There is a key word in there “some.” I’ve typed it extra slowly just for you. Wiki Apollo Program if you think I’m the one ignorant of history. I don’t know if there is a “I’ll Wiki That for you Link” but I’m sure you can manage.
I can’t help you have poor reading comprehension.
If I knew how to embed imagery I’d give you something to have the vapors over, merely so you’d have the vapors.
Nope. The key word is wrong. Just because we didn’t “raze Germany, Japan and Italy” that doesn’t mean we turned a “blind eye.” German atrocities were well documented and well known and grappled with.
You are an ignorant dumb shit. And you keep trying to minimize one atrocity after another. I’m beginning to think you might have some mental defect that keeps you from empathizing with people.
I can’t help it if you are an immoral shithead. But I can read your immoral stupidity just fine.
Quote me where I support what you say I support. Otherwise you are nothing more than a hysterical liar. With a potty mouth.
It takes no effort to grasp the difference. And you know I know the difference. Why’d you even say such a thing? Oh, let me know when you successfully lead a movement to rename Washington DC.
As an aside: I thought the Straight Dope forum was populated by intelligence. I see that indeed the posters here are more educated than the average but many of the posters here take a perverse pleasure in deliberately misreading and misrepresenting the views of others. It’s like you are playing some silly game where the goal isn’t to communicate effectively but to crap upon a point of view or even worse the person who has a differing point of view that doesn’t march lockstep with your intellectual orthodoxy.
I’ve been called all sorts of names in this very thread by an unhinged individual who cannot even decipher simple sentences accurately. Or, even worse, can decipher them but chooses to go forward with a poisoning the well technique in order to stifle discourse. Why take pleasure in that form of intellectual dishonesty? Do you get some sort of e-cookie by abusing fellow forum goers who present a differing opinion?
I can understand hostility if one were to advocate that Hitler did not go far enough, for example. But vulgarity and unhinged nastiness because one is not in favor of purging Earth of every reference of someone that may have “triggered” or “offended” someone else is counterproductive.
I don’t give a shit if you think I have a potty mouth. You deserve far more invective than you’re getting from me. If you don’t want people to hurl insults at you, then stop being an immoral douchebag. And stop pretending you’re some saint. You’ve hurled plenty insults of your own. Sorry, but you don’t get to hurl insults while pretending your above it all.
You’ve made several comments in this thread trying to imply that people outraged over this flag are simply looking for reasons to get offended or that these are all distant issues. And when I point out that these are not distant issues, when I point out that terrible atrocities happened within living memory, your response is handwave it away.
But the fact that you don’t even understand that it’s cruel and monstrous to wave a symbol of violence and terrorism at the people who suffered that violence and terrorism is what makes you such a terrible person. And here’s just one of your many offensive quotes:
See? There is absolutely no recognition of the fact that tons of people were victims at the hands of al-Queda. Your focus is on the “rarity” of the symbol. And then you accuse me of being blind? No, I am pointing out that the people who refuse to put themselves in the shoes of the victims of the lynchings and bombings and murders that took place in the civil rights movement are the blind ones. You can’t even bring yourself to empathize with the victims of terrorism, whether it was caused by people using an al-Queda banner or a Confederate banner. But you want me to understand that people might fly a Confederate banner for a number of reasons. Yes, I understand that, and it’s so obvious as to be trivial. But you and they are immoral assholes for expecting me to understand their reasons, while you and they completely ignore the reasons that we find that flag offensive. There are very few reasons that anyone can offer for flying that flag that outweigh the gross cruelty and injustice perpetrated against African-Americans and civil rights workers in living memory.
I’m not calling for the government to ban private individuals from flying the flag (despite your strawmen implication that I don’t understand that democracy means people will express views I don’t like). I’m pointing out that their behavior and your behavior is disgusting and immoral.
Well I disagree with you on this issue but I agree with your assessment of SDMB. Your description is entirely accurate. I don’t think you are a bad guy but I do strongly disagree in this situation.
Post a quote in this thread where anyone advocated purging the Earth of every reference. Unless I missed it, I’ve only seen calls for removal from government sites. So, post the quote or admit that you’re just making up strawmen.
Of course, if this quote is aimed at me, then it’s a complete lie. But, hey. I guess when you can’t make an argument, strawmen is all you have.
You know what you are typing is a pack of lies. What you are saying would be the same as if I flat out called you a pedophile who liked to forcibly sodomize children. It wouldn’t be true, at least I hope not, but it would serve the same purpose that your words do in this thread. Yes, this is “the pit.” I suppose it’s a place where apparently erudite people can express how they truly feel without fear of sanction. Which I suppose makes one suspect how cowardly and dishonest they are outside of the pit.
My sole contention to when I entered this thread was to caution that making the assumption that you know for a fact what someone thinks based upon a word they use or a symbol they fly can lead to false conclusions. I was attacked for this. I have explained multiple times that context matters and that no word or symbol is inherently racist and that context matters. Now a symbol could be used exclusively or damn near exclusively that the usage of such symbol doesn’t leave much room for ambiguity but that’s rare. Other symbols have more complexities to them which is why this debate is actually a debate and not a foregone understanding like the silly original post that made an analogy between the flag and the KKK hat, which I freely conceded was unambiguous symbol of terror. Outside of course the usage for stuff like a tasteless Halloween costume or whatever.
At one point the word “nigger” which in my mind is a very ugly word and I honestly don’t like to even type it much less say it was a word that was used, to my understanding, in an almost exclusively racist manner. Now, it’s used continuously in athletics, music, and other form of entertainment and now the word has to be judged by intent. I’ve been clear with what I’ve meant. I’ve given example after example. But you and others like you get some perverse pleasure at being part of some sort of aggrieved tribe. You are an intellectually dishonest bully. Furthermore, if “shithead”, “terrible person”, “dickhead”, “douchebag”, etc accurately describes one who is willing to listen and to take into consideration details beyond the superficial in order to make a careful and accurate judgement erring on the side of giving someone the benefit of the doubt, what does that make you?
Again, you can’t even respond to the points I’m making, can you? Your responses are all strawmen, insults and tone-policing. And yes, you cache your insults in roundabout language so you can pretend you aren’t slinging insults just the same as me, but that’s exactly what you’re doing.
This is not why I’m criticizing you, so why are you bringing it up with me? Are you attempting another strawman? If not, then why bring this up in response to me.
And I have given you the historical context for that flag. But you want us only to focus on the context of the person waving that flag while ignoring the historical context.
Right, you’re so willing to listen are you? Let’s take the last quote you posted:
Aside from the lies and strawmen here, this is again an attempt to trivialize real atrocities that happened in living memory. Your use of quotes here around the words “triggered” and “offended” implies sarcasm and implies that you think the atrocities suffered mere decades ago are trivial. Your use of a strawmen here also implies that too, because you are trying to twist my argument to imply that I want to ban everything everywhere, instead of grappling with the actual terror that happened under that flag.
You can pretend I’m unhinged or whatever you want, but you are truly terrible person who is minimizing real atrocities. You’re also a lying shithead.
At the end of the civil war, all the generals, politicians, slave owners, slavers, and all other traitors by choice, should have been deported. Off the continent. All of their flags, writings, symbols, and everything else pertaining to secession and treason, should have been banned and destroyed. The living ancestor of whoever wrote “Sweet Home Alabama” should have been hung for the future well-being of our nation, too.
Hindsight is 20\20.
Furthermore, the concept of “southern pride” is really fucking stupid. What are you proud of? That your idiot forebears started a war that killed hundreds of thousands, maimed even more, in order to protect an obscene and evil institution? Well, hell, have I got a flag for you! Because that’s what that flag means, you fucking retard. Slavery and treason.
You cannot separate beliefs and actions like that. You cannot have actions without beliefs. The actions you choose to do show what you believe. If you perform an action where you disregard the feelings of a certain race, you are saying you believe their feelings don’t matter. Both the action and the belief are racist.
If you are not a racist, then you will believe it is wrong to put a up symbol that causes pain and suffering to black people. You will believe it is wrong to use the word “nigger,” dress in blackface, make jokes about watermelon and fried chicken, calling people monkeys, calling grown men “boy.”
I never once said that racists couldn’t be otherwise nice people, or that assholes couldn’t not be racists. You whine about people not understanding, but then you make up things people didn’t say. Don’t do that.
Oh, and I already told you. The oppressors don’t get to repurpose the racist symbol. Only the oppressed can do that. No white person could rehabilitate “nigger,” and no white person can rehabilitate the Confederate flag.
If you’re proud of being Southern, create a symbol that actually means “Southern” and stop appropriating a racist flag for that purpose. If you aren’t racist, then there’s no reason not to. You get to have your Southern pride and not offend black people.
The only reason to hold onto the flag as a symbol of Southern Pride is if you want to incorporate its racism into your pride.
And I say this as someone who used to think the “Rebel Flag” meant nothing. But then I grew up, met some black people, and learned that whether I find it offensive DOESN’T MATTER, any more than it matters whether I find the word “nigger” offensive.
No. Although they were traitors, they were still citizens/nationals of the United States of America and thus not subject to deportation. Constitutionally, a prosecution against them for treason would have been legitimate; however, President Lincoln decided that it was in the best interests of the United States to “bring the South back into the fold”, so to speak.
Well, state, county, and municipal governments should be prohibited from memorializing/idolizing the treason and its symbols; however, people still have free speech, so let those who want to show their ignorance and/or prejudice display that trash.
That’s pretty much my only complaint so far about Lynyrd Skynyrd, that stupid song.
I agree with you about the meaning of the flag and those that committed treason. That being said, there are things to be proud of in the South, such as Southern manners and some leading figures in civil and military life.
That’s exactly right. This is nothing at all like the swastika, which even during the Nazi’s time, was still being used by millions of Buddhists around the world. The Buddhists were not repurposing anything at all; they were continuing to use their symbol. Those who use the confederate flag (and fuck off to anyone who bitches about me not capitalizing that abomination) are intentionally choosing a symbol that started out to symbolize racism and was “resurrected” to, yet again, symbolize racism.
Now that Virginia no longer has that stupid racist song as its state song (and, yes, I think they should’ve selected the non-racist lyrics of Oh Shenandoah as the new state song instead of being peevish and memorializing the racist trash as “state son emeritus”), I think this one is pretty good.
Completely correct.
Damn right. And the racists who despise President Obama are pretending that his use of the infamous word shows him to be a hypocrite–they even go so far as to call him a racist–although he was making the very same point you just made.
Great posts Big T.
This is just ridiculous. Really.
[double-checking if this thread’s in The BBQ Pit–Yep; good.]
Do you ever have any sense?
In the abstract. But in the realm of symbols, which is what we’re looking at here, there’s not.
How many schools, roads, parks, buildings in the south are named after Jefferson Davis?
Robert E. Lee?
Nathan Bedford Forrest?
Other slave-owners?
Other Klan members?
How many are named after Harriet Tubman?
Robert Smalls?
Frederick Douglass?
Others who helped escape slavery?
Others who fought for equality?
You’ll find a lot of MLK highways in predominantly African American neighborhoods in the South, it’s true. But that’s about it. Our institutions named after Southern historical figures are overwhelmingly named to honor slave-owners and secessionists and segregationists. Those who were enslaved are largely forgotten.
So here’s a proposal to add to Monty’s excellent proposal:
-Let’s have a movement to rename everything named after Jefferson Davis; we’ll name that shit after Harriet Tubman instead.
-Stuff named after Robert E. Lee? Let’s name it after Frederick Douglass, with no quibbling about whether he was a Southerner, because that’s not the point. (But if you want to be a real asshole about that, name it after Harriet Jacobs).
-Stuff named after Forrest? Name it after Robert Smalls instead.
We’ll carve out exceptions. If it’s your private road or building or hunting grounds or whatever, keep its name whatever you want. Fuck knows Rick Perry would. If it’s a museum specifically dedicated to Robert E. Lee, no need to change its name.
But if it’s named after a terrible human being who’s famous for terrible actions like starting the Klan or leading a murderous uprising to maintain human bondage, and if the only reason it’s named after that terrible person is because it’s something like a road that needs a name, let’s use the opportunity to honor someone who’s actually famous for doing some good in the world.