Possible Early Death for Southerners Pleases Northeastern Elitist

(Edited December 7 for length and organization,  and to give the title a more Brooks-D.-Simpsonesque feel.)
On October 24, 2012, Kevin Levin posted at Civil War Memory a screenshot of a few comments from the Southern Heritage Preservation Group (Facebook).  The comments were about a Confederate flag with Obama's face to the side.  Here's the SHPG screen shot:

One side of Obama's face is bright red, and an SHPG commenter said, "It does appear that Obama has been bloodied by it."   Another rejoins, "Not bloodied enough."

Apparently this stirred Kevin Levin's righteous northeastern elitist indignation (and that of several of his comment thread myrmidons) to an extremely pleasurable level.  He wrote: 

"I hesitate sharing this with you, but it is another wonderful example why the Confederate flag is slowly receding from public view.  It should come as no surprise that this screenshot comes from the Southern Heritage Preservation (facebook) Group.  The image was posted by Gary Adams, whose commentary is unintelligible.  Now I have no idea who is responsible for this sick image, but what I find incredible about the comments that follow is that these are the same people who claim with a straight face that the flag does not have racial overtones." 

 Of course, the flag, being an inanimate object, has absolutely no overtones of any kind.  Overtones are supplied by the minds of human beings. I'm sure someone as intelligent as Kevin Levin knows this, but why let a little thing like truth and logic get in the way of throwing a pleasureable conniption fit of righteous indignation aimed at the scummy South and it scummy denizens?

Levin says, "Now I have no idea who is responsible for this sick image..."  He must not want to know, because it's easy to find out who is responsible for it. I found out within about ten seconds of starting a Google search that the flag is available from UltimateFlags.com: http://www.ultimateflags.com/Rebel-Obama-new-flag-for-sale.html 

Here's an enlarged shot of the flag for sale on their site.

I note two things -- this is not a photo of an actual flag.  There are no hem-stitched edges, etc.  It is possible that the flag exists only as a digital design, and none will be manufactured unless they are ordered and purchased.  In any case, if you look carefully at Obama's face, it is not a normally colored photo/image with red smeared on one side (the perceived blood).  The colors of Obama's face, in addition to the red, are dark maroon, greenish/brown, pink and white.

What this appears to be -- what these colors indicate -- is that this is somebody's very bad photoshopping attempt to duplicate the colors of the Shepard Fairey "Hope" poster.

Let me emphasize that.

What this appears to be -- what these colors indicate -- is that this is somebody's very bad photoshopping attempt to duplicate the colors of the Shepard Fairey "Hope" poster.

Of course, acknowledging that robs righteous northeastern elitists of the pleasurable activity of verbally excoriating Southern sinners. Much better to go along with the mistaken impression that Obama's face looks bloodied and work oneself up into a pleasurable, racial righteousness fit...

Interesting that  Kevin Levin's myopic view of history focuses so intently on "the dark story of lynching and organized violence against African Americans during the 1950s and 60s – often in full view of a Confederate flag." This is a focus that ignores organized (government) violence aimed at white Southerners during the War Between the States... and that ignores organized (government) violence aimed at American Indians for generations.

Apparently, organized violence is not Levin's actual concern.  It only becomes important depending on who it is organized against.
 
Why is some organized violence not worthy of mention?   Well, pointing out the government's brutal war on white Southerners does NOTHING to give northeastern elitists the warm fuzzies they get when they evilize Southerners, which I'm convinced is the actual motive underlying these race-focused "civil war" blogs.  How does looking at the brutality suffered by white Southerners showcase Southern white evil?  It doesn't.  It showcases the evil of the government.

Ditto the government's oppression of and brutality toward American Indians -- totally USELESS in evilizing white Southerners. Therefore, it is ignored, downplayed, in blogs devoted to the evilization of white Southerners.

Said evilization is best accomplished by painting the fate suffered by Southern blacks, during and after slavery, as the worst thing any humans have ever suffered since the dawn of time. Because, you see, Southern white evil exists in EXACT INVERSE PROPORTION to black misery and suffering.

This is why I have grown convinced that elitist historian-bloggers who so enjoy evilizing white Southerners don't really care about black folks themselves.  Their "concern" for actual black folks is vague, nebulous, impersonal. They see black folks as tools or weapons for beating white Southerners over the head with.

This comes from the hammer-beaten meme that anti-black racism is the worst motive any human being can have. That's because the South's slaves were black, and they are the weapon of choice for eviling Southern whites, whom northeastern elitists simply cannot stand.

This explains why the establishment media (and Southern-hating "civil-war-haha" bloggers) can go into an orgiastic frenzy over Trayvon Martin ("white-hispanic" on black racism and violence), but virtually ignore black on white racism and violence...

For example, the Knoxville Horror
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murders_of_Channon_Christian_and_Christopher_Newsom.  

Ditto the Wichita Massacre...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wichita_Massacre

Wikipedia and the mainstream press usually do not show images of the men that tortured and murdered these white kids.  No, you have to go to private blogs, some of them overtly racially conscious (like that of certain civil war bloggers, but in reverse), to find pictures of the torturers and murderers:

http://worth-reading-blog.blogspot.com/2010/08/knoxville-horror-channon-christian.html
http://nicholasstixuncensored.blogspot.com/2010/12/forget-me-not-wichita-horror-update.html
http://www.wichita-massacre.com/

And these are just two cases, chosen for inclusion in this post to illustrate mainstream media indifference to reporting black-on-white crime, even at this level of brutality and horror. There are many more -- and their number is growing -- given grudging coverage in news media, when covered at all.

Pardon me for noticing, but I wonder whether, to Kevin Levin, the horrific, skyrocketing level of violent crimes committed by black perps (against both white and black victims) is not also a "dark story"? Notice that when the crime is homicide, white offenders comprise the smallest number of murderers, and white on black murder the lowest on the charts, hovering in all of them just above zero.
 http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/homicide/race.cfm

This horror is happening all around us, from border to border and coast to coast (except, possibly, in the lily white enclaves where these evilizers of white Southerners live) and getting worse all the time. But what do these righteous northeastern elitist civil war bloggers focus on?

Digital images of the Confederate flag on the Internet.

While Levin's blog post is interesting, but not surprising -- it's a theme he's hammered over and over -- I have to admit I found the words of one of his commenters truly shocking.  I reproduce it here. (It references  a comment by John Hall that was apparently removed from the SHPG screenshot.)

Keep in mind that this woman's career is in the healing/medical field.

 If you find that screenshot difficult to read, here it is in text form:

Michaela Levin October 25, 2012 at 10:09 am 16

Actually the translation of the German sentence is: “Black man does not belong in the vicinity of our flag”. Of course, as the “elite” minds of the SHPG go, the grammar in the German sentence is wrong. However, I am not surprised to see that they use the German language for racial slurs. If they were in Germany they probably would still find many arguments why Hitler was such a “success”…all in the “gentle” spirit of “heritage”, excluding Jews, commies and the rest of “them”. The only thing that makes my day is that the overall education these people enjoy and their general attitude to life, especially their choice of diet will statistically make enough a difference that they croak earlier than the average person in the US. Bless their heart!

They use?  John Hall is a THEY?  I thought he was a HE.  This is typical, transparent verbal trickery often used by Southern-hating bloggers (Simpson seems especially fond of it)  -- attributing the comments of one or a few to the many, presumably to make the "Confederate menace" look dangerous, and vastly larger than it really is.

I next note her baseless charge about what "they" would do if "they" were in Germany. She doesn't say how she knows this, but I have to assume she doesn't hang out on proSouthern groups and sites, as I do, because if she did, she would know, as I do, that references to Hitler and Nazis are miniscule in number and hardly positive.

But what truly took my breath away when I first read this was the sheer hatred in this smartass observation,

"The only thing that makes my day is that the overall education these people enjoy and their general attitude to life, especially their choice of diet will statistically make enough a difference that they croak earlier than the average person in the US. Bless their heart!" 

 It makes her day to think "these people" will "croak early."

Look closer at her comment. She implies that human worth (i.e., worthiness to live a normal lifespan) is determined at least in part by their educational level and "general attitude to life" -- though we have no idea how she knows what that attitude is --  and then expresses joy ('makes my day") in the possible early death of "these people" due to their diet.

It's unclear whether she means the four people named in the screen shot or all 1,837 members of the Southern Heritage Preservation Group. It is also unclear whether she extends her hatred and death-wish to the groups her husband loves to hate (the SCV, Virginia Flaggers, etc.) -- or just all white Southerners.

Regardless of who she includes in her death wish, are there others among my readers who see wishing early death on anyone blatant overkill (pardon the pun) as a response to the comments on the SHPG screenshot? Even the "not bloody enough" comment is not an outright death wish for Obama  the way Levin's is for "these people.". 

As for John Hall's purported German-language wish to protect the flag from blacks (identified by Michaela Levin as a "racial slur") -- well, it IS the NAACP, not the Huguenot Society or the Mayflower Descendants,  who's been crusading for the removal of the flag since before the 2000 South Carolina boycott.

What is there about those sentiments that would cause reasonable, decent human beings to joy in someone's early death, even hypothetically?

My last question is, why are political criticisms of Obama, including tasteless but non-serious threats of violence toward him, so awful for these folks, but these tasteless but (presumably) non-serious threats toward George Bush weren't worthy of mention?

Scroll down through these horrific photos and tell me that ANYTHING in that little SHPG screen shot comes close to this hatred and violence.

http://www.zombietime.com/zomblog/?p=621

Why are these ignored by "civil war" bloggers and northeastern elites who post on them?  Because Bush's Administration has nothing to do with "civil war memory"?  But-but-but ... isn't civil war memory whatever Levin SAYS it is? Interesting that Levin found reason to mention Bush in several posts on his blog, so he perceives SOME kind of connection...  But not enough of one to deplore the hatred for Bush exhibited in these images, apparently.

Yep, double-standards abound in the worlds of anti-Confederate bloggers and their commenters. Whatever reprehensible sentiments were expressed in the SHPG screenshot, for sheer, visceral hatred, they were thoroughly neutralized and far overshadowed by the comment by Michaela Levin.

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