Gettting rid of the Confederate flag has suddenly become the latest national obsession, at least among the commentariat and the political class. I haven't read so much drivel since thumping Indiana over the RFRA was the national obsession. I'm tempted to say that flags don't kill people, but that would probably be regarded as crude and insensitive, so let's forget I brought it up.
Of all the commentaries about the issue I've read, I like the one by Mollie Hemingway at The Federalist the best. It is headlined, "Congratulations! You Oppose The Confederate Flag. Now What?"
A lot of the surrounding media-led outrage over the flag seems somewhat cold, given the horror of what last week brought. We had nine black people brutally murdered because they were black and sitting in a church with a history of fighting white supremacy. With all due deference to hatred for a Confederate flag on a pole at the statehouse, this seems like an almost childlike attempt to miss the seriousness of the situation. It’s as if they expect us to say, “Congratulations! You oppose the flag of an army that was defeated 150 years ago. We’re all very proud of you, journalists!” This generation seems to excel at inventing controversies, weighing in on those invented controversies, and then patting itself on the back for being so courageous and open-minded.
She concludes with a paragraph about the "outrage culture" we have today:
We’re addicted to judgment porn, and this is just the latest example. And just like traditional porn, outrage porn serves only for momentary release. Confederate flag burning doesn’t actually do anything to stop racism. It’s a complete sideshow. And once we’ve blown up every confederate statue and smashed every tombstone with Confederate marks and erased all evidence of the Confederacy from our roads, we’ll still have the scourge of racism and every other sin with us.
