Editor,
As we leave behind a disastrous 2020, we enter into 2021 with hope. But a word of caution – unless we can sew together the lesions that divide our country, it looks to be another challenging year.
On January 6, America and the rest of the world witnessed a most shocking and heartbreaking scene. On a day we should have been celebrating Georgia’s decision to choose a Black and a Jewish senator, Domestic Terrorists invaded our US Capitol and riotous mobs raised the Confederate flag parading it throughout the halls and chambers.
These people are not “patriots” – they are white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
The Confederate flag has never flown inside the US Capitol – not even during the Civil War. And yet this flag, this symbol of hatred and repression, as of today, continues to fly all year long in our Eureka Springs cemetery.
The US went to war against the Confederacy. Why do the Cemetery commissioners still think it is a good idea to display this divisive symbol that magnifies such an ugly chapter in American history? Ask them.
Kathy Attwood
Ask them what? Why do the Commissioners continue to support the Confederate Battle flag flying in our city Cemetery? While, if you did get an answer at all, it will probably be the typical run around that the flag represents Southern nobility and an honor to the memories of the soldiers who waged war against the United States. When truth is that these commissioners are either intimidated by right wing neo-Confederate extremists who tout the nobility of the lost cause–or the commissioners themselves have a deep sympathetic streak in their hearts for the flag despite all the divisiveness it represents today, sweeping slavery and everything associated with it quietly under the rug..
The letter writer asks, “why do the Cemetery commissioners still think its a good idea to display this divisive symbol?” I have two theories about it. First, I think that the Cemetery commissioners are intimated by these neo-Confederate right-wing extremist people who continue to propagate the idea that the Confederacy was a noble cause. Secondly, and highly probable is that these commissioners possess a personal sympathetic streak in their hearts for the Confederacy, including its flag, and everything it represents today, sweeping white supremacy and slavery quietly under the rug.