What’s with the Stars and Bars at the anti-pandemic restriction rally?

This picture was snapped at a rally today in Wisconsin, where some folks are seemingly angry about the restrictions being imposed on them by that state’s governor.

The issue? It’s the coronavirus pandemic. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, has declared a state of emergency. The shut down orders have frozen the state’s economy, as similar orders have done throughout the nation. Indeed, the entire nation has been frozen economically in place.

Worse, though, is that Americans are being felled by the deadly virus. Thousands of Americans are dying … still!

Here’s what is puzzling me: the presence of the Confederate flag. What in the name of civil violence is that all about? It appears to be a classic TEA party dodge. You remember those folks. They argue for less government, fewer taxes. They want government to get the heck out of people’s lives.

Some of these TEA party fanatics have been known to fly the ol’ Stars and Bars at their rallies. I saw a rebel flag pictured at a similar rally in Lansing, Mich. Do you know what that flag symbolizes to me? I am about to tell you.

It symbolizes high treason, a Civil War, a call for a return to the old days when white Americans could own black Americans and treat them like property … you know, sorta the way they treat their, oh, livestock.

Is this what we’ve come to in this country as we fight a deadly worldwide pandemic? That it’s OK to march under a banner that symbolizes — in my view — the darkest time in our nation’s history?

This bizarre juxtaposition appears to validate my own long held notion that those who want to rush the country back to the “old normal” are as insane as those who wanted the nation to go war with itself over slavery.