Speaker 1: If you want to support the show and get the
episodes early and ad free, head on over to Freemanbeyond
the Wall dot com forward slash Support. I want to
explain something right now. If you support me through substack
or Patreon, you have access to an RSS feed that
you can plug into any podcatcher, including Apple, and you'll
be able to listen to the episodes through there. If
you support me through subscribe, star gum Road or on
my website directly, I will send you a link where
you can download the file and you can listen to
it any way you wish. I really appreciate the support
everyone gives me. It keeps the show going. It allows
me to basically put out an episode every day now,
and I'm not going to stop. I'm just going to accelerate.
I think sometimes you see that I'm putting out two
even three a day, and yeah, can't do it without you,
So thank you for the support. Head on over to
Freeman Beyond the Wall dot com, forward slash support and
do it there.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekingano Show.
Two returning guests John Slaughter, how are you doing?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: You know, Pete.
Speaker 4: It's Friday, and I'm going to have a nice discussion
with two good friends.
Speaker 2: I'm doing pretty good.
Speaker 1: Awesome, awesome, Yeah, that's gonna be great. What's going on, Paul,
how are you?
Speaker 3: Things are going very well. Thanks again for having me on,
and thank you mister Slaughter for coming on.
Speaker 1: All right, So this is a converse that 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 four, but really episode five,
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?
Speaker 3: Absolutely?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So 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
Cannon tier writing to it. Chris Avalone, who did a
lot of the writing for it, is an is an excellent,
excellent writer who's written many, many, many great games. 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 insan 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 and 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 splash,
special Forces uh 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 frumentarius 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, 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 recreate of the terrible twenty first 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 warlike society, 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 the Fallout Universe's American flag. It kind of
changes in the game, and 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 symbol.
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 into your mind. When you see the low
like it, like to the point where you see our avatars,
our characters, like you see my profile picture, mister Slaughter's
profile picture, or mister 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 know, or
or the whole of a man can be a symbol.
This is why statues are so important, because when you
see the picture of the man, the ideas that that
man lived and the ideas that that man embodied 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 of the Second Reich, of the of
of 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 rig for that matter, you know, or 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 symbol. It's a powerful
symbol because it's been banned and taken away from so
many places. They don't do that to symbols that have
no power. And 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 and 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 you
gentlemen to you know, I want to see what you
gentlemen think.
Speaker 1: God, mister slaughter.
Speaker 4: 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 algie. I don't know
my French. But anyways, in his essay on non places,
he one of the fundamental concepts of what makes a
place you know, 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 it's communicated to you. And if
you think of the way the way a child learns
to to talk, you don't 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, well,
they learn them through observation, right, it's not a it's
not a classroom setting. And because of that, the home
becomes familiar through this process of sort of the 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
this sense of meaning and purpose, not dissimilar from the
way a home makes an individual feel. And I think
the 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
this polemical or this this negative symbol at all. I
even remember as a child going to Hank Williams junior
concert and behind him is this this enormous Confederate flag
with a phoenix on it, and nobody bad it than
I at that at all. And even in my lifetime
I watched it sort of melt away and get turned
into something else. And I don't know if that start
the first incident I remember that is South Carolina removing
or actually is Mississippi, I believe removing the 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 two.
People often forget that the Confederacy is a victim of
the post war consensus. And as as that 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
to be reused and re established without some of the
baggage that has kept it sort of on the kept
it out of the public eye for so long.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as you were talking about that, it reminded me
of Marcia eli Odd's book The Sacred in 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,
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 the war between the
North and the South, and I remember how I felt
about it, even being a Northerner and just being like, oh,
these they called 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 that had
to be destroyed. And that was just the beginning of it.
You know, I've said clearly the line runs all the
way through through to Nuremberg. The people who won the war,
the war between the States, are the same people who
won World War One, and are the same people who
won World War Two. 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.
Speaker 4: 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?
Speaker 2: But as you you highlighted.
Speaker 4: 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 that's something that needs to be
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 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.
Speaker 3: And there there are times when oh, sorry, you want
to say some mister Peter.
Speaker 1: Well and 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.
Is 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 that has appeared in the past.
Speaker 3: No. Absolutely, and I mean one of if you want
to 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 is to decrease
the cultural prominence of their history, is to sort of
give them a sort of amnesia. And there are times,
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, you know, which you know, 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 we kind of
did just come out of a time where, you know,
a new symbol was created. The Maga hat is a
symbol that brings with everything, you know, Trump himself is
a symbol, you know, Make America great again is a symbol.
You know, it's kind of the first murmurings of a
great cultural remembering. And I'm very glad that it has
proven victorious at least as of recording, you know. And
this brings us to the you know, like you said,
mister Slaughter, you know that you can't. It's very difficult.
It's not impossible. It just takes the It takes a
kind of capital I don't think we have. It takes
a lot of I guess you could say historical capital. Two,
create a new symbol, writ large, a new symbol that
you may have some like minor, you know, what's the word.
I'm looking for precedent. But you can't. It's difficult too,
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,
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.
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, mister Slaughter, even when you were
growing up, mister Pete, it it means, and it kind
of you 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
made 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 know,
you will see more Confederate flags in Oregon and in
eastern Oregon or eastern Washington where the Rednecks live, or
in western Pennsylvania, or in Indiana, or in southern Ohio,
or in you know, Missouri, or places that weren't even
Confederate states, and yet you will see those Confederate flags
of what much more wide spread, 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
you know, it's it's few and far between. So I
think that the it's it's possible.
Speaker 5: 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
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.
Speaker 3: If you know what, if you know what I'm saying there,
you know, it's it's it's it's it's it's a map
of meaning, it's a symbol. But you know that I
just wanted to I wanted to throw that out there.
What do you gentlemen think of that?
Speaker 4: Do you do you think that it's possible that it
could be transformed into a symbol to represent something analogous
or we'll say, to the original intention of America sort
of in the similar vein that many of the Confederates
believe 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 it would make
sense that it would sort of transcend the South and
then be adopted by the sort of the the white
working class or or even middle class of across America
that sees it or sees that relation to the original
founder founding.
Speaker 3: Well, and mister Pete said earlier that you know, the
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 and insert. 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 incontinuity with the
United States of Washington and Jefferson and others like 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 we mean, 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, you know, they may counters like, okay, well,
perhaps these people do need a symbol that that tells
them what they are. But you know, the Confederate flags,
as you know you've both pointed out, has all this baggage.
You know, you can't you know, slavery, and you can't
you know, 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 let's assume you're right for a second, and we
can't use this symbol. What other symbol, could you put
forward that the same poll on people? Because that's what
that's what I believe differentiates the Confederate flag Besides every
other symbol is that it has poll on people. It
puts people into fight or flight, It puts 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, you know. So yeah, I guess,
I guess you could say I might be alluding to
something like that.
Speaker 1: Well, I think the power of it can be seen
in location. So when someone in the South goes north
and passes to Mason Dixon line, or when someone who's
in when someone who's a Southerner, let's say, goes north
of the Mason Dixon line, and someone who considers themselves
to be a norther, proud northernner 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 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 have been educated about the war, about you know,
the strife, you know the recent unpleasantness it. If you
know about it, crossing either way, crossing either way, people
just they know there's something. There's something spiritual there, there's
something metaphysical there, and yeah, to talk about it is
just that it just turns into it. People just start
joking about it. But it's not a joke. It's a
very serious thing.
Speaker 3: It is. It is and and it you know, the
ghosts of the past never really do go away. But
the thing is a great many, a great many Southerners
on the eve of and this is I don't necessarily
want this episode to be a relitigation 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 Roberty Lee, thought secession was
the worst idea ever and that the South would more
than likely lose, and that it was reducing the South,
that the South was economically symbiotic with the North. And
you know, despite how bad they didn't deny that the
North had, you know, had done very unjust things and
had treated the South very poorly. They did, and they
did not deny the legitimacy of succession, but they denied
the wisdom of it. That said, however, they you know,
stepped forward and fought, and you know, I mean, and
there were there were shoot there. You know, 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
is he was a very good engineer, and that's and
he was the reason why the Vicksburg defenses lasted as
long as they did. You know, you compare this to
General Thomas on the Union side, who was a Virginia
born Union officer who betrayed a state. And you know,
so this is the thing, right, like, this is the
thing in many ways the story of the Confederacy is
in and the story of the South large is inseparable
from the rest of the United States. And we kind of,
mister 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 mister Slaughter,
I think you're familiar with as well. Yeah, Virginia culture
is Southern culture. Virginia culture is Southern culture, and Virginia
culture large 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.
Speaker 1: You were talking about like like Pemberton, John C. Pemberton, Pennsylvania,
someone like that. You Yeah, I obviously, I I'm with
I'm on his side.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It's I'm someone who was born in the North, raised
in the North. But I got as I got as
far as 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 coming, we were
going to 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,
the oral 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 were 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 they're scared of the fallout is that the
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 area, sure, western New York,
there's some great places out there, you know, bright red
country out there. Same in most of Pennsylvania. But when
it comes down, 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 you have. 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.
So many people hate hearing that, even people listening to
this probably don't like hearing that.
Speaker 4: I think you're one hundred percent correct. P.
Speaker 3: One.
Speaker 4: One of the first substacks I ever wrote was in
reference to the fact that growing up in in the
Deep South, my entire life I had I had never
went I always, 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.
Speaker 3: And that was it.
Speaker 4: Because everywhere else I had been in my life, even
in the Midwest, people would identify as 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 use the Confederate flag again. And 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 had sort of the the guts to use
that symbol or as large the lower class, and it's
going to take some of our guys that are gonna
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
two people that are looked down upon, that that it
belongs to all of us, and that it's okay for
anyone in the South to fly it again.
Speaker 3: In some ways I kind of understand what you all
are saying, and especially you, mister Pete, when you talk
about how in the in the North, it's you know,
in many ways, it's 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 where 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 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 white if the white portion of the United
States has functionally Southern eyed, because that's the only strain
of it that has survived the you know, the selection pressures.
Speaker 2: Of the last.
Speaker 3: You know, however long. Perhaps then I don't I don't know,
I don't know how to how to connect this here,
But I guess I guess I don't really know. I
don't really know how how to follow that up. Is
is the it appears that the country is southernized in
response the white portion of the country have southernized in
response to the selection pressures, unless you count millennial RII,
Blue City, Christopher Sanbatch hiking culture as a as a
as an alternative. But I don't know. I'm kind of
at a loss here.
Speaker 4: Well, 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 catalysts that would sort
of free it for use for for the rest of Americans.
Speaker 3: Actually, mister Peter, you maut if I take this real quick,
go ahead. So you remember when God's in Generals ca
I was was a baby when God's in Generals came out.
You remember when God's in Generals came.
Speaker 1: Out and I actually saw it in the theater.
Speaker 3: Like being a Confederate was like the coolest thing on
earth for a little while when when that movie came out,
because it made the Confederates just look really awesome, like
like that's that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it had the same.
Speaker 4: I was gonna say it had the same effect as
Braveheart did for Scottish people.
Speaker 3: Exactly right. And 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 but
I want it to be anyway. It's like, you know,
the North and South mini series, 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 everything. 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 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 or or like or
a bio. Let's say you do the Roberty Lee biopick.
Has there been a Roberty Lee biopick? You could make
a Roberty Lee biopick of just his whole life from
beginning to end, from the repossession of Stratford Hall to
his his death as president of Washington College. You could do.
You could. 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
two 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.
Speaker 1: And there's many Cold Mountain, Yeah mountains.
Speaker 3: I never saw Cold Mountain, but I'll add that to
the watch list. I mean, but yeah, like that's three,
you know, and and 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,
you know. And but the way that you reintroduce this
symbol is you just start doing like you do the
Roberty Lee biopic, where you do the the you know,
you do a movie about the you know, you could
do a movie about what happened afterwards, but I can't
talk about that on stream. But like like like that's
how you do it. You you 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. You know,
So that's that's kind of how you do it.
Speaker 4: I think you're you're probably absolutely correct, because I am
thinking of that that line from Faulkner, and I'm paraphrasing here,
but he makes the point that 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 that's dormant
in a lot of people. And as you said, if
you were to start injecting that symbol into popular media
and have and I also think having people that that
are respectable enough to carry that right, that that would
that would awaken that same spirit the Faulkner was referencing.
Speaker 1: The it can't start obviously on the national I mean, Trump,
you try to present this, he's well, they lost. That's
this has to be something that starts in the South.
Starts 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?
Speaker 4: I think South Carolina was one.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, 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
yeh made the made the argument, someone who was highly respected,
somebody who was beyond reproach, because it's yeah, so what
we're seeing is, let's just compare it here. What we're
seeing is we're seeing the World War two narrative is
having holes shot in it quickly because we're in the
information age, and information travels and independent the 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 two narrative fall before you will
see the you know, the war before the war between
the states being you know, the Confederacy, seeing a comeback,
seeing 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 two 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,
six hundred thousand.
Speaker 2: It could be.
Speaker 1: Some people say as much as none. You know, so
many of those people dying just of you know, dysentery,
the worst things possible. 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 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.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm wondering Pete.
Speaker 4: As you're speaking, I'm thinking, hypothetically, let's say you had
the you know, the new governor of our 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 the
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 them why, they said,
it's because Wallace did more for us than anybody else.
And they referenced the roads he built, in the schools
he built. And I think, using that sort of as
sort of an example, that 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.
Speaker 2: Regardless, I remember.
Speaker 1: If it's going to be good, no, it was just
I was just gonna.
Speaker 3: 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, Uh not Will, that's
that's sorry, wrong 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,
you know, as like the nascent neo Khan is trying
to catch him on a bunch of things, and Wallace
is just Wallace, as sharp as attack man. He he
does not take it for a second. It's it's it's
something to see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's uh 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. You're going to have oh, this
is 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. Your message is sympathetic, your
message is logical, Your message is something that people can
hold on to, especially for hope.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: That's why, you know, I think 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
governor or lieutenant governor, the mayor of a city with
more than twenty thousand 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 if we're looking at four years
of you know, Elon Musk and his kind of you know,
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, elimiting
this amount of people ninety percent of this thing can go,
they're basically taking us back to what America was at
one time. Problem. You know, the hardest things to overcome
with that is that comes along with waiving, you know,
the stars and the bars and in order to use
the flag, you know, use the flag of the South
of the con Federate 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 twenty twenty, when federalism became a you know,
was back on the table and people were discussing it again, missus.
Speaker 3: Slot, You got anything on that.
Speaker 4: No, I'm just thinking that that It is also it
might be possible that if a federalism is back on
the table, or if something similar to twenty twenty were
to happen again, if we were to use the Confederate
flag as the symbol of resistance against that, that could
also galvanize people.
Speaker 3: It could, it could. The thing is is, it's it's
it's it's been the symbol of resistance for a long time,
and and and and resistance in the kind of way.
I don't like resistance in the 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 shore, I've
said this on the o GC streams, but I've said
this in your presence on air before, mister Pete. The
federal government is the weakest it's been since you know,
and and it's 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 yet 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 out hoss. And
you know 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 I think the Lord my state will be finally
back with the solid South again. But secondly, it's going
to this idea of like this decentralized federal government with like,
you know, its primary agencies in different places you're gonna
see a sort of regionalization occur because of that. And
I don't know how you recentralize something like that in
any in any in any timeframe. That's soon, and so
it's it's possible, you know, alongside general economic improvement, you know,
we're talking about like, you know, it's possible that if
things start getting better that you know, you said, mister Peter,
new federalist movement could kind of emerge. Well, it's possible
that that time is star arting to come upon us,
that that time is is is you know, might come soon.
Because the thing is, it's like, you know, esthetically 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 thirteen stripes you know of of red
and white. You know, it's beautiful, you know, it's an
esthetically pleasing flag. You know, the problem with it is
is that flag has become has had the meaning of
the post war consensus poured into it, and more more
so than the post war consensus, specifically, the post nineteen
sixty four 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.
Speaker 5: But but.
Speaker 3: It is possible that we're in an environment where something
like this might start becoming a thing might start becoming possible,
and you know, shoot, maybe 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
it people. Better. Find me a symbol that tells the
story that the Confederate flag tells.
Speaker 1: And that's it, isn't it. You're we're 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, Darryl Cooper went on and questioned and
said that he thought that he said that Churchill was
the villain of World War two. Well, they're saying that
the reason, the reason why where 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 want, 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 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. A's nonsense. That myth is gone. It's
been proven wrong. We have one hundred years of trying
that over one 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.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I 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
spilt 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 to do most flags. I think, and
this is just maybe this is just 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 folk you see this focus 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, that there's
there's really no, I don't know that there's a more
powerful symbol for us than the Confederate flag.
Speaker 3: Well, and in this this this raises the primary question.
You know, 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 you know, as mister Pete said, we're in
a myth war. And while as the post and the
post war consensus, whatever you think of, it was a
myth that was suitable enough to last for the time
the period of time that it lasted, for good or
for ill. It was a myth that people saw as legitimate.
People 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. I mean, this kind
of brings me back to the character of Ulysses in
the game Fall at 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 talking like, you know,
mister Sawery, you talking 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 and you know,
this is 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 of two days or three
days ago. Now, the myth of the you know, 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
lot term myth. Everyone knows that that myth will end
with Trump, you know it. And but it's 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, you know, 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 is like, what kind of American are you? And
that question, the one like good moment in an otherwise
terrible movie, is 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? And is that myth a new one
that we create completely, you know, not not totally separate
from the past, but incontinuity with the past. Or do
we unearth and revive a castaway 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.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I'm I think that we're I think we
know what needs to be done. I mean, I don't
think 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 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?
Speaker 2: We we.
Speaker 1: It's a hard question to ask because we know what
we know what the zeitgeist is right now, and it's
one hundred percent against that. But how do we start
to make little little strides towards that? And how do
we 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 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 needs 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, sir.
Speaker 3: I guess we could leave it at that, unless you
all have anything else to say.
Speaker 1: I think that's I think that's the place to end it. So,
mister Slaughter, what do you have to promote?
Speaker 4: Well, I just dropped a new substack about the ghost
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.
Speaker 1: All right, I think I have some links from the
last time you were on. I'll include the in the
show notes. Uh, mister 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 echo that message.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but don't join John's chapter. He's been too busy lately.
He needs a break.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: It's literally almost sixty people. These interviews are taxing to watch.
But uh, but it's good to know that we have
so many based and and extremely competent guys are eager
to join join.
Speaker 3: I can't even I can't even conceive sixty people.
Speaker 1: I will just say, if you're in Alabama and you've
reached out, just please be patient because you heard how
many peoples. All right, gentlemen, have a great weekend. Thank
you very much, take care.
Speaker 2: Thanks Bete.