Someone messaged me to ask if I was "looking forward to the coming civil war." This person lives in this part of the country now but does not have roots in the southeastern U.S. They may or may not be aware that tornadoes ripped through my hometown last month. Parts of it still look like a war zone. Even though I am actually a native of another county in Tennessee, I feel a lot of affection for the place I live in and like many people here, have lingering feelings of sadness mixed with relief that it wasn't worse.
Only someone who is insane, evil, irretrievably stupid, or a mix of all three would wish this on their own home, much less on anyone else's. Don't say you love this country and declare you want to rip it to shreds in the same breath. Remember the CSA? Some of those people are family and I love them, but they were also seditionists. Their continued citizenship and by extension mine were restored by the good grace of people who wanted to see our country healed. How dare you profane the legacy my ancestors worked so create by cheerleading the very people they fought at various points in the Twentieth Century.
Would you tell your relatives to their faces that you now feel loyalty to people with ideologies they were trying to protect the U.S. from? Don't lie. You know you wouldn't. I've seen your type slink away when older men and women bearing warrior marks from those conflicts cross your path. They're dying out, but that does not give you permission to wreck what they sacrificed so much to see happen.
In short, yeah, I know -Too late!- take several seats. Can you say who your people were and where they fought? No? Am I surprised? No. Guess which one of us could join The Daughters of the Confederacy? I'll give you a hint. (whispers) It's not you.
I wrote this three years ago and stumbled on it this morning. It still applies:
"Not gonna hate. I was a stereotypical default Southeastern chauvinist until I was a few months shy of thirteen. Then a librarian in the Lubbock County Library System cracked the right books for me. Everybody has to learn at some point.
The bellicose, blustery offspring of Mumma'n'Deddy get a pass until they have their own Damascus Road moments if they're lucky. People who remain willfully ignorant into adulthood and those who wrongly underestimate those of us who refused the Kool-Aid will end up with well-deserved claw marks. This is the way."
Yes, I watched The Mandalorian.
You have been warned. The grownups are tired of your nonsense. You want to cosplay the tough people you aren't and never were? Go find someplace else to create your dystopia. The rest of us have enough we want to do that does not entail being cruel jerks.
This was written in memory of my fourth cousin, Alvin York, who was a real hero and who spent his remaining years as an advocate for peace, prosperity, and education for all!
Pax vobiscum, y'all!
Jas Faulkner
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