and insurrection supporters Alito and Thomas, represent the complete obliteration of the checks and balances system our Founding Fathers designed. The federal judiciary is now merely an extension of MAGA. MAGA controls the House of Representatives as well. So if Trump’s minions take the Senate and he takes back the White House, which controls the entire Executive Branch, America is completely under the control of this madman who has already proclaimed he will be a dictator on Day 1.

Since 1984, when I became a political science major at Emory University (on top of my sociology major), I have dedicated my life to understanding how fascism happens. My work has included going undercover in fascist movements to see how they recruit young people, to entering war zones in Eastern Europe to help children escape the invasion of fascists. For forty years, I have been consumed with this work in hopes that I could prevent it from happening here. That forty years of work, of expertise in this field, tells me one thing. It is happening here.

Let me put this into the most simple words I can, Donald Trump does not give a fuck about America or Americans. He would never let any of his knuckle-dragging MAGA base into his haughty Mar-a-Lago affairs where he flaunts his stolen wealth. Trump cares about power and ego and ratings. And he cares about retribution. He has made it exceedingly clear that his second term would be about revenge, including firing any and all federal workers that are not absolutely loyal to him. His (currently imprisoned) top advisor, Steve Bannon, has said Trump 2.0 will arrest, try, and imprison Biden officials and anyone viewed as not supporting Trump, including former FBI acting Director Andrew McCabe, former FBI Director James Comey, former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, former Attorney General William Barr and former Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley.

Trump 2.0, would be modeled on the authoritarian regimes Trump has only shown admiration for. A national abortion ban, the releasing of the January 6 terrorists, and detention camps for immigrants would be the first impact. The hollowing out of voting access for minority populations and the protection of corporations from regulations comes next. Then, as Trump has publicly supported, the implementation of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, replacing every federal worker not loyal to Trump, from the highest executive office staff to the lowest park ranger, with Christian nationalists. Department of Education? Gone. Environmental regulations? Gone. Civil rights enforcements? Gone. And finally, because of the July 1 ruling, Trump can legally “take out” any perceived opponents, from Nancy Pelosi to the teenage anarchist down the street. America becomes a hellscape where the Confederacy has won the long civil war. There will be blood.

Why Americans are not out in the streets, I’ll never know. Maybe we’re the frog in the slowly boiling pot. Maybe it’s, as John Lennon sang in 1970, they “keep you doped with religion and sex and TV and you think you’re so clever and classless and free.” Or maybe we have prematurely achieved Idiocracy. Whatever reason, fascism is at our doorstep and turning the knob.

Even if you think my words alarmist, you know another four years of Trump appointments to the federal judiciary will fundamentally transform the nation for generations in a way that will make America the nineteenth century again. An immunized presidency will provide no disincentive to the wanton criminal behavior of a sociopath. A sociopath who only cares about his own power.

Yeah, Joe Biden’s performance at the recent debate was a train wreck, but I would vote for Biden in a coma if it meant keeping this very real threat to the nation from access to the levers of our democracy. Trump and his GOP cult of personality will burn it to the ground.

Is “Civil War” a Preview of 2025?

~ Randy Blazak ~ 4 Comments

April 22, 2024

I just walked out of the new Alex Garland (Ex Machina) film Civil War and am wondering if I need to arm up. The dystopian film, starring Kirsten Dunst and Wagner Moura as war journalists, feels a little like a flash forward to America after the fallout of the upcoming election. The film is clear not identify who the bad guys are, but America is under the leadership of a “third term president” who sure sounds like a certain authoritarian-wannabe we all know, currently on trial in a criminal court in New York City. The “Western Forces” of Texas and California (I about choked on my popcorn at that thought) are trying to retake Washington DC. I don’t want spoil any of the fun, but firefight between the Western Forces and the Secret Service on Pennsylvania Avenue is pretty lit.

The movie is more of a meditation on the need for emotional detachment required to document wars than a treatise on the polarized nature of the our uncivil society. There’s a scene where Dunst’s character, reflecting on her coverage of brutal foreign wars, states that the subconscious message of her war photos was, “Don’t do this here at home.” Oh, the irony. But my work has me highly focused on the “the don’t think it can’t happen here” scenarios. So my heart is racing.

I’ve written plenty in this blog about the looming fantasies of a second civil war from the far right, who made their first attempt in 1995 in Oklahoma City. This project I’m working on, funded by Homeland Security, has me spending an inordinate amount of time in spaces where the far right fantasizes about launching a second American revolution if Trump wins or loses.  If he wins, they’ll see it as a green light to string up woke traitors from lampposts and if he loses, they’ll see it as proof that democracy has been hijacked by “communist libtards,” only to be restored by the blood of patriots. Either way, there will be blood.

Not long ago I was in the parking lot of Home Depot near the Portland airport. I was parked next to a pickup truck with a ton of anti-Biden stickers. The truck had a very small “III %” sticker in the window. The Three Percenters are a local militia group that were heavily present at the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. I waited to talk to him (after moving my car). When he came out, I struck up a conversation with him. (He also had a University of Oregon sticker, so that was my in.) “Hey, I noticed your Three Percenter sticker and I have to ask your position about armed violence.” He seemed surprised and a little leery I knew that deeply underground imagery. “We’re locked in loaded,” he calmly said. “When we get the call from above, we’re ready to go. Locked and loaded.” Stand back and stand by, someone said.

Whether or not the Bubba Militia would be able to defeat the U.S. military is another discussion, but if the Commander in Chief was also their commander, it might not be that hard. Even if they couldn’t, as Timmothy McVeigh demonstrated in 1995, they’re willing to take out a lot of innocent civilians in their long game to make America that again. That America, where kids were safe to play “Smear the Queer” in the street and you know who better be off the street when the sun goes down.

Civil War is just a movie. I was pretty freaked out the first time I saw Night of the Living Dead and I’m not too concerned about a zombie apocalypse (although HBO’s The Last of Us has me thinking about it). But we know the Trump harbors fantasies of a regime of retribution if he is elected, democracy be damned. And we know the heavily armed MAGA minions are fueled by the politics of grievance and entitlement. There’s a reference in Civil War to “Portland Maoists” and the “antifa massacre” that reminded me of the summer of 2020 when caravans of armed Trump supporters drove into Portland from the exurbs to attack BLM protestors. It just feels close, and that I should have a plan to protect my family.

In the meantime, while either side stockpiles supplies, I’m going to continue to find ways to bridge the divide. It does’t have to be like this. We have so much the unites us. Red state and blue states share some deep connections that can bring us back from the edge. Our movie can have a different ending.

Bridging the Great American Divide: Stepping back from the cliff that is Civil War II

~ Randy Blazak ~ 3 Comments

February 1, 2021

I haven’t spoken to my father in six months. At the peak of the Black Lives Matter protests last summer, he posted on my Facebook page, “You can either support Antifa or be my son.” I replied, “You know I’ve worked to oppose fascism my entire adult life. I am, by definition Antifa – anti-fascist.” His response was to unfriend me on Facebook. Unfriended by my Trump-loving father.

I know this scenario has played out in thousands of ways in American families as the lines of division have been drawn up. “Trump cult” brother against “libtard” brother, QAnon daughter against “communist mother,” or in my case, Antifa son against “Anyone who listens to the mainstream media has drank the Kool Aid” father. I was going to call my dad after election day, and then after inauguration day. I keep putting it off because I don’t want to hear his fragile old white man “sky is falling/Joe Biden is too old” blather.  (For the record, Joe is eight months younger than my father.) If I can’t heal my relationship with my old man, how can America heal this chasm that separates us? And is this how families felt before that last civil war?

Like a lot of Americans, while watching the January 6 storming of the capitol (It’s its own Wikipedia entry now) unfold on TV, I more than half-expected to see someone I knew (including my older-than-Biden father). We might have heard some great calls for unity on Inauguration Day but it feels like we’re more divided than ever. Trump still holds the reigns of the GOP from his gilded palace in Florida. A large percentage of the 74 million people who voted for Trump think that a large percentage of the 81 million people who voted for Biden were dead people. And complete nut jobs like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green are either seen as prophets or complete nut jobs.

It seems so hard to cross this divide. The mother of one of my childhood friends (who I had a mad crush on when I was 12) just posted something about Biden letting in “illegal immigrants who carry diseases.” My first response was to call out her racism. That’s what we’re supposed to do, right? But am I just driving her back into her fragile white castle? I’m good on a Facebook smackdown. I’ve got links to New York Times articles, persuasive statistics, hilarious memes, and, if all else fails, a facepalm gif.

Then I remember what I’ve been doing for the last 25 years, helping people leave the white supremacist movement (WSM). There are two ways to think of the WSM. The first is a fractured subculture of hate groups, white nationalists, and anti-immigrant organizations. The second way is to see the white supremacist movement is as America writ large. The real advocates of making America white again are not Klansmen and Proud Boys, they are people like my friend’s mom who would never own her own racism. “I’m not racist, but…” So maybe the things I learned about extracting Neo-Nazi skinheads could be helpful to talking to people stuck Trump’s in narrow nationalist vision of “patriotism.”

How has this improved your life?

One of the questions that has helped to get racist to rethink their commitment to racist activism is, “Has anything about this choice you’ve made made your life better?” They’ll sputter a bit and maybe parrot some line about finding “pride.” But then you push them with questions about their family relations, their economic prospects, their legal problems, their love lives and they’ll start to see they’ve painted themselves into a corner. The silly “white utopia” that they are physically fighting for isn’t coming and they are increasing socially isolated. I had one troubled young skinhead tell me, “It’s so hard to be racially pure and know what to eat. I love Mexican food but I can’t eat it anymore.” He left the movement shortly after that.

I wonder how my father’s life has changed with his devotion to this failed businessman from Queens. He chose that over a relationship with his son. It must be hard to be a Trump loyalist, having to believe so many things that are obviously untrue; that COVID-19 is “just the flu,” that the January 6 insurgence was a false flag plot by Antifa, that Trump won the election. The emotional labor it must take to ride the wave of disinformation while everyone around you watches you fall down the rabbit hole must be taxing. Just like the QAnon cult that saw their prophecy fail when the “Storm” failed to materialized to prevent Biden’s swearing in, Trumpists must have to expend a lot of energy to just not look crazy. 

We’re always telling racists that life is better on the other side, with our wide open cuisine and limitless playlist. Maybe an open invitation to Trumpists to break bread at the mosque and talk about Jesus in a black church would work. When you take off your Giuliani-stained blinders, so much great comedy, music, and NPR is there to enjoy. All that Ted Nugent and Scott Baio must get old. There’s so much celebration of life over here. Invite a Proud Boy to a Gay Pride parade. They kinda seem like overlapping circles anyway.

The power of the open hand instead of the clenched fist

I get it. It’s fun to fight. I’m always up for a few rounds with my high school posse, most of whom have become pot-bellied Trumpies. Sarcastic insults worked in high school so let them fly. I have a 50-something classmate who still calls me “Ballsack.” I won’t say he’s been emboldened by Trump’s bullying. This guy was always a prick. The political banter can take on a sport-like quality. Who gets the best jibe and obscure historical fact in last? I have dialed down my social media time (at the request of my wife and humanity), so I get a lot of “He stopped responding. I won.” Cheerio, desktop gladiator.

But the stories of haters leaving their racist lives have a similar element. Most had someone who they were supposed to hate reach out to them. A Muslim, a gay bashing victim, a black man harassed by Klansmen. In The Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead, former skinhead Frankie Meeink tells the story of a Jewish boss who helped him out of a tight jam and how he never wore another swastika after that act of undeserved act of kindness. I published a book chapter in 2004 after numerous interviews with former Neo-Nazis remarking on the pattern that females in their lives (girlfriends, teachers, daughters) had helped them out by showing the hate that they experienced as females was no different than the hurtful hate their men expressed as racists, opening the door to empathy.

I’m currently reading The Opposite of Hate: A Field Guide to Repairing Our Humanity by Sally Kohn. She describes how both sides of the political divide are pretty good at dehumanizing each other. Internet trolls can lay some pretty hateful rhetoric on their victims, but referring to them as trolls makes them less human as well. Hillary Clinton’s 2016 “basket of deplorables” comment dehumanized Trump supporters who she accused of dehumanizing others. (We don’t put people in baskets, Hill.) 

Remember when Barack Obama said in 2004 that. “The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states”? In fact we’re all shades of purple. We’re not so divided as we pretend to be and there’s more that unites us. As a life-long anti-racist, I can have a pretty good conversation with a racist skinhead about our common love of Slayer albums or classic WWF wrestling stars. Then, if we have time, we can get to the deeper stuff. I promise you this; no Nazi has ever stopped being a Nazi because they were told they were wrong just the right amount of times. You’ve got to win hearts and minds. I have to remind myself of this fact when I’m armoring up for a Facebook battle with my Georgia homies.

Being a part of something that matters

The teenage skinheads and the old white men who stormed the Capitol have one thing in common. They all want to belong to something that matters. The skinheads I studied wanted to save American from Jewish communists and the Trump loyalists want to save America from, well, Jewish communists. The both see a country that is about to “cease to exist” because of perceived enemies of “real Americans” and feel the rush of engaging in a great historic cause to the “save the country.”

The left has a similar raison d’etre, as we call others to, “Man the barricades!” and burst into lyrics from Les Miserables and Hamilton. “We’ll tell the story of tonight. Let’s have another round!” When I was getting teargassed by the police last summer at the George Floyd protests, I had a feeling that I was a part of something that really mattered, a page in American history. A younger version of me might have seen fit to hurl a projectile at the symbols of oppression. (Older me has several friends who are cops.) We want to feel like we are bigger than just our small one man/women shows. That we can change the world for the better.

The Trump loyalists and Nazi skinheads feel the same way. They see an injustice, however upside down or lie-based it might be, and they want to set it right. “Raise a glass to freedom. Something you will never see again!’ as they sing in Hamilton. What if they were brought into our great cause, the cause that expands the rights millions of Americans, not one that expands the right of one bloated con-artist to become America’s first dictator?

One of the best weapons against hate is an organization called Life After Hate, made up of former extremists, like Frankie Meeink. They use their time in the rabbit hole of racist violence to pull others out and advertise the waste of the dead-end world of hate. There are plenty of former Trumpies, Proud Boys, and QAnon cultists who can serve a similar function. I’ve interviewed militia members and former militia members, and the formers have all said the same thing, “I wish I could meet my younger self and talk some sense into him.” The Life After Hate members are a part of something that matters. Former racists make the best anti-racists, because they understand the humanity of the racist.

Adapting to these times

We’re in strange times. The uncertainty of life makes the comfort of a perfect conspiracy theory seem all that more appealing. It creates a world that is easily understandable. But unfortunately it also creates a world where half of the country thinks the other half is brainwashed, and vice versa. This may be the time to reach out. 

My friend’s mom felt like I was picking on her on Facebook and I responded that I loved her and that her ignorant comments broke my heart. I forgot that calling a white person in the South “ignorant” is essentially calling them “black.” (The phrase “ignorant black” has long been a part of the racist Southern lexicon.) She immediately shut down and ended the conversation. I forgot how to talk to fragile white people. I should have said, “I don’t think YOU are ignorant, but I find some of your racial comments not based in fact.” I apologized for my poor approach hoping to have another opportunity to reach out to her. Nobody said this would be easy. Part of me wonders why I should waste any time with people whose thinking is so entrenched in fear and hate and conspiracy theories and just incorrect information. But another part of me thinks that nothing is ever going to change unless we try. As Axl Rose once sang, “I don’t want a civil war.”

I understand this approach centers the haters and doesn’t address the trauma caused by the hate itself. But one way to allow the victims of hate to heal is to stop the wounding done by the haters.

OK, I’ll call my dad. 

Real Americans Burn Confederate Flags

~ Randy Blazak ~ 2 Comments

June 28, 2020

Seeing this weekend’s vote to remove the Confederate stars and bars from the Mississippi state flag gave me a moment of hope in the progress of this once violently divided nation. The Confederate battle flag was first added to the Magnolia State’s flag, not during the actual Confederate era, but in 1894, 29 years after the end of the Civil War. It was inserted as a pro-Jim Crow protest against the Reconstructionist federal forces who were trying to integrate southern states into a nation free of slavery. We had a similar moment in Georgia in 2001, when the state finally canned the rebel stars and bars that had been placed in the state flag in 1956 to stake Georgia’s claim in racial segregation. Change happens.

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But so what? It’s just a piece of cloth. Yeah, a piece of cloth that has been a fixture at Ku Klux Klan rallies for over a hundred years. In probably the least expected “woke” move this year, NASCAR banned the Confederate flag, but you’re still going to see it flying at NASCAR tailgate parties. Why are we so hung up on this red, white, and blue banner?

Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Tick tock, time is up on the traitors who cling to the Confederate battle flag of the Northern Army of Virginia. (It’s not even the actual Confederate flag, but don’t expect ahistorical bigots to actually read history books.) All true-blue Americans should rip those flags off the Antebellum porches and mobile homes from across this great country and set them alight. And here’s why.

1. The Confederate Flag is the Flag of Treason

You would think that people who are still fighting the “war of Northern aggression” in their minds would actually know something about the Civil War. Without the replaying the entire bloody conflict that started before RACIST TERRORISTS attacked a United State military instillation called Fort Sumpter on April 12, 1861 and ended when Robert E. Lee surrendered his traitorous forces at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, there is just one thing to remember; the Confederate States waged war against the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. And the USA won. USA! USA!

To be pro-Confederacy is to be anti-USA. What do these rednecks not understand? America, love it or leave it, dumbass.

The South’s act of treason led to the death of 360,222 American soldiers from the U.S. Army, Navy, and Marines. That’s a hell of lot more than on 9/11. How can you “support the troops” and fly the flag of the forces that killed over 360,000 of them? Do you also fly the ISIS flag?

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There are those who claim the Confederate flag as a non-racial flag of rebellion, nothing more. I remember fairly decent white guy Tom Petty using the flag as a backdrop on his 1985 Southern Accents tour. In 2015, he declared the move “downright stupid.” “I wish I would have given it more thought, “ he told Rolling Stone magazine. A lot of people are giving it more thought right now. But if you want a true rebel flag, I’d like to suggest the rainbow flag. You wanna rebel against society, Johnny Reb? Fly that Pride flag. Be proud you’re a rebel! Let’s fill the stands at Talladega with rainbow flags! Yee-haw, girlfriend!

But it’s not a “rebel flag.” It’s a racist flag. I was doing a presentation at a high school in an unnamed town in Oregon (Hood River) and I noticed a ton of Confederate flags on backpacks and lockers and t-shirts. I asked the students why, so far from the Old South, the Confederate Flag was so ubiquitous. One young white student, said, “Well, the Mexicans have their flag. We want ours.” And when I said, “Wouldn’t the flag of the United States be your flag?” he said nothing. Because he wasn’t a rebel. He was a racist. Rebels rebel against white supremacy, they don’t wave a flag to uphold it.

2. The Confederate Flag Causes Americans Emotional and Psychological Trauma

There are approximately 42 million African-Americans in the United States (according to the 2010 Census). I’m guessing that every single one of them understands what the Confederate flag means. Well, maybe not black babies, but I bet that black toddler holding the “I matter” sign in the (Dixie) Chicks “March, March” video knows. It represents centuries of terror of white supremacy that didn’t magically end in 1865 when the traitor Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox.

Let’s be 100% clear, race does not exist as a scientific fact. It was created by white Europeans in the 17th century to justify their superiority over other people. The enslavement of Africans was cleared by Pope Nicholas V on June 18, 1452 when he declared the people of Africa to not have souls and therefore not be fully human. The history of racism was built on the dehumanization of people whose roots were in Africa. And the history of America was built on the brutal enslavement of those people.

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And if you don’t know American history, let me tell you that that enslavement was brutal beyond belief. Rape and torture and kidnapping were “light” days in the slave trade. There’s a reason the true history of the slave trade is populated with stories of women who killed their own children to prevent them from becoming the white man’s slave. Whites love Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben and the Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah happy slave. “They were better off as slaves than living in Africa,” a white person recently told me. The violent savagery of the slave trade is the worst kept secret in America, but whites today are in mass denial. Like all that brutality was wiped clean at Appomattox.

 

“Slavery ended in 1865. What are they complaining about?” “I never owned a slave. Why are they angry at me?” “Get over it!” You hear white people say all kinds of things to get themselves off the hook of their white privilege. The truth is the savage brutality of slavery, became the savage brutality of Jim Crow, and then became the savage brutality of a criminal justice system that saw a uniformed officer of the law choke the life out of George Floyd for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, while onlookers recorded the modern-day lynching.

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To be black in America is to live with both the inherited trauma of the legacy of slavery that violently defined black men, women, and children as less than human and the present trauma of a white supremacist system that will murder you just for going on a jog. It will certainly pull you over, ticket you, deny to medical service, not give you a home loan at a good rate, make people get off an elevator that you get on, and cause Becky to dial 911 when you’re having a BBQ with your black friends. The numbers don’t lie. Racism is alive and well in every aspect of American culture, and if you forgot about it for a sweet second, there’s some idiot with a Confederate Flag decal on her Honda Accord to remind you that you can’t breathe in America.

The trauma of anti-black racism is real and deep and the Confederate flag does nothing to heal the pain of 42 million African-origined Americans. It only deepens the wound. Real Americans want to help their fellow Americans heal. We don’t support the flying of the Nazi flag because of the trauma that causes, so why do we tolerate the flying of the Confederate flag? And both the Nazis and the Confederacy had their asses kicked by the USA!

Let’s Be Clear About What This Flag Debate is About

Whenever someone says that tearing down a statue of a slave owner or removing a Confederate memorial is “destroying history,” I like to inform those people is that there is this thing called BOOKS. There’s a ton of good history alive and well in books. I just put “Robert E. Lee” in the search engine at Amazon and came back with over 8000 results. “Confederate States of America” generates over 4000 results. Confederate history is not dead, it’s growing exponentially in books.

But, but of course these people don’t read. They don’t actually care about history.

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What they care about is preserving white supremacy. They will claim not to be racists but work desperately to block every local, state, and/or federal action that might serve to dismantle white supremacy. And they’ve got a president who has promised to defend Confederate memorials and make America (white) again. But nobody’s buying it anymore. Nobody is buying the honky shuck and jive that bleats, “It’s heritage not hate!” It’s a heritage of hate. And you better see the Mississippi flag’s death as the end of your plantation fantasy. Your “Southern culture” is on the skids. You wanna “preserve” it? Write a book.

Real Americans reject the racist divisiveness of that stupid flag. Real Americans know we have to work to heal the wounds from centuries of rape, murder, kidnaping, dismembering, and traumatizing of our black neighbors. Real Americans know anyone who flies the Confederate battle flag hates all that is good and possible about this country. Let’s have a mass flag burning and out of the ashes will rise the promise of America.

And to my fellow white people, now is the time step to the right side of history and be better people. Tom Petty and NASCAR did it. So can you. It’s only a flag. You can’t destroy history, you can only make it.