Riots Racism FascismFollow

I thought I did, I went to the google to check, and yes, it's a gaming term for what you said - apparently originating in StarCraft. I'm most familiar with the zerg from the years I played Warhammer Online.

I don't think swarming the proverbial castle is the best method for structural change in the 2020 real world.

Aside from voting, what do you think would be helpful?

At this point, with a new USPS head who's a Trump supporter I honestly thing mail-in ballots may not reach their intended home. What then? What's your breaking point?

Never.

Your problem is that you are applying your assumption to my statement. I don't assume that someone who carries the Virginia Battle Flag (not the "Confederate Flag") is "clearly a racist asshole". That's your assumption. There are a whole lot of people who disagree with you, and not surprisingly most of them are conservative, and thus most likely to have been at an event like that in the first place, which kinda nullifies your opinion. Unless you walked up to each and every person at that event and asked them why they were flying that flag, and what that flag represented to them, you can't infer *anything* about them with regard to their views on race.

Additionally, while that article (which is so clearly unbiased, lol!) makes a big deal about park police and swat being called, there were no actual acts of violence. No clashes with said police at all. And it makes a big deal about damage to public property, but the only actual damage was to the temporary barricades set around the parks in order to artificially restrict access to parks that are normally unfenced and available to the public 24/7 even when there are no park personnel on the grounds. That was the big reason for the protest. Obama responded to the shut down by going way over the top to make it as painful for people as possible. Putting fences around parks that are normally freely open, is one example of the insanity he did there. Another was the absurdity of putting a drape on the window in the museum that houses the liberty bell. So normally, even when the museum is closed, folks can walk by on the street and *see* the bell. On no! We're shut down, so gotta block that view.

That went well beyond furloughing park personal. Way way beyond.

Which is funny because this is somewhat of a theme for the Dems. Fits in with their current policy of making the shutdowns as painful as possible to the public to service their political narrative. Hmmm... Almost like a pattern of behavior, right?

Edited, Jul 21st 2020 2:31pm by gbaji

What makes someone a racist (well, a racial bigot to be more technical) is if they actually engage in behavior that discriminates against people based on their race. Waving a symbol around that means one thing to them, but something else to you doesn't qualify for that label. That's you re-interpreting a symbol to mean something new and then applying it to them. Waving a flag around doesn't mean anything in terms of someone's actual behavior or beliefs. Well, it does, but based on that person's interpretation of the meaning of said flag. I wave the US flag and I see all the ideals upon which this nation was based and other "good things". Colin Kapernick sees the same flag and sees only the bad things about the US today which he doesn't like.

See how that works? You'd be wrong to see me waving a US flag and concluding that I like all the bad things that others see. Because I interpret the symbol differently. Same deal with the VBF. You simply can't assume what someone else view that flag to mean.



There's a key difference here. The swastika was adopted as an official symbol of the **** party in Germany. That party went on to gain power in Germany and their ideology of racial purity produced horrific harm to millions of people (we're not even talking about deaths in the war itself here). The point is that the folks who did this and held to that ideology took that symbol as their own.

What you're doing here is not looking at the flag of the Confederacy, but a flag that was specifically chosen to represent southern veterans and over time the south as a whole, with the intention of selecting a flag that was *not* associated with slavery and racism so as to effectively turn over a new leaf for the south, so to speak. But over time, idiots decided that it's a flag, and it represents the south, and the south had slavery, so therefor it must be a symbol of slavery and racism.

That would be like taking the German flag selected after the war with a clear separation from the **** regime, and then decades later decide that it too means racism and cleansing of all undesirables and whatnot. That's kinda ridiculous. It's artificially created conflict. You convince a bunch of people, ignorant of the past, that a flag means something it does not, spend a few decades repeating this message over and over, and then eventually you'll get enough people to believe it that they just can't understand why those people in the south who know what the flag really represents would fly a flag that so clearly (to the idiotic) is a symbol of racism and slavery. Um... But that's all in your head. Someone taught you that meaning for that flag. Why do you suppose that was?

So if I wave the LGBTQ flag and then switch to the anarchist flag that means the anarchist and the LGBTQ goals are the same?


Get a PET scan, man.

Huh? No. A better analogy would be folks attending a series of protests against unfairness in the current government, some of them are anarchists and are waving the anarchists flag, others are LGBTQ folks and are waving their flag (among others as well). Let's say that as part of this movement (whatever it is), the anarchists take control of the government, and proceed to put people in death camps for a few years until overthrown and order is restored. Then, decades later, someone looks at the fact that some of the folks in the original movement that lead to those anarchists taking over were waving LGBTQ flags as well, and declares that the LGBTQ flag is equivalent to those evil anarchists and anyone who waves it must really support the exact same form of anarchy that our hypothetical nation endured and should be attacked and proclaimed to be anarchists if they wave that flag.

Meanwhile the LGBTQ folks are going "huh? That's not what our flag means at all. Yeah, we supported that movement back then because we opposed a set of rules that oppressed us, but we certainly didn't condone the things the anarchists did when in power, and our flag certainly doesn't mean we agree with what they did'.

Se how that works. In the same way that the veterans latched on to the VBF as a means of representing themselves and their struggle after the war, and the citizens did as well, during the long rebuilding of the south after the war, finding it in a symbol of hope, strength and will to go on, that most specifically did *not* have association with the principles of the Confederacy itself (slavery, racism, etc). That was the precise point for using that flag.

That it's meaning has been twisted over time is what is sad here. The idea that General Lee's flag was a symbol of racism and white supremacy is a very new idea. Not sure where it came from, but it didn't exist when I was a kid (no one thought that the symbol was problematic when it was on the car in the Dukes of Hazard tv show, for example). So sometime after the 80s, perceptions changed. Again, not sure why, but they did. The question you have to ask is if a flag didn't have that meaning back when the historical events we're referring to existed, then why associate that meaning now?

That seems odd, don't you think?

So you can't love or hate someone unless you behave in a certain way that demonstrates that feeling? I'm pretty sure I can have feelings toward someone and not demonstrate them.

Sure, but that's how society works. Just because you view a picture of a woman riding cowgirl on a man as "Patriotic art of beauty" doesn't change how it will be accepted in society. I can also say me calling you an "idiot" is a sign of love, etc.

No. I'm saying that you can't know what is happening inside someone else's head. You can't read their thoughts. You can only judge them based on actions. I'm countering the idea that since *we* associate a symbol with support for racism doesn't mean that the person displaying that symbol does, and thus can't assume that person is somehow declaring their racism when doing so.

We can and should only conclude someone is a racist if they actually engage in an act of racism. And again, flying a flag doesn't do that.



Um. That it's overwhelmingly going to be seen as art. Admittedly, art that may not be appropriate for all ages (which is itself a social more), but still art. No one would conclude that displaying such a picture (say in your home) means you are a sexist, or racist, or bigot of any kind. We could conclude that you perhaps find beauty in the human form and sexuality.

You kinda picked a weird example there. That's also not a "symbol", so kinda falls outside this discussion.



This is at least a bit closer, because words in language have accepted meanings, which is a step more specific than those of symbols, which may have many different meanings. So closer, but still not quite right.

I think the key bit here is that symbols do have multiple meanings. Always have. And yes, I get that this particular one right now has a specific meaning to many people. But I'm also trying to point out that a lot of that is the result of a long campaign to make people view the symbol that way. If you tell enough people for a long enough time that any symbol is a symbol of hate, then poll on how many people think it's a symbol of hate, you'll see a good percentage report that they think it's a symbol of hate. That's not education, that's indoctrination.

And to repeat my concerns from my previous post, it concerns me when that's how we define things. You can literally get a population to adopt *anything* if they are simply exposed to enough repetitive claims affirming that thing. Doesn't matter what it is. We should not form our opinions based on that methodology, but should educate ourselves instead. But most people don't want to bother doing that.

Yes, of course, "just asking questions" like Obama's birth certificate, etc. Funny the direction your questions always seem to go.

Anyway, I once spent far too much time attempting (in vain, apparently) to educate you about the flag and all that. I have no real desire to watch you "just ask questions" for another fifteen posts. I only answered above because it was a simple factual question to answer. Watching you "just ask questions" as you tapdance around it holds no interest for me.

Taking positions based on the principle and methodlogy involved rather than how the thing affects me personally? Yeah. Isn't that how we should do things?



I don't recall me "just asking questions" here though Joph. I pretty specifically recall making a rather direct point about how we as a society decide how to determine what symbols we should condone or condemn, and that the way this one is going is not the correct method. You're free to ignore my actual point and go off on a strange historical tangent, but then that's you avoiding the actual argument I'm making.

My point about my personal opinion of the battle flag is to make it clear that this isn't about "that flag" for me. It is, and has always been about the methodology we follow and whether I think that's the right way to make decisions as a society. What's funny is that both of you decided to completely ignore the actual argument I was making in favor of what is essentially window dressing.

I'd be making the same argument about any symbol being condemned in this manner.

Edited, Jul 23rd 2020 12:55pm by gbaji

Voting republican is a hate crime.