Jenna and I spent a chunk of this week in Northern Virginia, in the area around Shenandoah National Park. Shenandoah (which it turns out I've been pronouncing incorrectly for my entire life) was great. There were hikes of all levels and lengths, varying difficulty, varying crowd-levels, and lots more. The park wasn't in full-swing yet, as some of the camping areas don't open until "summer," but there were still plenty of people out enjoying nature, which is nice.
Being in nature gets me thinking. After a day of driving along Skyline Drive and doing several small hikes, we hiked a trail called Bearfence. After an incredibly fun scramble up the rocks to the actual peak, we were greeted with what I can only imagine is the best lookout point in the entire park.
Sitting on top of a mountain - looking over dozens of other mountains - is a special feeling. As tiny houses in tiny faraway towns fill your vision, you start to think about how those are just people. From up there, the people in those houses could be black, Indian, Asian, gay, trans, mutants, centaurs, or even (maybe the most dangerous of all) straight white men. There's no way of knowing, and from that distance, it doesn't matter in the least. The houses are simply filled with people who are going about their lives and trying to get through to whatever step is next in life.
In short, when you zoom out, people are people.
From the top of the mountain you realize that these small towns - as far as you can see in every direction - probably add up to less than half a million people. Beyond the horizon to the east would be the Washington DC metro area, which is home to almost 7,000,000 people. That's just within 75 miles, too. If you go in any direction, you will eventually run into more people, eventually adding up to the seven billion who live on Earth. That moment where you feel like you can see forever from the top of the mountain helps you to realize that you are, in every sense of the word, tiny.
But there's a difference between tiny and insignificant.
During our few days of driving around the area, we saw several sign-posts commemorating Civil War battles or history of the Civil War, and I never felt comfortable reading them. I was always afraid that it would glorify the Confederacy, since we were in a territory that was part of the Confederate States. It got me thinking about how some of the people who want to "make America great again" are also people from the south who also wave Confederate flags.
Do they have the faintest idea what they're doing? There is not a single flag they could wave that's as anti-American as the Confederate flag. The Confederacy went to war against the United States of America. Who else has, unprovoked, waged war against the United States? Japan when they bombed Pearl Harbor? You can't even say "the Taliban" or "Al-Qaeda" because neither actually tried to start a war, they just made an attack and then hid. Imagine if people started waving "Japan, 1941" flags around and declaring pride in the Japanese military's attack of Pearl Harbor. Might turn some heads, right?
That's what Confederate flags represent, except that more than twice as many Americans (Confederate soldiers are not counted here because they were enemies of the USA) died in the Civil War than the number of Americans who died in the entire Pacific Theater of World War II. About 360,000 Union soldiers died at the hands of a country that went to war against the United States of America. And yet people who claim to want to preserve American heritage and history feel like they should honor those attackers. Should we also begin raising statues to Admiral Yamamoto, who was in charge of the Japanese Combined Fleet in 1941? Based on what southerners who wave Confederate flags pretend to believe in, yes, of course we should. We should also build those statues specifically at Pearl Harbor.
And yet, from atop Bearfence Mountain, all of this is out of sight. These people are tiny, but they are not insignificant. Nor am I. Because I still believe in speaking out against these idiots.
You could make the argument that the only thing that compares to waving Confederate flags would be waving Nazi flags in support of one of the United States' most horrifying enemy of the past 100 years.
Well then I have great news for you.
By Anthony Crider - Charlottesville "Unite the Right" Rally, CC BY 2.0, Link
Being in nature gets me thinking. After a day of driving along Skyline Drive and doing several small hikes, we hiked a trail called Bearfence. After an incredibly fun scramble up the rocks to the actual peak, we were greeted with what I can only imagine is the best lookout point in the entire park.
Sitting on top of a mountain - looking over dozens of other mountains - is a special feeling. As tiny houses in tiny faraway towns fill your vision, you start to think about how those are just people. From up there, the people in those houses could be black, Indian, Asian, gay, trans, mutants, centaurs, or even (maybe the most dangerous of all) straight white men. There's no way of knowing, and from that distance, it doesn't matter in the least. The houses are simply filled with people who are going about their lives and trying to get through to whatever step is next in life.
In short, when you zoom out, people are people.
From the top of the mountain you realize that these small towns - as far as you can see in every direction - probably add up to less than half a million people. Beyond the horizon to the east would be the Washington DC metro area, which is home to almost 7,000,000 people. That's just within 75 miles, too. If you go in any direction, you will eventually run into more people, eventually adding up to the seven billion who live on Earth. That moment where you feel like you can see forever from the top of the mountain helps you to realize that you are, in every sense of the word, tiny.
But there's a difference between tiny and insignificant.
During our few days of driving around the area, we saw several sign-posts commemorating Civil War battles or history of the Civil War, and I never felt comfortable reading them. I was always afraid that it would glorify the Confederacy, since we were in a territory that was part of the Confederate States. It got me thinking about how some of the people who want to "make America great again" are also people from the south who also wave Confederate flags.
Do they have the faintest idea what they're doing? There is not a single flag they could wave that's as anti-American as the Confederate flag. The Confederacy went to war against the United States of America. Who else has, unprovoked, waged war against the United States? Japan when they bombed Pearl Harbor? You can't even say "the Taliban" or "Al-Qaeda" because neither actually tried to start a war, they just made an attack and then hid. Imagine if people started waving "Japan, 1941" flags around and declaring pride in the Japanese military's attack of Pearl Harbor. Might turn some heads, right?
That's what Confederate flags represent, except that more than twice as many Americans (Confederate soldiers are not counted here because they were enemies of the USA) died in the Civil War than the number of Americans who died in the entire Pacific Theater of World War II. About 360,000 Union soldiers died at the hands of a country that went to war against the United States of America. And yet people who claim to want to preserve American heritage and history feel like they should honor those attackers. Should we also begin raising statues to Admiral Yamamoto, who was in charge of the Japanese Combined Fleet in 1941? Based on what southerners who wave Confederate flags pretend to believe in, yes, of course we should. We should also build those statues specifically at Pearl Harbor.
And yet, from atop Bearfence Mountain, all of this is out of sight. These people are tiny, but they are not insignificant. Nor am I. Because I still believe in speaking out against these idiots.
You could make the argument that the only thing that compares to waving Confederate flags would be waving Nazi flags in support of one of the United States' most horrifying enemy of the past 100 years.
Well then I have great news for you.
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By Anthony Crider - Charlottesville "Unite the Right" Rally, CC BY 2.0, Link
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