There are over one hundred Confederate soldiers buried there. Most were sent to a hospital in the area from from the Siege at Vicksburg. About sixty of 'em are unknown. Like so many, they gave not only their lives but their existence to assert the independence of The South...to live free from what they rightly saw as an imperialistic United States increasingly dominated by rapacious industrialists.
Yet what do I find at Doolittle Cemetery yesterday?
This demented gesture again...the stripped rag!
I'm willing to concede that who ever You are...You at Doolittle, You at Okolona,...meant no harm. I'm sure, standin in line at Walmart with these tacky plastic flowers, you felt it was a magnanimous gesture you were making. We're all Americans now...these boys should be recognized as the great Americans they were, etc. Of course logically this could only mean that they were being forgiven...can you not see that?
They are in need of no forgiveness. What they deserve is respect for the sacrifice they made. Not only is this gesture highly disrespectful...it's disgusting. That flag has been slapped on every Southern thing that its representatives have deemed worthy of taking...from our towns to our music, our books, our food and our booze. These men were not Americans...like the blues, William Faulkner and Cokecola....they were of The South, they were Southroners, and they deserve to rest in peace as such.
It may come as a shock to You...but there are those, many of us direct heirs of these men, who don't give a fig about the U.S.A...U.S.A. Who don't see it as anything other than an imperial construct...a phony "nation." Without malice, we see no genuine ancestoral, cultural, or historical ties that give any meaning to the idea of a Nation that stretches from Main to Arizona...Michigan to Mississippi.
Whoever You are, if it's possible, think before You decide to do something like this again. In fact it's best you do think about it...twice.
*“Meridian with its depots, store-houses, arsenal, hospitals, offices, hotels, and cantonments no longer exists.”
General..W.T. Sherman, U.S.
I hope you removed that offensive rag from that hallowed ground.
ReplyDeleteIt is gone my friend.
DeleteThe same type of people who ask why we still have two minutes silence for Remembrance Day and then talk over the top of it.
ReplyDeleteLeast you put the wrong right
Yes ma'am.
DeleteThis is the second time in a couple of months I've seen this...around Vetrans Day and Memorial Day. Just gonna have to beat these folks to it...or, talk with the Sons of Confederate Veterans about posting some signs.
"Numbskulls...Please Don't Plant U.S. Flags on Confederate Graves!"
Wow man I am on the other side of the world and know how offensive that act was. Be like laying a British flag on a Scottish grave. It should be a hangable offence those boys are probably turning in their grave over that. Hell I would come back and haunt the idiot if I was one of them.
ReplyDeleteTime does not heal a wound that big, a fractured culture and a way of life that can never be brought back. I hate nothing more than cultural insensitivity. It sucks.
And your right, about the north it was nothing more than a grab for the wealth and way of life enjoyed in the south. How different our world would be today had the north not won.
It would be a very different place indeed...probably unrecognizable.
DeleteAs ridiculous as it is...I think these people mean well but they sorely misguided. It needs to stop.
Who would even consider doing this at the burial grounds at Wounded Knee for instance?