Juneteenth

This past June 19th was the 150th anniversary of the United States Army's glorious victory over the fascist trash that called itself the Confederacy. Sadly, it was overshadowed by a white terrorist trying to keep the Lost Cause of the South alive - and, for the really thick among you, that Cause is terrorizing African Americans.

Let's get that perfectly clear right off the bat: Dylan Roof is a flag-burning, anti-American twerp who is one tan away from being another ISIS shovelhead. He explicitly killed the three men and six women of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church because they are black and he had appointed himself the vanguard of an expected race war. And every single pol and pundit who has tried to distance his crime from that hideous Confederate rag is a fool, an enemy, or both.

If you've been here before, you may have noticed a fondness for Grant and Sherman and the other brave boys in blue who battled the worst fascist state in history from 1861 to 1865. That's because, for all it's ridiculousness and mindless cruelty, the United States is still leagues better than the Confederacy and fer chrissakes, those treasonous creeps started a war to preserve chattel slavery! No, it was not something more nuanced or "states rights" or whatever other lies you've heard:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

Straight from the monster's mouth. The Confederacy was of, for, and by the slave-holding class of the South who didn't want to grow up and join the modern world. The vain dream of rich imbeciles who wanted to preserve their feudal demesnes and compliant serfs. And the best thing that ever happened to them was Sherman burning down their sad little kingdom.

We don't need no water, let the motherfucker burn!

Though clearly it was only temporary. The sore losers of the South, even in the wake of a blatantly Neo-Confederate terrorist attack, are still crying that old saw about "Heritage Not Hate." Claiming that removing their precious traitor's flag from the South Carolina capitol is some sort of "cultural genocide." Even asking the stupid question of "Are white people safe in black churches?" because they are perpetually scared of warmer, browner, and more industrious peoples. They're even trying to call the suckers who fought for the Dixie Dumbass Dream "brave" and "Americans."

Rot all of that. The Confederates, from the lowliest private to Robert E. Lee himself were at best dupes and more commonly vicious reptiles disguised as human. Nathan Bedford Forest, who pioneered the concept of war crimes, spent his years after the war forming the Ku Klux Klan. A dozen other Southern "gentlemen," magnanimously spared from the gallows by a too forgiving Union, endeavored to re-create slavery in everything but name: blacks were barred from suing or even testifying against whites, blacks could be "bailed out" of jail by whites in exchange for indentured servitude, and black men were lynched en masse for the crime of merely existing. A greater reign of terror than the Jacobins ever managed and all because these dumb crackers still couldn't accept that they'd lost.

Monuments to this grand state of denial exist in all the former traitor states. Statues and monuments to the American ISIS who fought for slavery and tortured even other white people at the infamous Andersonville POW prison. Taking down their flag should be just the first step, followed by toppling these edifices of treason and fascism. Just like Saddam Hussein's statue in 2003, Old Glory wrapped around their ugly mugs. To all the cries of "heritage" and who cares what else these dead enders might offer, there is the reply voiced by Sherman 150 years ago:

All the powers of earth cannot restore to them their slaves, any more than their dead grandfathers. Next year their lands will be taken, for in war we can take them, and rightfully, too, and in another year they may beg in vain for their lives. A people who will persevere in war beyond a certain limit ought to know the consequences. Many, many peoples with less pertinacity have been wiped out of national existence.

The Confederacy is dead. Good riddance. Now let's see it buried.