The waitress came over to refill my coffee. She’d served the CCC at breakfast and formed her own views about the flag dispute. “You know what the state should’a done? Send someone to the capitol in the dead of night to take the flag down without telling anyone. I’d bet a week’s worth of tips that not a single person in South Carolina would’a noticed it was gone.” She sighed. “It’s too late now. As soon as you make an issue of something, everyone feels they got to pick sides, same as they done back in eighteen-whatever.” This was the most concise analysis of the flag controversy—or of events in
...more
