If you want to understand what has happened across the South over the past two weeks, then you need to take a look at this:

“Big business was on the winning side in the U.S. Supreme Court’s two major cases of the year, with hundreds of employers pushing hard in favor of gay marriage and the healthcare industry backing the insurance subsidies available under Obamacare. The court on Thursday rejected a conservative challenge to President Barack Obama’s healthcare law on a 6-3 vote and, a day later, ruled 5-4 that gay marriage should be legal nationwide. Both cases were largely seen through the lens of national ideological wars, with liberals backing gay marriage and Obamacare and conservatives opposing them.” But the cases could also be seen as pro-business rulings by a court with a reputation as friendly to corporate interests under Chief Justice John Roberts. …”

See also this:

“After the killings in Charleston, the business leaders saw their chance. The chairman of the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce, an old friend of Ms. Haley’s named Mikee Johnson, polled his 56 board members about the future of the flag. Everyone who responded was of the same opinion. He called Ms. Haley and told her: If she was ready to bring down the Confederate banner, they were behind her. So was the South Carolina Manufacturers Alliance, the muscular association that represents giant international companies like BMW and Bridgestone Tire. Over the weekend after the shootings, its president, Mr. Gossett, urged members to draw up a strategy for finally ridding the State House of the flag. …”

Read this too:

“By the time they had finished their work, Gov. Robert Bentley, who had ordered the removals the previous afternoon, was in a small town in the state’s northern hills to make an announcement. Google was coming to Alabama, building a $600 million data center to be powered completely by renewable energy. “We have so many premier automobile and aerospace industries in the state, and I want this progress to continue,” the governor said in an interview. “I don’t want anything to be a distraction to my ability to recruit jobs.” He continued, “A flag is not worth a job.” …

We’ve met the enemy … and the enemy is the latest incarnation of the “New South.” It’s the same enemy we faced in the 1960s too.