US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2069

On June 28 2015 08:01 farvacola wrote:
Yeah, well their ancestors lost and were traitors, so fuck them, to be entirely honest. The losers don't get to set the rules. Adding in the fact that those ancestors were motivated by a defense of slavery just makes it worse. This is what happens when you let states set their own education curriculum, particularly those states that have clearly demonstrated their inability to teach their own people history.

On June 28 2015 08:14 WolfintheSheep wrote:

Gee then, thanks then for taking the time to make people understand how lashing out at an inanimate symbol is such an important matter.

I don't see how this is remotely different than any other moral panic ever. Video games make kids violent. D&D turns children into satanists. Rock & Roll is making everyone have sex. Flags are making people racist.

Flags are making people racist.

On June 28 2015 08:12 Gorsameth wrote:

"You can't fly that flag (which stands for a government that fought to maintain slavery), a racist crazy guy that posed with it killed a whole bunch people in church"

On June 28 2015 08:18 GreenHorizons wrote:



You are misunderstanding the symbolic gestures as 'the point'. You are just grossly ignorant of what the flag represents and why the symbolism of removing it actually represents something significant.

People wanted the flag down a long time ago, but racists said "tough shit we want our racist flag and you have to deal with it because we run this state"

The fact that it's coming down means that the racists no longer have the power they once did. It doesn't in itself accomplish much, but what it means is that we can pick these fights against racists and win them.



The only people saying dumb things like that are people like you, not any of the people that wanted the flag down...

On June 28 2015 08:22 WolfintheSheep wrote:

And again, as I said, the flag should be taken down because it's just stupid having it up, even ignoring any racist connotations.

That still doesn't explain why your whole country is in a collective tizzy over the flag being anywhere else.

On June 28 2015 08:00 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
a lot of people also identify with that flag and the Confederacy because that's the side that their ancestors fought for.

On June 28 2015 08:23 farvacola wrote:

Your analogy makes it clear that you do not understand what the Confederate Flag means and how it operates in the public space of the United States, though make no mistake, I can hardly claim to have an expansive knowledge on such a thing either. What I will say is that this is not about moral panic, though there are characteristics that are similar because this is a sudden massive declaration of disapproval predicated on an act of mass violence. But in this case, the public backlash is related to the outcome of a war that played a fundamental role in how the cultural landscape of our country was formed and remains to this day. Naturally, contemporary times help break down borderlines, but the politics of the United States and their almost comical polarity should be evidence enough that this country has an identity problem, and one that almost always looks like one side versus the other when it comes down to it. And, as controversial as it is to lay down before the lordship of a symbol, Americans have a thing for flags; our songs talk about them, our schools place an importance on them, and people can be motivated to pretty extreme feelings when talking about how to treat them.

Yes, this may seem foreign to you, but that's part of the point, now isn't it.

On June 28 2015 08:14 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

The US was born as a traitor to Britain and partially in defense of slavery. MANY European countries at the time supported and participated in slavery.

On June 28 2015 08:35 WolfintheSheep wrote:

Maybe my use of the phrase "moral panic" is throwing things off, but I'm not sure what else it would be called.

Scapegoating, maybe?

It's just like whenever a school shooting is followed up with discussions about which video games the shooter played. It's taking a very serious crime and a very real issue, and grasping at the most visible and easy target to focus attention on.

(But also yes, the US seems to have a ridiculous thing for flags in general)

On June 28 2015 08:30 Jormundr wrote:
Yeah, it's not even a confederate flag. It's the nigger-hating emblem of the KKK. Between the end of the civil war and the middle of the 20th century, this flag was dead. It got revived by the KKK and those sympathetic to them. It was a way of letting black people know that they were unwanted. Of course this all happened down here in the south so we had to keep up the appearance of civility, so people were like "nonono, I didn't put this flag up because I'm a racist! I just want to support my heritage!". Fast forward two or three generations and you have morons who now legitimately believe that it's about heritage.

This shooting pretty much tipped the balance in popular opinion from "Oh these people are stupid enough to think this flag is a symbol of their heritage, that's cute we should tolerate even though its actually just a symbol of racism!" to where we are now that people are forced to acknowledge the racist shit stains that dominate that flag at its core.

On June 28 2015 08:10 GreenHorizons wrote:


The confederate flag and Call of Duty are not even remotely comparable in the way that you are trying to compare them and misled outrage.

Suffice it to say, you just don't understand the issue so of course it doesn't make sense to you.



Sounds like people with no clue are making assumptions based on their ignorance.

On June 28 2015 08:12 Gorsameth wrote:

"You can't fly that flag (which stands for a government that fought to maintain slavery), a racist crazy guy that posed with it killed a whole bunch people in church"

On June 28 2015 08:44 killa_robot wrote:



Right, so you legitimately believe that the actions of a crazed racist is just that great an argument to get rid of a flag?

You don't think it's a bit strange that a mass murder sparks this kind of outrage against a flag? You can't possibly expect me to believe the flag was such a huge racial issue before, yet it could not be removed until now.

On June 28 2015 08:49 GreenHorizons wrote:



Yeah we actually do. They voted to remove it but they couldn't get it all the way off the grounds, they could only get it to a memorial. There's a reason it was chained in place with no way to lower it.

I don't understand how this is so hard to understand. Though I guess if one takes Jonny's trolling seriously I could see how one might get confused.

On June 28 2015 08:42 Yoav wrote:


This issue took off because of an emotional response people had to an incident. I guess that makes it like certain bad moral panics. Sure. But it also makes it like how Gandhi or Martin Luther King built movements off of small incidents that served to bring into the open the hatred and oppression that was always lurking below the surface.

Nothing changed when Rosa Parks refused to move. It was something that had happened a million times before and the issue at its core had been a problem for most of century. But the incident helped make people aware of its injustice.

On June 28 2015 08:52 WolfintheSheep wrote:

But if you're comparing this current flag issue with those, then they're basically exact opposites.

Yes, minor incidents can lead to massive, meaningful movements. But this was a serious incident that lead to a completely meaningless movement.

And again, I'm not counting the removal of the flag from the city hall, because that is somewhat meaningful. I'm mostly talking about the nation-wide protest of the flag being anywhere.

On June 28 2015 08:56 GreenHorizons wrote:


Didn't we cover that this is a fiction?