You live in a cultural transition zone--where North overlaps with South, and vice-versa. Keep in mind that southern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois were first settled by Kentuckians, and by Virginians and Marylanders, who came down the Ohio River on flatboats. There are many such cultural transition zones in the U.S.

My younger half brother has never lived in the south and only visited it a handful of times yet his facebook feed is full of this shit as well.

He lives in Westerville Ohio

The cult of the noble loser goes back a long way - Chanson de Roland, Harold at Hastings, Custer at the Little Bighorn. Folks get all schmaltzy when they think of those who die without retreating in defense of a lost cause. It doesn't seem to matter how shitty the lost cause was either. The CSA is seen as a golden time of rustic peace populated by Rhett Butlers and Scarlett O'Haras, all swept away by crooked New York bankers, scruffy Pennsylvania coal miners and greedy carpet baggers.

I ran into an old man who went off on me for saying that I could understand how black folks would take offence to the stars and Bars so I came Home and wrote down something Mahre had Mentioned about a Holiday for the south called St.Krackers Day: this I wrote Every year put aside one day so the South could Fly the Stars and Bars without catching Hell, Drink moonshine legally, have sex with their sisters,wear their draws down enough to let their crack show, and wear their hoods and a burn a cross on the courthouse Lawn. If nothing more just laugh at its sillness.I'm making fun of those people whom want to live in the past and forgetting about how terrible slavery was. We are one Nation under One Flag with freedom for all, what I'm afraid of is were slidding backwards and the klan is becoming more acceptable. White Nationalism is another word for the Klu Klax Klan.

Based on having grown up in Michigan, I never realized what the Confederate flag really stood for, it was always portrayed as the "rebel" as in the Dukes of Hazard, and never portrayed as the racist symbol that it is in the South. In fact, when I was in the Navy, I use to wear a belt buckle with a rebel flag on it, and even recall an incident were a black guy confronted me about it, but what really pisses me off, to this day, is that he side-stepped my questions when I asked him what his problem was with the belt buckle, instead of just coming out and saying it, because had he done so, I would have taken it off right then and there, and given it to him to pitch into the ocean, or I would have done so myself. And, because he never said why, I never found out why for probably about a decade. That may seem a bit absurd, but I did not grow up in the city, the only black person I had ever met before where I lived was in school and was considered to be a friend. Conversely, my parents were super-prejudiced, and so are now most of the people in my family who I have nothing to do with.