Confederate Flags
Dear Editor: Thank you for Mr. Stephen Courtright’s impassioned plea for Sitkans to get rid of their Confederate flags (Sentinel, Aug. 14). My question for him and those who feel the same is as follows: What will you do about those Sitkans who choose NOT to get rid of their “Crossed Stars and Bars?’’ Take it down for them?
I seem to recall within the past year or so a couple of local Good Ole Boyz who paraded around on a main intersection downtown with similar flags, sidearms, and semi-automatic rifles. I can’t help but wonder how them folks – among others – would react to efforts to remove their flags?
To his credit, during his Charlottesville press conference on Aug. 15, President Trump uttered one of the few intelligent and intelligible things he’s had to say ever since getting elected: “When,” he mused, “will the demands start coming in to purge America of all those monuments, memorials, and memes honoring the slave-owning (even while President) George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe?”
All those folks enraged about Confederate statues, flags and other memorabilia would do well to ask themselves that very question, and contemplate what answer they get.
For this retired U.S. Army Master Sergeant, the sight of American citizens holding a flaming torch and marched across the campus of the University that Jefferson built – complete with heil-Hitler salutes and the accompanying obscene chants – makes me literally, metaphorically, and physically want to puke. And to shudder for the future of this nation.
I could only wonder how many of those alt-right/White Super-Patriots – all dressed up in their signature, de-rigueur battle gear and other TrumpLandia fashionista costumes carrying their nite-swords – how many are actual, real-world (as opposed to Nintendo), combat veterans? I’d have loved to have rounded up a bunch of World War II European Theatre Vets (especially those guys from those all-Negro units), and have them had a ring-side seat for the parade.
Meanwhile, the same folks in charge up there at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue who can’t seem to get anything done but sanctions (helps “Put America First,” “MAGA,” etc.) confront the debt ceiling debate, and how to pay for the new $1 trillion defense and fatherland surveillance-secrecy-security budget. Won’t that be fun? Plus, 9/11-XVI is right around the corner. Won’t that be interesting?
JG Moebus, Veterans Against War (Sitka Platoon)
