The past four weeks have been an exciting time for anyone who enjoys watching others flip out. The shrill screeds that have been presented have been quite entertaining. They are enough to make one sit back with a bowl of popcorn and enjoy the show.
The current fuss about artifacts of the old Confederacy is silly, so silly that not even John Cleese would walk this one.
The various extrapolations presented by people simply defy reason. For example, consider what Nolan Finley writes:
What started as an appropriate debate over whether a flag of rebellion and oft symbol of racism should fly over public buildings has become an obsessive purge. The rebel banner is suddenly deemed so traumatizing that it’s unacceptable even in the silliest settings — “Dukes of Hazzard” reruns were yanked off the air — and in historical contexts — pressure is mounting to remove the flag from national battlefield parks and cemeteries.
As could have been predicted, the Confederate flag is just the beginning. Across the South demands are being raised to scrub away all antebellum remembrances that suggest any measure of Confederate heroism or glory.
The idea that the Confederacy was created for a noble reason is an idea that is a fantasy, and there are occasions when a fantasy needs to be exposed for what it is. However, doing so doesn’t require that every artifact of that fantasy be eliminated.
Sometimes, a statue of a person is just a statue regardless of anything that the person did. The same is true for a road or a piece of property named after a person.
A statue serves as a piece of art no matter who it looks like. A road or a piece of property would serve its purpose even if it were unnamed. The effort to eliminate statues and names (click here for an example) is a fool’s errand that not even Don Quixote would make.
Yet, it isn’t just the opponents of statues and names who are tilting at windmills. Defenders of the Confederate flag have been guilty of their own form of hysteria.
Let’s cut to the chase. The effort to keep the Confederate flag from being displayed in inappropriate public places doesn’t equal an attack on conservative values or Republican values, and nobody is trying to deny one the right to display said flag on one’s private property.
In contrast, there are folks to would deny one the right to eliminate said flag from one’s private property, as seen in the case of the owner of a certain car that features said flag. Such hypocrisy is amazing.
The same is true regarding the effort to whitewash said flag’s historical symbolism of racial oppression. Some folks may have been fooled into believing the whitewash, but others haven’t.
As that great American philosopher Dilbert once said, “All Humans are irrational.” The truth of that saying has never been more evident.
So, drop the histrionics about artifacts of the old Confederacy. Life is too short for such silliness. One would be better off imitating Dilbert by singing a tune. If one doesn’t prefer singing a tune, then one can always eat a bowl of popcorn (or catcorn if one is a Melmacian).
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By the way, some party is trying to profit from the current national brouhaha by preying on gullible people with the following Internet ad:
The word “BANNED” in the ad is a falsehood.
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IMAGE CREDITS
Featured Image: Tilting at windmills by Gustave Doré (1863). In Public Domain. Retrieved from Wikipedia .
Statue Image: Statue of Lee by Leo Lentilli located in Charlottesville, Virginia photo by Einar Einarsson Kvara. Image retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.
Internet Ad: Taken from a screenshot.
Image of John Cleese: John Cleese as a Civil Servant in the Ministry of Silly Walks. Screenshot from Monty Python’s Flying Circus episode, Dinsdale (Alternate episode title: Face the Press). Image retrieved from Wikipedia, which states the following:
Though this image is subject to copyright, its use is covered by the U.S. fair use laws because:
1. The screenshot is of lower resolution and quality than the original video (copies made from it will be of inferior quality).
2. No free or public domain images have been located for this content.
3. The screenshot does not limit the copyright owners’ rights to distribute the show or DVDs in any way.
4. The screenshot is intended to represent the nature of the show. Its inclusion in the article is important as an example of an element specifically detailed in the article.
5. The screenshot is being used for informational purposes only, and its use is not believed to detract from the original show or DVD in any way.
The “Wanted” posters say the following about David: “Wanted: A refugee from planet Melmac masquerading as a human. Loves cats. If seen, contact the Alien Task Force.”