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Head on over to freemanbeyondthewall.com forward slash support and do it there.Thank you.I want to welcome everyone back to the P. Caniano show to returning guests.John Slaughter, how are you doing?
Oh, you know, Pete, it's Friday and I'm going to have a nice discussion with two good friends.I'm doing pretty good. Awesome.
Awesome.Yeah.This is going to be great.What's going on, Paul?How are you?
It, uh, things are going very well.Thanks again for having me on and thank you, Mr. Slaughter for coming on.
Alright, so this is a conversation.
You mentioned that Paul and I, for most people who don't know, Paul and I are doing a Golden Age of Spain series, and on episode, officially episode 4, but really episode 5, we started talking, and I think it was afterwards,
And we started talking about flags and symbols.And Paul started talking about American symbols.So I'll give you the floor, Paul.Why don't you introduce the subject?
For those of you who have followed me for a while, you understand that one of my biggest fonts of inspiration, and in terms of artistic creation and content creation and understanding, and specifically in political myth-making, is Fallout New Vegas.
The reason I like Fallout New Vegas so much is I really do think it has, like, canon-tier writing to it.Chris Avellone, who did a lot of the writing for it, is an excellent, excellent writer who's written many, many, many great games.
Um but the reason i like fallout new vegas so much is that it's a it's a you know.Parody to the point of insanity of insanity of ludicrousness.
Of which allows you to better understand whenever the bad parts of your world are exaggerated the pitfalls and shortcomings of the of the world in the society you inhabit.
And so there's a character in the game Fallout New Vegas by the name of Ulysses.And Ulysses, you know, used to be a sort of an equivalent of a scout slash spy slash special forces slash like, you know, you know, sleeper operative infiltrator.
Who, you know, kind of did all of those things.That was one of Caesar's frumentaries, for those who are unfamiliar with the game, they kind of serve this unique role of people who go deep, deep, deep undercover behind enemy lines.
And in the game, actually, one of them is so good at it that he ends up achieving a high rank within the military of Caesar's Legion's primary enemy, the New California Republic. But I don't want to get too much into that.
But Ulysses is interesting because his whole thing, his whole character arc is about symbols, very specifically symbols.
And he specifically talks to you, the player character, about the symbols of the two big nations in the game, the New California Republic.
And caesar's legion represented by the bear and the bull respectively and he talks about the differences of those two symbols and the men that uphold those symbols he talks about how.
The ncr and in this post apocalyptic world and fallout after a nuclear war is just a recreation of the.
Terrible 21st century corporate quote-unquote democracy that caused the nuclear war and it's just repeating the same mistakes over and over again, but then he critiques the bowl as Like every war like society.
It's it's it's too reliant on forward momentum on constantly being at war with neighbors Right, and so he talks about how both are flawed but the symbol that he wears on his back is
Is the fallout universes american flag it kind of changes in the game.I don't want to talk about fallout for too long but this kind of sets the scene of what gets me thinking about symbols right.
Because nations in many ways can be reduced to their simple that's what symbols are symbols are a picture a sign. Which we assign a certain meaning to and you know if you see that picture or that sign that meaning is immediately.
Brought into your mind when you see the low like it like to the point where you see our avatars are characters. I'm like you see my profile picture mr slaughters profile picture mr pete's profile picture.
It's a symbol you know it resonates things in your mind even someone's face can be a symbol.You know you or or the whole of a man can be a symbol this is why statues are so important because i'm when you see the picture of the man.
The ideas that that man lived in the ideas that that man in body are. immediately get inserted in your mind.This is also why flags are so important.
Flags immediately bring up a certain connotation of symbols into your mind, you know, and different national flags throughout time.
You know, you look at the flag of the Second Reich, of the Kaiser's Germany, and you think of a whole different set of things from when you see the flag of the Third Reich, or the flag of the First Reich, for that matter.
You know what you see the betsy ross flag you know to bring this to america and talking about american symbols when you see the betsy ross flag.
You think of a different thing than when you see the modern american flag or when you see the pine tree flag the appeal to heaven flag.Or the gadsden flag or the primary flag that pete's background is based off of.
in part that has us talking here, the Confederate flag or specifically the one everyone thinks of is either the Confederate Navy Jack or the battle flag of the Army of Tennessee.It's not the actual Confederate flag, but we all know that.
But that flag specifically has all of the meaning assigned to it and it's a very very very powerful symbol i can tell you why it's a powerful symbols a powerful symbol because it's been banned and taken away from so many places you don't do that to symbols that have no power.
To kind of finish this up and then hand this off to either of you gentlemen, the reason that I believe that that symbol is banned and pushed down and kept out of public consciousness is that when Americans see that symbol, when they see the Confederate flag, instantly, in all of their minds, they see a picture of a society where white people are, number one, Christian, for a very large extent, and number two,
Explicitly, legally, politically, racially superior to any other non-white group of people, you know, in the fact that they possess a nation at the expense of other people, right?
That and, you know, for good or for ill, that's what the symbol conjures in people's minds, right?
And people could argue that the symbol has transformed, maybe it means different things, but that's primarily, and it's the same reason why I think the statues of the men who fought under that flag,
have been taken down is that when people see statues of those men, when people see that flag, specifically white people, they have in their mind an image of a society in which they, even if in an imaginary sense, live in a better political position than the society in which they currently live.
And so with that, I want to see what you gentlemen think.
Go ahead, Mr. Slaughter. Well, I think as Paul was speaking and he was explaining the power of symbols, the first thing that actually kind of came to mind was, Mark, my French is terrible.I think it's a gay or Augie.I don't know my French.
But anyways, in his essay on non-places, one of the fundamental
Concepts of what makes a place valuable to an individual is the fact that when you grow up in a place, you can operate sort of on assumptions because you don't have to communicate everything because it's communicated to you.
And if you think of the way the way a child learns to talk.You don't sit down and explain everything to them or teach them every word.They observe these things and they learn them, you know, basically, they learn through observation, right?
It's not a classroom setting.And because of that, the home becomes familiar through this process of sort of the unspoken assumptions.And that creates this feeling of the familiar.And I think that's a big part of what
these symbols are, specifically, you know, for the Confederate flag, it communicates so many things without words, and it creates this sense of meaning and purpose, not dissimilar from the way a home makes an individual feel.
And I think because of that, it has a certain type of power, or symbols have a certain type of power that nothing else can really replicate except for maybe the feeling of home, but then you could argue that home is a symbol in and of itself.
But the Confederate flag is an interesting case because I grew up, you know, in a world where it wasn't considered, you know, sort of this polemical or this negative symbol at all.I even remember as a child going to a Hank Williams Jr.concert
And, uh, behind him is this, this enormous Confederate flag with, um, with a Phoenix on it.And, and nobody batted an eye at that at all.And, and even in my lifetime, I watched it sort of melt away and get turned into, to something else.
And I don't know if that started the first incident.I remember that is South Carolina removing, um, or actually it's Mississippi, I believe moving, removing the, uh, changing their state flag.But I think we're at a point now where.
a lot of people have forgotten that when we think of the post-war consensus, and as it recedes, what goes with it, we often think of, you know, the mid-century Germans, we think of World War II, people often forget that the Confederacy is a victim of the post-war consensus, and as that
the leaf system sort of melts away with the boomers, that symbol, I do believe, is going to be up for grabs, to be sort of not necessarily reinvented, but to be reused and reestablished without some of the baggage that has kept it out of the public eye for so long now.
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Yeah, as you were talking about that, it reminded me of.Marcia Eliade's book The Sacred and the Profane.Which basically?Talks about how.It talks about symbols.It talks about myth.It talks about ritual, but it also talks about how.
When something happens at a certain place where it, whether it be somebody believes a miracle happens, a battle happens, a statue is put up. now that place has become sacred.
Now that place has become something that people point to, that a mythology is built around.And that's one of the things that has to be destroyed by the post-war consensus, is anything that is, anything that you can point to
that comes from the past, that comes from history, that takes away from their power, that takes away from what they want you to look at, what they want you to concentrate on.
And the flag, you know, it's like the first time I remember where I was the first time I ever read about, you know, the war between the North and the South.
I remember how I felt about it even being a northerner and just being like, oh these They call themselves the Confederate States of America They didn't call themselves The Confederate State of England or France or something?
They weren't trying to They weren't trying to leave behind their history.They weren't trying to leave behind who they are, who they were.
They were just splitting from a people who had basically made everything that they were about, had tried to turn everything that they were about into something that was forbidden.
and it's really just like you're, it was a grasping and a holding on to where we came from and who we are, and to make it about tariffs, to make it about slavery, to make it about anything other
than mythology and history and those things that bring people together.And in this case, white Europeans together, that had to be destroyed.And that was just the beginning of it.I've said clearly, the line runs all the way through to Nuremberg.
The people who won the war between the states are the same people who won World War I and are the same people who won World War II.
It was just the beginning of creating that new world in which man only gets to live the history of this post-war consensus and this march towards progress.
You know, Pete, I think you raise a really good point that I feel like there will be some people that are going to push back and they're going to say, well, why don't, you know, this, this symbol has so much baggage behind it.
Why don't you get rid of it?But as you, you highlighted this, there's a mythology already behind this symbol and you.To create a new symbol, we would have to arbitrarily attribute value to it or have that new symbol.
raised during a time of crisis in which mythology can be born.
And I think that's something that needs to be clear to people, is one of the reasons that this symbol should be used and not thrown out is because it already has ties to a mythology and a meaning and a purpose and a specific people with a specific goal.
So I think that just that's something that needs to be clear.So people don't think we should just get rid of it and start with something new because you can't, I don't think that's something easily done or that should be done.
Well, and there are times when, oh, sorry, you want to say something, Mr. Pete?
I was going to say, and of course, I'll be real quick with this.And of course, some people will step in and say, well, if you're going to use that flag, then Germany gets to bring back the flag of the Third Reich, or even the Second Reich.
That's just saying there's too much history there.So now you're just opening the door for every, quote unquote, oppressive symbol that has appeared in the past.
And I mean, if you want to rule over a people, or if you want a people to be docile or much less willing to resist certain policies that go against their best interests, one of the best ways to do that is to erase their history, is to decrease the cultural prominence of their history, is to sort of give them a sort of amnesia.
There are times where new symbols can be created writ large, but those are usually times of great strife and suffering in which the strife and suffering is poured into that new symbol, which the value of it is attributed to the amount of strife and suffering that went into the establishment of that symbol.
And frankly, I don't think we're, I mean, we kind of did just come out of a time where, a new symbol was created.The MAGA hat is a symbol that brings with everything.Trump himself is a symbol.Make America Great Again is a symbol.
It's kind of the first murmurings of a great cultural remembering.I'm very glad that it has proven victorious, at least as of recording.And this brings us to the
Like you said mr slaughter you know that you can't it's very difficult it's not impossible it just takes the cut it takes a kind of capital i don't think we have.It takes a lot of.I guess you could say historical capital to.
Create a new symbol writ large a new symbol that may have some like minor. You know uh what's the word i'm looking for precedent but you can't it's difficult to especially in the time in which we live which is a time of attempted reform.
When you're trying to reform something you look for the place where it went wrong you're saying this thing is in a bad place but it's not unsalvageable.
Right um and that's what you know i mean we're both in we're all in the old glory club and that's i guess one of the contentions about.
The old glory club is that the idea of an America is in a bad place, the idea of an American people is in a bad place, and even an American government and an American nation and an American body of laws.
You know, are in a bad place and are very poorly run, but they're not unsalvageable, or at least they shouldn't be thrown out entirely.
There was something of value there at some point, and perhaps to a certain extent, some part of it can be reformed.What that reform looks like is a whole different matter.
And if it can't be reformed, then, well, at least we can start hiding away symbols for when the great time of crisis comes that we can then plant and see flower once the time of crisis passes.
And this leads me to sort of how symbols change over time, and specifically the Confederate flag.
The Confederate flag today does not mean the same thing that it did even when you were growing up, Mr. Slaw, or even when you were growing up, Mr. Peete.
It means, and it kind of, when you were both growing up with it, it kind of mean it started that transition.But the Confederate flag has, at least in my opinion, and you may disagree with me, although I do see a lot of them in Virginia,
Not so many of them in North Carolina, funnily enough.But the Confederate flag has sort of been partially de-territorialized from the South.
You will see more Confederate flags in Oregon, in Eastern Oregon, or Eastern Washington, where the Rednecks live, or in Western Pennsylvania, or in Indiana, or in Southern Ohio, or in Missouri, or places that weren't even Confederate states.
And yet you will see those confederate flags at a much more widespread, much more prominently displayed than a lot of places in the South.And I'm not saying you won't see it in the South, but it's few and far between.
So I think that it's possible that you could
say that perhaps the confederate flag and the fact that it's displayed in so many of these places outside of the south doesn't necessarily mean at least what when they're thinking about it doesn't necessarily mean the cause of or the struggle for southern independence or maybe even
The struggle for southern independence in their mind doesn't mean the struggle for southern independence.If you know what I'm saying there, it's a map of meaning.It's a symbol.I just wanted to throw that out there.
What do you gentlemen think of that?
Do you think that it's possible that it could be transformed into a symbol to represent
something analogous, we'll say, to the original intention of America, sort of in the similar vein that many of the Confederates believed that they were sort of fighting a second revolution for the original intention of the Founding Fathers.
And if that be the case, then it would make sense that it would sort of transcend the South and then be adopted by the sort of the white working class or even middle class across America that sees it or sees that relation to the original founding.
Well, and Mr. Pete said earlier that, you know, the The third word of the confederate states of was America.It wasn't the confederate states of the south.It wasn't the confederate states of Dixieland.
It wasn't the confederate states of, you know, it was the confederate states of America.Their constitution was almost, you know, I don't want to say, it was modeled off the United States constitution.You know, it was a different iteration
Of this same concept which had existed before it was in continuity with the united states of washington and jefferson and others like and they did believe it was a second revolution.And i mean perhaps the listener may think okay well.
Perhaps there is a need for a new symbol which can represent the real america that you know.
Which, when we say the real America, we mean the white people who live in this country, that's the real America, the Christian white people who live in this country and built this country.
Perhaps they made counters like, okay, well, perhaps these people do need a symbol that tells them what they are, but the Confederate flag, as you both pointed out, has all this baggage, you can't, slavery, and you don't want the story of the white man in the United States to be one of oppression, of bondage, of all these other things.
And my counter to that would be, okay, yes, perhaps, you know, even, let's assume you're right for a second, and we can't use this symbol.What other symbol could you put forward that has the same pull on people?
Because that's what I believe differentiates the Confederate flag, besides every other symbol, is that it has pull on people.It puts people into fight or flight.It has a visceral reaction.
And in that sense, it's more art than most art that is displayed nowadays.It forces people to confront something and make a reaction to it, either to totally condemn it or to make peace with it or to accept it and take it up and follow it.
And that's the kind of symbol that mobilizes people in one direction or another.So yeah, I guess you could say I might be alluding to something like that.
Well, I think the power of it can be seen in location.
So when someone in the South goes North and passes the Mason-Dixon line, or when someone who's a Southerner, let's say, goes North of the Mason-Dixon line, and someone who considers themselves to be a proud Northerner crosses the South of the Mason-Dixon line, they instinctively know
they know they're entering into a different world.They're entering into a place where the culture is different, where the people are different, and they're like, well, these aren't my people.
A lot of people think that way, especially people who are attuned, people who have been educated, people who quote-unquote educated, people who have been educated about the war, about the strife, the recent unpleasantness.
If you know about it, crossing either way. People just they know there there's something there's something spiritual there.There's something metaphysical there and you know.To talk about it is just then it just turns into it.
People just start joking about it, but it's not a joke.It's a very serious thing.
It is it is and.And it you know the the ghosts of the past never really do go away.But.
The thing is, a great many Southerners on the eve of, and I don't necessarily want this episode to be a re-litigation of the Civil War, because there's too much of that.
But on the eve of secession, a great many Southerners, very notably including people like Nathan Bedford Forrest and Robert E. Lee,
thought secession was the worst idea ever, and that the South would more than likely lose, and that it was reducing the South, and that the South was economically symbiotic with the North.
And despite how bad... They didn't deny that the North had done very unjust things and had treated the South very poorly.And they did not deny the legitimacy of succession, but they denied the wisdom of it.
That said, however, they stepped forward and fought.Not every Southern general was born south of the Mason-Dixon line.
Most famously, General Pemberton, whose first name I forget, but General Pemberton, who was in charge of the Vicksburg defenses, was born in Pennsylvania, and he had married a Southerner, and that's why he sided with the South.
And he was a very good engineer, and he was the reason why the Vicksburg defenses lasted as long as they did.You compare this to General Thomas on the Union side, who was a Virginia-born Union officer who betrayed his state.
So this is the thing, right?Like, this is the thing.In many ways, the story of the Confederacy is, and the story of the South writ large, is inseparable from the rest of the United States.
And we kind of, Mr. Pete, we talked about this in the Virginia First documentary, not documentary, the thing we did talking about the Virginia First documentary and the idea of Virginia First, which Mr. Slaughter, I think you're familiar with as well.
Yeah, Virginia culture is Southern culture. Virginia culture is southern culture and Virginia culture.Southern culture is American culture.
And I think perhaps the great flaw is to attempt to separate these two things rather than to find a symbol that re-knits the wound, if that makes sense.
You were talking about like Pemberton, John C. Pemberton, Pennsylvania. Someone like that, obviously I'm on his side.I'm someone who was born in the North, raised in the North, but I got South as soon as I could.
What we're looking at is going forward, and instinctively I knew, even back then, that we were gonna come to this reckoning. where you were just going to have to choose sides.And.
It's obvious from, you know, a lot of people call it rural, urban, rural, urban, rural, urban divide.And you do get a lot of that because, you know, even in a lot of the urban areas, I mean, Atlanta in Georgia is no longer a Southern city.
It's just not.It's it's something else.It's a post-war consensus city.It's a Nuremberg city. you're just, you knew instinctively you were going to have to choose.And what you see basically, what I saw was, and what I still see is,
even if people don't want to in the South, they're not willing to say it, they're not willing to express it because it's, you know, it's just not done anymore, or they're scared of the fallout, is that Southerners embrace the history of white America.
And when you see, you know, in Alabama, you don't like you mentioned Oregon and the flags in East Oregon, the flags in East Washington, there are more, you will see more flags in East Oregon flown than you will in Alabama.
And it's, it's not because people have forgotten.It's just because people have, it's almost like it's been put on the shelf. And it's almost like people are waiting for someone to come along and say, it's okay.You can do it.You can be who you are.
You can celebrate your history.You can look at your past and you can be proud of it.And that's not something that in the north, north of the Mason-Dixon line, what is, what are they celebrating other than the post-war consensus?
I mean, you get outside of rural areas, sure, Western New York, there's some great places out there, bright red country out there, same in most of Pennsylvania.
But when it comes down to it, a lot of those people just, they're embracing like that classic civic nationalism, that classic kind of classical liberalism. And they're not embracing the kind of full-on culture that you can really only get down here.
And it almost feels like you have to be someone who's lived up there.
and lived here to experience exactly what someone is talking about when they talk about the South being basically America, that Virginia is America, and that, you know, that flag represents what America was.
As much as people, you know, so many people hate hearing that, even people listening to this probably don't like hearing that.
I think you're 100% correct, Pete.One of the first substacks I ever wrote was in reference to the fact that growing up in the Deep South my entire life, I had never... I always... and it wasn't until I left the South that I met people that would
reference them, you know, talk about themselves as they were Italian Americans or some hyphenated American.And I realized that at some point that the only people that I had ever met that saw themselves as actually American were Southerners.
And that was it.Cause everywhere else I'd been in my life, even in the Midwest, people would identify as being German American.Right.And it was only the South where people just saw themselves as Americans.
And I think, I think you're correct that people are sort of waiting for the go ahead to to use the Confederate flag again.And I, I don't necessarily want to be the optics guy.
But I think a large part of that is because the only people who have still has sort of the the, the guts to use that symbol or is largely the lower class and it's going to take
some of our guys that are going to sort of form a new aristocracy, if you will, to use that symbol and say, no, this is, this is our symbol.
And it's not something to be relegated to, to people that are looked down upon, that it belongs to all of us and that it's okay for anyone in the South to fly it again.
In, in, in some ways I kind of understand what you all are saying.Um, And especially you, Mr. Pete, when you talk about how in the North it's, you know, in many ways it's the people up there, they don't really have anything like the South has.
On the other hand, people in upstate New York wear cowboy boots now.People in upstate New York wear cowboy hats now.People in upstate New York, in West Pennsylvania, in any rural area, There's a book about this called The Southernization of America.
I forget the author's name.But, functionally, rural culture anywhere and everywhere has become Southern.
Like, for better or for worse, there is, you know, there's been this strange homogenization amongst Red America that you have this sort of, this vaguely Southern-ish monoculture, which, you know, has also kind of come to the south as well.
And that has good and bad.And I think that's part of the reason why the Confederate flag is so widespread.
And so if the white portion of the United States has functionally southernized, because that's the only strain of it that has survived the selection pressures of the last however long,
Perhaps then, I don't know how to connect this here, but I guess, I don't really know how to follow that up.
It appears that the country is southernized in response, the white portion of the country has southernized in response to the selection pressures, unless you count millennial, REI, Blue City, Christopher Sandbach hiking culture as an alternative.
I don't know, I'm kind of at a loss here.
Well, my question would be, and maybe either of y'all can answer this, is do you think that if we had people in positions of authority, you know, people that present themselves well as leaders start to use that symbol, that that would be the catalyst that would sort of free it for use for the rest of Americans?
Actually, Mr. Pete, you mind if I take this real quick?Go ahead.So you remember when Gods and Generals came out?I was a baby when Gods and Generals came out.You remember when Gods and Generals came out?
I actually saw it.I actually saw it in the theater.
Being a Confederate was the coolest thing on Earth for a little while when that movie came out, because it made the Confederates just look really awesome.Yeah, it had this thing.
I was going to say, it had the same effect as Braveheart did for Scottish people.
Exactly, right?And Gettysburg had a very similar effect, although Gettysburg was a lot more even-handed.Not to say I dislike Southern propaganda.I love Southern propaganda, but I want it to be – anyway.
It's like, you know, the North and South miniseries, the Ken Burns miniseries, you know, all of these other like media products about it.
Any, you know, any neutral portrayal of the Civil War and people immediately like, you know, like every, the only reason anyone, anyone reads about the Civil War, no one really, no one really reads about the Civil War to read about the North.
They do it to read about the South and like the personalities and the character and all that other stuff.And so the way that you would do it
The way that you do, and this, of course, necessitates some kind of media control, which, oh, gee, I wonder if that was trending in our direction at time of recording.
But when you have some kind of media control, what you do is you make a big blockbuster movie about, you know, like, let's say the Battle of Shiloh or something, or like, or a bio, let's say you do the Robert E. Lee biopic.
Has there been a Robert E. Lee biopic?You could make a Robert E. Lee biopic. of just his whole life from beginning to end.From the repossession of Stratford Hall to his death as president of Washington College.
You could do, there's so much there that hasn't been done.I was kind of, you know, growing up I was very disappointed with how few civil war, like good civil war movies there were.Like there's so many World War II movies.
Like I can count I can rattle off like five or six World War Two movies, but like Civil War movies, there's there's hardly any.There's Gettysburg and Gods in general.And that's that's pretty much it.
You know, I mean, there's many cold, cold mountain.
Yeah, I was going to say cold mountains.
I never saw a cold mountain, but I'll add that to the watch list.I mean, yeah, like that's three, you know.And there's just there's so much there.
And I think part of the reason is because people, the powers that be, do not want the American people to be seeing media depictions of them being brave, heroic, and cool, and fighting for causes that they think are valuable.
But the way that you reintroduce this symbol is you just start doing, like you do the Robert E. Lee biopic, or you do a movie about the founding, You can do a movie about what happened afterwards, but I can't talk about that on stream.
But that's how you do it.You start slowly reinserting the symbol in the public consciousness through just passive media consumption.
And yeah, people may get mad about it, but if you have enough promoting, pretty soon the symbol gets normalized, and pretty soon people start thinking it's cool.So that's kind of how you do it.
I think you're, you're probably absolutely correct.
Cause I am thinking of that, that line from Faulkner and I'm paraphrasing here, but he, he, he makes the point that, um, that at some point, every, every Southern boy pictures himself, you know, online at pickets charge and wonders, you know, if, if the day could go different.
Basically, and I think that's dormant in a lot of people.
And as you said, if you were to start injecting that symbol into popular media, and I also think having people that are respectable enough to carry that, that would awaken that same spirit that Faulkner was referencing.
The, it can't start obviously on the national, I mean, Trump, you, you try to present this.He's well, they lost.
That's the, this has to be something that starts in the South starts to either a local County state, you know, we've already had, I mean, do we even have a state flag left that has the Confederate flag in it or are they all gone?
I think South Carolina was the last one.
So it would have to be something at the state level and it would have to be like a governor, a Lieutenant governor, someone like that, somebody who made the, made the argument, someone who was highly respected, somebody who was beyond reproach because it's,
So what we're seeing is, let's just compare it here.What we're seeing is we're seeing the World War II narrative is having holes shot in it.
quickly because we're in the information age and information travels and independent the regime media doesn't control the flow of information anymore information can go can go through and
you will see in this country the World War II narrative fall before you will see the, you know, the world before the war between the states being, um, you know, the Confederacy seeing a comeback, seeing a, a way of, I don't know, humanizing them.
It's just, it's too close to home. If you have a battle overseas, that doesn't affect the people.It doesn't affect... World War II didn't affect us like it affected the people of Germany, Poland, Russia, France, Italy, North Africa.
But that affected... it was a big effect here. you know, 600,000, it could be, some people say as much as nine, you know, so many of those people dying just of, you know, dysentery, the worst things possible.
And, but the problem, the biggest problem we have is that that post-war consensus is that we deal with, with world war two is it's the same exact thing with world, with, uh, with this war.And in order for this to be done,
I mean, it just has to be done in the most perfect, under the most perfect circumstances and in the perfect environment.And I think it's going to have to be in an environment where the United States as a whole is in the ascension again.
It can't be as a reaction to you know, what Kamala Harris and Joe Biden and this whole post, this whole post Nuremberg regime has done, it's going to have to be in the Ascension.
It's going to have to be like, Hey, let's look at this again, where everybody's where most people are happy about what's happening.It can't be a reaction.I guess that's what I was trying to say.
And I could have said that in two sentences instead of a hundred.
Well, I'm wondering Pete, as you're speaking, I'm thinking,
hypothetically let's say you had the you know the new governor of Alabama who did exactly what you're saying and all of their policies and their prescriptions were at the benefit of Alabamians across the board that would in my mind I'm thinking that would be something that would work because I watched a documentary a few years ago about George Wallace and one of the things that struck me about it was that
They were interviewing some older black individuals.Most of them were civil rights leaders of some sort.And they were shocked by the fact that most of their parents had voted for Wallace.
And when they asked him why, they said, it's because Wallace did more for us than anybody else.And they referenced the roads he built and the schools he built.And I think using that sort of as an example
That could possibly work because despite all the baggage that Wallace had, he still was able to get support from people that you would assume would not support him because all of his goals were to better the people of Alabama regardless.
I remember if it's going to be good.No, I was just I was just going to make a comment.I remember on Wallace's interview, one of the few things I've ever watched with Bill Buckley in and on firing line.
Will Wallace, not Will Wallace, sorry, Ron Wallace.When George Wallace was on Bill Buckley's firing line, I'm remembering how he was debating both Buckley and the moderator, and he was running circles around both.
If you ever get a chance to watch that interview, it really is something to see, because Buckley is trying, as the nascent neocon is, trying to catch him on a bunch of things, and Wallace is just Wallace is sharp as a tack man.
He he does not take it for a second.
It's it's it's something to see Yeah, and that's that that's exactly it is that When you bring it up if you bring it up at the wrong time It's going to you're going to have two on one and you're going to have, oh, this is a, this is an interview.
It's a debate.Well, then the moderator gets into it because especially, especially if you know what you're talking about, especially if you start making sense, especially if you start seeming, you know, your message is sympathetic.
Your message is logical.Your message is something that people can hold onto, especially for hope.
You know, that's why, you know, I think this, this has to start locally, if anything, because the, the amount you see what happens when anyone steps over the line, you know, if a, a governor, a lieutenant governor, the mayor of a, um, you know, a city with more than 20,000 people, if they step out of line, everything,
You know, it's just wars declared on them.So.Yeah, I mean, I think that it's.I think the most important thing is, is that.
it has to be done when, you know, if we're looking at four years of, you know, Elon Musk and his kind of ilk doing everything they can to get this country running right again, and basically what they're, I think what they're trying to do, not to derail this at all, is when they talk about eliminating this,
Limiting this amount of people limit 90% of this thing can go.They're basically taking us back to What America was at one time?
problem, you know the the hardest thing to overcome with that is you know that comes along with waving, you know, the stars and the bars and in order to
use the flag, you know, use the flag of the South, of the Confederate States of America, then it's going to, you're going to maybe even see a kind of Federalist movement of some sort.And maybe a Federalist movement only
works in this kind of way when things are good as opposed to in the middle of a quote-unquote pandemic like 2020 when federalism became a um you know was back on the table and people were discussing it again.
Mr. Sawyer you got anything on that?
No I I'm just thinking that um that that it is also it might be possible that
If federalism is back on the table, or if something similar to 2020 were to happen again, if we were to use the Confederate flag as the symbol of resistance against that, that could also galvanize people.
It could, it could.The thing is, it's been the symbol of resistance for a long time, and resistance in the kind of way I don't like.Resistance in the guerrilla, sort of no victory condition kind of way, where the only victory is survival.
I think, personally, federalism is only going to expand because the federal government is I've said this, I think I've either said this on your show or I've said this on the OGC streams, but I've said this in your presence on air before, Mr. Pete.
The federal government is the weakest it's been since, and it's strange to say that, but it really is.It is the weakest it has been since the Tyler administration, really.
Yeah, it's got a lot of spooky power and concentrated in Washington, and yeah, it does tyrannize the mid-Atlantic pretty well.
But for the most part, the federal government doesn't have a lot of authority outside of its general area, outside of its outposts.
And from what I'm hearing at time of recording on Trump discussing moving all of these different executive agencies out of Washington, number one, it's gonna depopulate Northern Virginia, which thank the Lord, my state will be finally back with the solid South again.
But secondly, Um it's going to this idea of like this decentralized federal government with like you know it's primary agencies in different places you're gonna see a sort of regionalization occur because of that.
And I don't know how you re-centralize something like that in any. In any in any time frame that's it and so it's it's possible you know alongside.
General economic improvement yeah i'm talking about like you know it's possible that if things start getting better that you know you said mr peter new federalist movement kind of merge what's possible that that time is.
Starting to come upon us that time is is is is you know my come soon because the thing is like. Aesthetically, and in a vacuum, there would be nothing wrong with the American flag that we currently have.That is a symbol of the American people.
That is a white symbol created by whites.The 13 stripes of red and white.It's beautiful.It's an aesthetically pleasing flag. The problem with it is, is that that flag has become, has had the meaning of the post-war consensus poured into it.
And more so than the post-war consensus, specifically the post-1964 civil rights consensus poured into it.
That is what the flag is now, you know, as opposed to like, you know, say the Betsy Ross or something like that, which harkens back to an old America, which I don't know if you could adopt as the American flag, but,
It is possible that we're in an environment where something like this might start becoming a thing, might start becoming possible.And shoot, maybe it won't be the Confederate flag that's adopted, but like I said earlier, find me a better symbol.
Find me a symbol that pulls the people better.Find me a symbol that tells the story that the Confederate flag tells.
And that's it, isn't it?We're in a myth war here.Something I was talking about on my sub stack not too long ago.
When they started, when these quote unquote right wingers who are really just classical liberals who are leftists started talking about the woke right.
Because, you know, Darrell Cooper went on and questioned and said that he thought that, he said that Churchill was the villain of World War II.
Well, they're saying that the reason, the reason why we're the woke right is because the left is always seeking to destroy the myths of America.And well,
okay that's fine if you want to do that if you if that's your game is to say well you're doing something the left does that that means you're a leftist and that means you're woke sure you can play that game it doesn't discount the fact that if we're living under a false myth we need to destroy that myth but we not only need to destroy that myth that myth needs to be replaced with something and
what it can be replaced with is something that is familiar, something that is something that has stood the test of, well, something that got put on the back, you know, put into the back, on the back of the shelf. and you can roll something out.
But then again, like you said, it could be something brand new.Whatever it is, it is going to replace, it has to replace these myths, and it has to be its own myth.So it has to be equally as powerful.
And when you talk about the Confederate flag, there are very few that are more powerful. And that doesn't mean that it has to be, that that's a positive power.Sure.It's a, it's positive for many, but it also is negative for many.
So there is power behind a symbol.We have to remember that.So whatever that symbol is, it has to be equally as powerful.And it will, one thing we have to understand, it will unite some. but it's going to divide us from others.
So we can't stay with this post-war consensus myth that we all need to come together.And this only works if we're all together.That's nonsense.That myth is gone.It's been proven wrong.We have a hundred years of trying that, over a hundred years.
It doesn't work. We need a new we need a new myth or an old myth, and we need a symbol and it needs to be a powerful symbol.
Yeah, I tend I tend to agree, and I think something that a lot of maybe people don't understand early, maybe this is just me, but I think that largely what gives, especially when we're talking about flags, the symbol of flags, what gives them power is the sacrifice and the blood spilled underneath them.
Because that's, in my opinion, what gives them the power in the first place.Because it's been proven to be such a powerful symbol that men were willing to die for it.And the Confederate flag already has that, as do most flags.
this is just maybe this is me talking but I tend to think that the path forward because this flag this symbol has so much power is that it has to be carried forward by men who are respectable in the same vein that Lee is respectable and that are proven to be good honest decent people you know in the same way that
you know, we sort of have this, this, this, you see this focus on, on the metaphysics of dress.
We understand the power of that, that extends out outside of just the way that you, the clothes you wear, it extends to the way you carry yourself, the way you treat other people.
And I think having somebody that can carry that symbol and at the same time, Garner respect from all individuals because of the type of person that they are that will allow that will sort of free up that symbol to be used because I do think.
I don't think finding a new symbol is is something we should seek out I think that that happens on its own that's not something you intend to do.And so we have to use what we what we have currently and.
As Pete said, there's really no, I don't know that there's a more powerful symbol for us than the Confederate flag.
Well, and this raises the primary question.The Confederate flag is currently, at least at the end of this live stream, the best entry that we have into, I guess you could say, the grand competition of, as Mr. Pete said, we're in a myth war.
And the post-war consensus, whatever you think of it, was a myth that was suitable enough to last for the period of time that it lasted, for good or for ill.It was a myth that people saw as legitimate.
A lot of people still see as legitimate, though it is breaking down.And a new myth will not come forth very quickly.You will have a great competition.Like, you already saw two myths.And this kind of brings me back to...
The character of Ulysses in the game Fallout New Vegas because he talks a lot about how, you know, myths go to war and one triumphs over the other.
You know, and he talks about how individual people, you know, you talk to me like, you know, Mr. Slaughter, you talk about Lee.Well, what is the, what is the individual of the Confederate flag?It's Lee.There's no one else.
There's no one else who holds up that flag.You know, it is, it is, it is the flag of Lee, you know, even, you know, even the, battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia was a square version of that flag.And, you know, this is the thing.
What other myth do we have?Because the myth that we're looking for right now, we saw two myths conflict two days or three days ago now.
The myth of the culmination of the long march through the institutions of everything that the left had for us, and it was utterly torn apart by the myth of Make America Great Again, and that is currently the ascendant myth, but it's not a long-term myth.
Everyone knows that that myth will end with Trump. But it's suitable enough for now.But in that vacuum, a deeper, much more profound myth will need to be found.
And I think the myth, as crappy as that Civil War movie was, it attempted to at least say something to the situation that we were in.And the question is, what kind of American are you?
And that question, the one good moment in an otherwise terrible movie, is exactly the question that is being asked.What kind of America are we?What is the America we want to be?Because there's more than one.
There is more than one, and the Confederate flag is one.Is one that is very, very, very, very close to what we want America to be.And so, in the coming battle of myths, in the war of belief,
You know what is the myth that number one we want to be the one that triumphs and the one that remakes america in its image.
Um and is that myth a new one that we create completely you know not not totally separate from the past but in continuity with the past.Or do we unearth and revive a cast away myth that still has some possibilities left in it that's I suppose the.
And every myth has a symbol and what symbol represents that myth.So I suppose that's the question we have to ask.
Well, yeah, I. Think that we're.I think we know what needs to be done.I mean, I don't think we the old glory club wouldn't exist if we didn't know what needs to be done.Now it's just a matter of doing it.You know, it's a matter of.
Will people listen to this and, you know, have that, who have that flag and have it hidden, you know, have it folded up and it's in their, in their closet.And will they think about it?Will they think about, you know, do I put this out?
Do I, do I fly it again? we, it's hard questions ask because we know what, we know what the zeitgeist is right now.And it's 100% against that.But how do we start to make little, little strides towards that?
And how do we, um, you know, are you, you know, I guess the question is, Are are you willing to let people know that that's what you that's what you believe?That's what you stand for.That's what you think America is.
And, you know, at this time, it seems, you know, I mean, look.I'm using my real name and I'm not saying I should be proud of that and everything is probably really fucking stupid.But we're at the point where people are anonymous. And why is that?
Because you're saying things in a culture that just isn't accepted.So.
I think that's a good way to think about, you know, well, how do you start showing that this is what you this is what I think America is in a time when showing America what you think it is, you know, can get you to lose your job or not get promoted or.
You know, if you're in the military, you know, face some kind of some kind of discipline, possibly get kicked out.So, I mean, I think these are all good questions.
And I think that's questions that basically need to be individually answered at this point.Or, you know, if you have a if you have a group, if you have some kind of organization,
How would you handle that if you actually agreed that that was what the symbol going forward should be?So I think there's just a lot of questions there.
I guess we can leave it at that, unless you all have anything else to say.
I think that's the best place to end it.So Mr. Slaughter, what do you have to promote?
Well, I just dropped a new sub stack about the sort of the ghost dancing nature of our current holiday season and working on the first draft of my novel.So I guess everybody can be on the lookout for that.
Other than that, I don't have anything pressing at the moment.
All right.I think I have some links from the last time you were on.I'll include those in the show notes.Mr. Fahrenheit?
Support the Old Glory Club.
I knew that's what you were going to say.Support the Old Glory Club.I think we all three of us 100% echo that message.
Yeah, but don't join John's chapter.He's been too busy lately.He needs a break.
Yeah, it's literally almost 60 people.These interviews are taxing to watch, but but it's good to know that we have so many based and extremely competent guys eager to join.Join.
I can't even, I can't even conceive 60 people.I will just say, if you're in Alabama and you've reached out, just please be patient.All right, gentlemen, have a great weekend.Thank you very much.
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