They Risk Upsetting The Bulk of Their Customer Base

[The Grand Nudger]

Firstly, it's the battle flag of north virginia, not the confederate flag, and secondly..it doesn't characterize hate any more than my crossed rifles with the scroll "cold steel" or the union jack - but, unlike my crossed rifles or the union jack...it does remind us of something uncomfortable and embarrassing about our country.  

It's something, sure, but it's something pandering and ignorant....and that's amusing given that the general idea seems to be that offering this flag was pandering to ignorance in the first place.  There's no nice way to say this...but a person who sees the battle flag of north virginia and immediately jumps to hate, is expressing exactly that which they are criticizing.  It doesn't actually matter whether or not the person agrees with that "hate", therein represented, or whether they vehemently oppose it.  Both groups are fantasizing about some hated "other" group.  Both sides are fantasizing about the meaning of that flag, or it's promise.  It;s a fucking battle flag...and tame in comparison to many which we still use and no one bats an eye about regardless of how much blood has been shed while they wave.  If walmart pulled my units battle flag off the shelves there would be chest thumping aplenty about how unamerican it was to do so.  This we're comfortable with, though, because the stars and bars were on the wrong side of history and the wrong end of the table come time to wave a different flag, a white one.  This we're comfortable with, because -two- ignorant groups have a fantasy regarding what that flag represented or why the drums were beat for war.  We have mytholigized that conflict immensely, myths need villains, and villains need a villainous flag to fly.  

This is a battle flag that american soldiers fought and died under.  It flew just a hop and a skip away from DC (the reason it's so often mistaken for the confederate flag in the first place....Richmonds proximity and the ferocity of battles where it flew - and other confederate states desire to honor or emulate those they saw as the first and front lines).  The lack of respect for that (from both sides), to me, is positively fucking -disturbing-.  Then again, this is Murica!, where we only respect the winner.

For flavor, here are a couple of flags my family fought under during the civil war.  

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Apparently one of those, but not the other, "characterizes hate" , or some such bullshit. I know, I know...my point would be equally lost on some racist shithead who -also- thinks the confederate flag he flies stands for white supremecy, but so does wearing a god-damned pillowcase on your head...and Walmart still sells -those-, huh? If Walmart stopped selling bars -and- pillowcases those motherfuckers would rally under a flattened bud light can..........