Confederate flag art must fly

Kudos to The Bee, for the article concerning a local artist’s painting showing a Confederate Flag in a Civil War battle. I was surprised that The Big Fresno Fair has rejected exhibition of the painting due to a recent California law banning display of the Confederate flag.

I’m not surprised, however, that California wishes to obscure examples of involuntary servitude, given the current condition of on-demand labor. Another, more severe term, amongst knowledgeable persons is, free-range slavery.

This latter, much harsher expression, refers to the fact one can seek minimum wage – part-time employment, at numerous multinational establishments because it doesn’t matter. The big corporations have the whole place sewn up anyway.

Restricting thoughts, symbols or ideas, is censorship. Laws against freedom of expression are unconstitutional, in the mildest sense, or deliberate thought control, at the very worst.

Ray Bradbury’s novel, “Fahrenheit 451,” spotlighted a dystopian world where government suppressed free thinking, by burning books. George Orwell’s “1984,” had the thought police.

We cannot retrocorrect history. We can, historically, preserve representations of inhumane treatment, lest they not be repeated.

In the contemporary methodology of the colossal corp-rats, we are all repressed into a bondage of captive serfdom.

This story was originally published September 11, 2016 at 3:13 PM with the headline "Confederate flag art must fly."