The 2020 Mississippi flag vote

Mississippi's legislature has voted to change the 1894 state flag, which features an image of the Confederate battle flag.

Diane Pantaleo reports on the vote in What we know, and what's next, for the bill to change the state flag Clarion-Ledger 06/29/2020:

• Speaker Pro Tem Jason White, a Republican, spoke on the House floor in favor of the bill. “Many opponents of changing the state flag say we should stand up to what is right, that we shouldn’t cave to outside pressure … even if it’s bad for business," White said. "I agree with those people... I’m here today because it is simply the right thing to do.”
• Sen. Barbara Blackmon, a Black Democrat from Canton, said she had witnessed several major historical moments, but she never expected the state flag to come down in her lifetime. "The time has come to take this flag down, because it is right," she told her colleagues.
• Sen. Chris McDaniel, a Republican, argued that in the future, people who view the American flag as oppressive may want to take it down as well, and that voters should decide whether to change the state flag. “I don’t see how that makes me a racist," he said. "I don’t see how that makes me a terrible human being.”
• [Republican] Gov. [Tate] Reeves tweeted that he will sign a bill that comes to his desk.

Chris McDaniel is a real piece of work who postures as a hardcore rightwing Republican. (Who is Mississippi Senate candidate Chris McDaniel? Clarion-Ledger 12/10/2019)

His whiny-white-guy comment above isn't novel. You can see his filmed Facebook presentation on it here (06/28/2020). Where you can here his tone of authoritarian condescension, similar to what we hear from Mike Pence. It's kind of a rural high-school principal tone.

He claims what he wanted was a referendum on the flag, which has a specific history. There was one in 2001. He was hoping for a rerun of it.

Ole Chris havin' him a serious talk with his Facebook followers over that thar flag vote

He had this to say about fighting for the lost cause of the Mississippi Confederate state flag:

Ah'm not doin' this to try to hold anybody that voted for the change accountable. Accountability, uh (thoughtful pause), it has to rest with the people that were pushin' the issue. [You know, those people.] ... If you think that the American left is going to be satisfied with this change, you ah mistaken. These are the same people who are tearin' down monuments to George Washington, to Francis Scott Key, to Abraham Lincoln, to Theodore Roosevelt, etceteruh, etceteruh. They will never be satisfied until we make them be satisfied. And the only way to make them be satisfied is to finally tell them No. ...

Look, at some point, you draw a line in the sand and yuh explain to the American left that we are going to either learn to live together or we or not. But part of learnin' to live together is to occasionally be offended by one another. And right now, we don't have that in this country. One side of the equation is shouting and screamin' and usin' violence to git their ways [sic], that is not appropriate and we cannot allow it. The fact that we condone it even through our silence is problematic, It's, uh, (thoughtful pause) it's encouragin' their behavior. We can't do that.

Today we allowed it to occur in this state. An' I'm sure that some of the people who voted for it wur well-intentioned, I do not dispute that. The question, for purposes of thiis discussion is, will it stop? No, it's not goin' to stop, and it's not goin' to solve these problems, and it's not going to bring us closer together under these circumstances.

Gee, I haven't been keeping up enough with Mississippi politics. I had no idea that there was a strong anarchist faction in the Mississippi Legislature that rammed this flag bill through by "shouting and screamin' and usin' violence to git their ways"! Wow!

At the end, he wishes himself happy birthday and bitches about "Obamacare" and whines about how mean God is to him on his birthday. (I'm not kidding!)

His reference to the statues of Washington et al is in line with his indirect quote in Pantaleo's report, "that in the future, people who view the American flag as oppressive may want to take it down as well." He's simultaneously smearing critics of Confederacy idolatry as being un-America and vaguely hinting that the White Power crowd may start going after public symbols that are meaningful to African-Americans and Democrats. And I wouldn't be surprised to see the Republicans try something like that, because they unfortunately have reason to expect that the Democrats would be fairly feckless in their response.

Public symbolism is symbolism. But there's good reason to single out monuments to the Confederacy. Because it was a treasonous uprising against the United States government to defend and expand the institution of African-American chattel slavery. And the Lost Cause monuments were part of pointed political campaign in the postwar period to inspire the resistance to equal rights for black citizens. They are monuments to white supremacy and of hostility to democratic government. As much as politicians like Chris McDaniel might want to deny it, essentially everyone in the US is very aware that the celebration of the Confederacy is about white racism and white supremacy.

There are monuments that recognize a major Revolutionary War general whose name became synonymous with "traitor" in American English. But they show more discretions than the monuments to Robert E. Lee and his fellow Confederate commanders. (Dennis Yusko, Infamous Benedict Arnold finally gets some respect Houston Chronicle 06/17/2001)