The fall of the Confederate flag

I wish I could say that this was a victory for civility, but it's not. People like Nikki Haley, Rand Paul, and Mitch McConnell aren't dropping their support for the confederate flag because they suddenly realized its unfriendly overtones, or because they suddenly decided it's wrong to offend large numbers of people.

No, it was a cost analysis. It finally cost them too much in terms of general respect to continue supporting the flag or being non-committal about it. But I wonder how they made that calculation. Are there snap polling firms that will alert a politician to such changes in the political winds? Maybe there are. Some firms probably track hashtags, and the pol's PR czar will be watching anxiously. One large polling firm, Public Policy Polling had a poll, but the report didn't break down lack of support by state, so it's hard to tell whether there was useful information there.

Maybe anxious PR czars tracked the number of clicks on stories about the confederate flag flying high over the South Carolina capitol grounds, protected from lowering unless a supermajority of legislators saw fit to debate and vote on it. I certainly clicked on that story. I read the history of the flag in South Carolina, and how pols grumpily moved it off the State House because of a boycott.

What it really symbolized

I also checked the history of the flags' use, and how it was adopted in wake of the civil rights movement. It was a fuck-you to the federal government and to northerners and to blacks and to those who supported the principle that all men are created equal, not just all white men. Fuck all those people! Give them a big middle finger by flying an old confederate battle flag, one that is clearly different from the stars-and-stripes.

So its modern popularity started as a banner for segregationists/racists. Since then it has become many more things, including a fuck-you to all authority figures (a rebel banner), a southern pride symbol, a fuck-you to diversity and political correctness advocates, a redneck pride symbol, and so on.

Hung out to dry

Last week was a very bad week for the confederate flag. First the Supreme Court decided that Texas didn't have to issue vanity license plates with the symbol on them. Then a racist shot nine black people in a church in a southern state that still proudly flies the fuck-you-I-support-segregation flag. That's a PR disaster, I guess.

Still, I'm surprised at how quickly it turned. Has it really become unsafe or unpopular to be a crypto, under-the-radar, soft racist? Can they no longer hide behind southern tradition?

Yes, that's a big surprise. Yet it really seems to have turned. Already Walmart and Ebay have stopped selling goods with the symbol. That is lightning fast--faster than I ever would have expected. I'm astounded, and I hope someday to understand how and why it happened now.

One final thought. I wrote above that I don't think civility has broken out across the country or the South. I'm afraid it's a matter of giving up an outward symbol without changing any actions or any sentiments.

To quote Nathan Gunn, speaker of the House in Mississippi: "As a Christian, I believe our state’s flag has become a point of offense that needs to be removed." Translation: We got away with this hate for a long time, but the party's over.

Image: lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com

Extras. An explanation of the societal and business trends against the confederate flag. HotAir: It's the Dems' fault for "happily tolerating" the flag for years. Is it because social liberals have reached parity with social conservatives? Uh oh--more flags to change. Complete text of the racist shooter's manifesto.

Update 6/24/15. Here's an interesting report. Maybe the PR czars were following what business leaders were tweeting. Possible boycott was definitely in the air. And does Romney deserve kudos for being the first top GOP figure to call for the removal of the confederate flag? Looks that way to me.

Burn them out

I've been thinking lately that the fighting in the Middle East seems different in a vague way. A key here is the vagueness, If I can figure out more precisely what is different, I'll might have a new, important insight that I didn't have before. So let's try.

Al-Queda, ISIS, and Boko Harum seem amazingly cruel. They blow up mosques, they blow up markets, they gun down students, the latter two kidnap girls and boast about selling women as slaves. It's barbaric, and it's definitely not in the stream of 20th century Western European behavior.

So, does it seem strange just because it's cultural different? Maybe. I'm surrounded by a liberal-tinged expectation of civility, support for the unfortunate, fair competition rather than conquest, electoral democracy, freedom of speech and religion, and all that.

Perhaps the ISIS and Boko Harum practices seem strange because they are culturally different. However, that explanation doesn't really work well. Japan and China are cultural quite different without causing the distaste and fear that ISIS/Boko Harum do. Besides, Japan, China, Europe, South American, and the US manage to get along.

What's really horrifying about is how the extent of the rejection of modern, western civility. Even the Taliban, who dynamited a precious piece of history (a huge hillside carving of Buddha), didn't go this far in their rejection of modernity. They didn't try to bring back slavery.

I seriously wonder how this philosophy can appeal to many people, and whether it has much of a future. Certainly, modern life has its bad side. We live in crowded conditions, have cheap, unhealthy entertainments, cheap, unhealthy food, and lives with less meaning and purpose than we'd like. But it seems to me that slavery and beheadings aren't the antidote to modernity. Do some people really want to go back to the cruelty of the past? For some, it seems that the answer is 'Yes.'

ISIS in particular is using cruelty to provoke a response. It hopes to provoke a war between Christians and Muslims, and has lately been ramping up the killings and abductions of Christians. Evidently they would relish all-out war, but the western countries aren't going to give it to them.

It's a better strategy (for the West) to limit their involvement, and let the cruelty of these radicals lead to their isolation. Already Jordan and Egypt are taking a stronger stand against ISIS. If only Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the Emirates weren't so slow in denouncing ISIS and seriously fighting against them. Of course, that is part of the reason ISIS, Al Queda, and Boko Harum have grown--there is too much support for any Muslim fighters, and their cruelty has (up till now) been a selling point. I certainly hope that has finally tipped. Maybe the supporters, who used to cheer the occasional bombing in Israel or the West, are finally repulsed by the amount of blood. It's about time.

Image: barenakedislam.com

Extra. A fascinating description of the religious underpinnings of ISIS.

The high stakes of culture, part 1

Wow. I'm not sure I can do justice to this topic. Today I read a long article on the influence of American media, with its liberal bias, on American thinking and behavior. I have no doubt it's true because I see the effects of culture everywhere.

• Why do we have so many guns and mass shootings? The gun culture in our country. I'm sorry, but a few decades of anti-gun-ownership laws in a few liberal states doesn't change that.

• Why do blacks and minorities do worse on IQ tests? The first place to look is at the huge cultural differences between the creators of the tests and the young minorities taking those tests.

• Why is the south and the midwest so Republican? It stems from the interplay of culture and political movements.  

I'll stop now with the recitation of examples. But even a believer like me was astounded by this:

"The researchers found that areas that gained access to Globo [a major Brazilian TV channel] saw larger drops in fertility than those that didn't... It was not any kind of news or educational programming that caused this fertility drop but exposure to the massively popular soap operas, or novelas, that most Brazilians watch every night... Exposure to this glamorized and unusual ... family arrangement [small family and childless adult women] 'led to significantly lower fertility'—an effect equal in impact to adding two years of schooling." -- reported by Jonathan Chait

Yes, Brazilian tele-novelas depicting small families changed the fertility rate among Brazilian women from "6.3 children per woman in 1960 to 2.3 children in 2000." Wow.

It's no wonder then that traditionalists are so frustrated with and defeated by American mass culture. When TV and movies started depicting gays as OK and pre-marital sex without life-ending shame, traditional values didn't stand a chance.

But there's more to this, I think. Those traditional values were, in part, lies. All gays weren't greasy, sadistic lurkers. Pre-marital sex didn't have to end in shame and exile from your family. It was the improvements in life that accelerated the spread of these cultural changes. That, and perhaps blindness to the downside of the changes. 

These reflections on culture to be continued...

Opening episode of The Bachelor--Tuesday night at 9 Eastern

Image: pictify.com