Several weeks ago, I saw a guy riding a motorcycle with the American flag flying from the back of his bike and the confederate flag sewn on the back of his jacket. I do not live anywhere near a southern state.
I can't fathom the amount of mental gymnastics it takes to proudly fly the flags of two opposing parties in a major war and still somehow believe it represents your views.
I think of it like any expression of non-oppressed identity.
It's perfectly fine to be proud of a non-oppressed identity, as long as it's not something ridiculous or harmful. But the people who feel the need to shout it from the rooftops are often the worst possible representatives of that identity.
Cyclist here! American flags protect you from getting run off the road. I'm serious. My hypothesis is that Jimbos hate woke cyclists unless they stand with 'Murica.
When I see the American flag, I see people proud of shit they had nothing to do with personally. It's no different than sports teams gear at this point.
If I remember right, the rich confederates hid their wealth during the war in banks in Montreal. There were definitely Canadians who were allies with them.
What's wilder is seeing the Confederate flag well outside the USA. I was just in the eastern part of Germany for a wedding, near-ish to Leipzig, and at the venue one of the employees had a Confederate flag plastered on the back of his van.
Britain was especially hypocritical for supporting the Confederacy, given how much they actually did do to outlaw international slavery and how much they spent on interdicting it. But they needed that sweet cotton for their factories and they wanted their money back: an interesting fact is that most southern plantation owners were perpetually deeply in debt, to London bankers.