They Risk Upsetting The Bulk of Their Customer Base

[The Grand Nudger]

Indeed, Shrapnel was a name before it was a thing.....just as one example.  As an example of what the stars and bars stood for (and still stands for today among the non bigoted set of the south)...

Approximately 12,500 men in nine infantry brigades advanced over open fields for three-quarters of a mile under heavy Union artillery and rifle fire. Although some Confederates were able to breach the low stone wall that shielded many of the Union defenders, they could not maintain their hold and were repulsed with over 50% casualties, a decisive defeat that ended the three-day battle and Lee's campaign into Pennsylvania.[1] Years later, when asked why his charge at Gettysburg failed, General Pickett replied: "I've always thought the Yankees had something to do with it."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickett's_Charge

12,500 men, infantry like myself - and americans like many of us on these boards......on foot.....advanced three quarters of a mile under shrapnel and small arms fire on the orders relayed to them by their commander despite having known beforehand that it would fail.  Cold Steel, if -ever- there was any.

Here's a view of the field.....(from the Unions POV)..imagine yourself advancing on this..for me, the prospect is terrifying.


Boy, this wiki page is a goldmine...lol....William Faulkner on Pickets charge, the flag they fought under..... and what it means/meant...a lost cause.

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happened yet, it hasn't even begun yet, it not only hasn't begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it's going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn't need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose than all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago.

Im -my- perfect world...both the klansman who wave it and the people who accept their waving it...going so far as to -give them the fucking flag- would feel shame, and for the same reasons in both cases. We shouldn't be happy to get rid of the flag, we should be wrenching it from the hands of those cunts. It's embarrassing to me, frankly, the manner in which this is so commonly discussed. Our -owners- set us at each others throats and then managed to deflect the indignation and hatred that we should have laid at -their- feet.......at the feet, instead, of a defeated battle flag. I see no cause for celebration in the flag that so many americans died under being treated this way by either side. It's disgraceful.