The stars and bars are coming down all across the old south. High time, in my humble opinion. This does, however, represent a kind of gallows conversion on the part of many of the region’s politicians who capitalized on this symbol of their racist past throughout their noxious careers. Now they’re climbing over each other in a scramble to be out front on the flag issue. The political calculus has shifted with respect to the battle flag of the confederacy, and political leaders see the loss of this symbol as an opportunity to gain some easy points. No policy changes – just remove the flag and we’re all good, right?
It’s vintage American political theater, kind of like the ubiquitous flag pin. (Pin on, hero! Pin off, traitor!) We are so obsessed with symbolism that we invariably miss the fundamentals. Reverend Barber was talking about this over the last few days, countering a lot of the happy talk about everyone coming together and pulling down that offending flag. Seriously, when I watched Nikki Haley making her dramatic announcement, all I could think of was the thousands of working families in South Carolina – many of whom are African-Americans – who could benefit from Medicaid expansion under the ACA, if only she and her party would allow it. Sure – symbols mean something to those who have suffered under them. That’s reason enough to pull the stars and bars down. But let’s not stop there.
King V. Burwell – The ACA (“Obamacare”), not to mention a large sector of our economy, is still alive, thanks to the Supreme Court. Further evidence that John Roberts, while a full-blown corporatist and a tremendous dick, does not like to throw the card table over or set the house on fire. Killing the subsidies for coverage would have punished working class to middle class folks. Meanwhile, all of those people in Republican led states just above the poverty line (but too poor to go to the exchanges) have to go without. So good news for some of us. But again … more work to do.
luv u,
jp
