In my neighborhood (mostly blue-collar, solid middle class, pretty rednecky, but most people keep their yards and houses neet), one guy has a US Marines flag and the US flag flying from his truck. Okay, not so bad, but I just noticed a front plate (we have only one issued plate for the rear, not two like in California) with the Confederate flag and an eagle’s head airbrushed on it.
That was Step 1.
Step 2 was the Confederate flag sticker with “Heritage – Not Hate” emblazoned on it, stuck in the back window of the truck.
Okay, update: this weekend I was paddling on the Susquehanna River between Cooperstown and Oneonta NY. We (my daughter and I) rounded a bend in an otherwise empty-of-human-habitation section of the river and came upon a house overlooking the water, a house with three flags:
–A large US flag;
–A large POW/MIA flag; and
–A superlarge, humongous, ginormous Confederate flag dwarfing the other two.
My daughter said, “I haven’t seen one of those for a really long time.”
Saw a slave flag hanging in the back window of a bubba truck in Northwestern Ontario, Canada, earlier this week. Bubbas being bubbas, it might be that he is a racist asshole who hates blacks despite there being extremely few blacks at this end of the province (tens of thousands of slaves made it to Canada via the underground railroad, but in those days our end of the province comprised of a fur trading post in the midst of First Peoples), or it might be that he is simply is too dumb to understand why the slave flag is so offensive to so many people. My guess is both.
Hey, I’m across the state line from you, I guess. I don’t care so much if you have a “Rebel” decal or whatever, if you’re not a dick about it. But some people, well, they may not mean any harm, but they don’t come off so well putting the giant Battle Flags on their houses kind of right after a mass shooting by a racist.
And there’s just enough history of KKK and WAR activity around here that people might think you’re one of those.
I’d mostly stopped seeing the vehicles that had them, let alone any new ones… till just a bit ago. Then down the road zipped a jeep with the top off flying a big, brand new looking flag. The way it was attached it would have to come down to put the top on so it’s not even just attach once and leave it. It’s extra work to hoist it each time the top comes off.
Make the count post furor:
11-12 unique vehicles with flags
1 unconfirmed possible
1 truck hitch cover