Might as well just not use names derived after people at this point. Random numbers and symbols would be less likely to offend the perpetually aggrieved.
Won’t this cause a problem when people named with random numbers and symbols start get caught doing bad things?
Well, I like cephalopods. Can we kill two birds with one stone - just call you Austin and rename the city Octopus?
Cosign. Do not fuck with my favorite city. The majority of people who live in this city (looking at you, Greg Abbott!) are fantastic. There’s righteous SJW stuff, and there is stupid SJW.
This is stupid.
I think you are on very solid ground here. Clearly, the main effect of people is more people.
I am obligated to inform you that this idea still sucks. :dubious:
The people attempting to change the name of the city are virtue-signalling. They know there is no chance in hell of the name being changed. They know it. They are doing what they are doing because that’s what those kind of people do.
The Trump supporters, which I presume to include the OP, also engage in virtue signalling whenever they bring up incidents like this as some kind of example of how America is fucked up. “The liberals” want to do this or that, as if a proposed suggestion that’s being “considered” by a few members of a council is in any way indicative of all the larger social trends that they view as everything that’s wrong with American society today.
The problem is that because of the internet and the nature of how news is spread and discussed today, nothing ever happens in a vacuum anymore. Twenty years ago or even ten years ago, these same deluded people suggesting that Austin’s name be changed, would have perhaps garnered some minor mentions in newspapers, some people would have chuckled, and then they would have moved on. Today, every time something like this happens, it spawns threads like this one. I’m quite certain the people at The_Donald reddit are crowing over this thing in Austin right now and jerking off over how idiotic it is. I’m sure a lot of people all over Texas and all over America are posting about this on Facebook and Twitter. I wouldn’t even be all that surprised if Donald Trump himself got wind of this and mentioned it in a speech somewhere or other.
“They want to change the name of Austin, Texas. Austin, Texas. Do we love Austin? Isn’t Austin great? Austin, Texas, folks, and they want to change the name…BOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
That’s the world we live in today.
Baustin.
They can call it Leftyville of Commiegrad.
(added emphasis mine) Exactly.
“I know it’s not true. I want to make him have to deny it”.
And making a big deal about such a crank proposal ties in with…
… essentially to establish a narrative that “the Liberals” must be stopped because they want to “destroy our way of life”. Even when it happens somewhere else and does not affect “us”. Forcing people to waste time on explaining it is NOT what it looks like.
I think armadillos carry the plague and not rabies.
ETA: Or is it leprosy?
It’s the heartbreak of psoriasis.
I think it’s a reasonably plausible attempt to rationalize the general movement of what I’d call PC iconoclasm. Reasonable people on the left naturally try to find reasonable rationalizations for the extremes on their side.
However whether that argument actually explains all recent PC iconoclasm, rather than the Occam’s Razor explanation (virtue signalling on a slippery slope), is more debatable IMO. PC iconoclasm isn’t limited to US slavery or the Confederacy. For example Columbus is a prime target of PC iconoclasm, and he has never been celebrated because of bad treatment of natives in the Caribbean. Same goes for Junipero Serra in CA mentioned above.
Nor are all public remembrances of Confederate figures because of their support of slavery. There’s the whole debate about recognizing Confederate military excellence, as part of the US military tradition, as opposed to the underlying cause of the Confederate armies. Some iconoclasts accept that distinction (‘OK, keep memorials at battlefields, not downtown’), others don’t.
There is a reasonable, limited, argument IMO that many remembrances of the CSA had (or even have) political implications in subsequent racial/civil rights debates. Although sometimes that argument is stretched also. For example statues put up in say the 1920’s were not necessarily to ‘keep blacks in their place’ since that wasn’t really in play at the time as it was when some state flags were CSA’ized or the CSA battle flag itself started being flown from state capitols in only the 1950’s or even 60’s. Or likewise in the 1890’s when Jim Crow was only being consolidated. In say the 1910’s-20’s the people putting up the statue surely believed in white supremacy, and we can certainly make clear our disagreement with them. But it isn’t actually necessarily true they put up the statue at that time because of that belief rather than money finally being available in the poor South by then. It’s open to interpretation in many cases, even on the relatively strong ground of the argument ‘I’m against that statue because it celebrates support of slavery’. But again that argument doesn’t nearly completely cover other areas of PC iconoclasm.
The idea that ‘treason’ is the cause to take down the statues though is hard to take seriously. Modern sensibilities on the left heavily weigh moral imperatives over ‘empty patriotism’. In Vietnam the US was wrong (in the basic worldview descended from the counter culture), that was the key factor. ‘Ho-Ho-Ho Chi Minh, the NLF is gonna win!’ etc. can be taken as a metaphor or just forgotten; Jane Fonda said she was sorry for some of the displays on her visit to NV so forget it. Not trying to derail, just really doubting ‘treason’ as separate from the slavery issue for people who actively want to root out memorializing CSA figures, and just recently, when it wasn’t such a big deal for a long time. Again the best argument for that is to say the memorials are because of support for slavery, and later white supremacist social policies. Though that’s not a killer argument in favor of all PC iconoclasm IMO.
Just a coupla points: Yes, keeping the blacks in their place was as strong an imperative in the 1920’s as at any other time. That was the height of lynchings, following the recent resurgence of the KKK and reaction to black migration out of the South and other signs of uppitiness.
We also now generally recognize (with some holdouts) that the cause of secession was the retention of slavery. Treason was a result rather than a cause, yes, but it’s hard to take seriously a claim that it’s hard to take seriously.
Travis’ slave Joe was a notable survivor of the Battle of the Alamo, from whom much of the defenders’ side of the story is known. So probably equally objectionable.
I am waiting for them to change the name of Indiana
I read the report.
There is no proposition to change the name of the city in the report. There are a list of items that are recommended for change right away. “Assets slated for initial review” Lee Elementary and Jeff Davis St. have been renamed. The longer list is a list of pretty much everything that could be deemed objectionable, what it is, who it’s named for, who that person is, and what entity would be responsible for any changes. Down on page 22, it says:
Asset name: Stephen F. Austin Drive, Austin city name, & Rec Center
Notes/Context: Fought to defend slavery in spite of Mexico’s effort to ban it; believed slave labor indispensable for Texas to flourish in it’s production of sugar and cotton; believed that if slaves were emancipated they would turn into “vagabonds, a nuisances and a menace.” Wanted slave owners to be compensated if their slaves were emancipated.
Liability (who has to fix it): City
Priority: Medium
Comments: none
So they’ve got 23 items for a secondary list with NO recommendation to do anything about them. There are also reports about what Dallas and New Orleans are doing in a similar situation.
I read it like this: Here’s a list of obvious stuff. This should be fixed. Here’s a list of how far this could go if someone really wanted to push it. Here’s how Dallas and New Orleans are dealing with it. Now figure out where you’re going to draw the lines.
But it’s much easier to run around in outrage at what those crazy liberals are trying to do than read the report.
Personally, I’d take everything with the Keep Austin Weird slogan and dump it in a land fill, but no one asked me.
Man, that would be a sight to behold, wouldn’t it? 
Leprosy, yes. Most mammals have too high of a body temperature to sustain the bacteria, but humans and armadillos can keep it alive.
Plague and rabies can be transmitted by more species, but aren’t as common because the mortality rate is very high. Leprosy can stay in an animal for years without killing it, and is infectious for much of that time.