what I don't get is why the south is so obessed with the confederacy. It was less then 5 years of the south's history.
The South's perception of the conflict is skewered that's why, the reason is that the average southerner for over a hundred and fifty years has been told that it's the
'South's symbol' and thus a symbol of themselves the problem with that is the South of 1861 and now might as well be another planet Hank Williams Jr puts this attitude in this song which sums it up pretty well.
The best way I ever heard it put is that the ACW started when two brothers who had a multitude of disagreements walked into a bar and the younger got drunk and started harassing his elder who though morally upstanding had always been a little arrogant about it, long story short it ends in a fight were the elder eventually prevails but not before reviving a extremely bloody nose.
The above paragraph and song are how the modern South see's the ACW, as a football game. That we started it? Irrelevant. That we were on the wrong side morally? Who cares? That we ultimately lost? We don't see that, all we remember is that we beat the face in of the people in who have been mocking us for having a different way of life ever since segregation ended and always has some other dang excuse to complain about the way we live from
'Racist!' to
'You backward people need to learn to adapt'.
When Southerners look at the Confederate flag now, they don't see the flag as standing for the Confederacy as it was in 1861 they see it as the South is
now. Sweet Tea, NASCAR, Fishing, Hunting, BBQ, Footballl and many other things. So when people go after the flags or statues of the Confederacy they view it as being a attack on their culture as it is now and another means by which the bitter liberal people whom they gave that bloody nose that time seeks to take even the memory from them before systematically eradicating their conservative culture.
So it's not for any love of the confederate government or their policies that a majority fly that flag today rather their culture as they see.
nor should they define themselves by it.
As I have stated above you got it mixed up, they don't define themselves by the
flag, they think the flag defines
them.
Again not defending the confederacy's actions here, rather explaining the general census as I have seen it.