In a small antique shop in rural Holmes County, Ohio, I saw some Confederate battle flags for sale. They were packaged with American flags under the marketing line "fly these colors with pride." Is there a more appropriate representation of contemporary white American society? 1/
America today is a society obsessed with its past, but large elements of this society are unwilling to reckon with, much less even acknowledge, the complexity of that past. It's much easier to slice the past into a neat & nuance-free "before & after." 2/
People who are "like in mind & like in skin," to quote the @drivebytruckers, rally around an America that was "great" once & can be great again. For these folks, issues like race, class, gender, even history itself become crude tools for stoking modern resentments. 3/
The people who comfortably fly the Confederate flag alongside Old Glory, the people who think America can be great "again, they're your relatives, neighbors, & co-workers. Decades of simmering right-wing propaganda has been hatching them like orcs inside Saruman's Isengard. 4/
Donald Trump didn't create these people, he just dragged them out of Isengard & brought them into American Middle-Earth. Red trucker hats & Rebel flags are totems of their free-floating white resentment. They don't want to preserve history, they want to strip it of all meaning.
@threadreaderapp unroll.
