The battle flag represents different things to different peoples. For many white southerners the struggle for independence and the collective trauma of war, for most African Americans the collective trauma of slavery. Ask a Native American about the Stars and Stripes and chances are he'll say land theft and genocide.
You got me thinking about how far from normal the US situation is and how it compares to here in the UK. Correcting for population, if the UK police shot people dead at the same rate as the US police they would be shooting about 200 people a year. The actual number of fatal police shootings in the UK was 23 from 2010 to the end of 2019. That's bonkers, it's easy to point and say Cops Bad but actually doing the maths, even roughly, gets such an extreme result. It's truly is like you said, normalised in a way it should never have been.
As for the statue photo, it was taken in Paris, 1941. Statue was of the Marquis de Condorcet, interesting chap.
Collective trauma of war? ****. Right. Off. It was a war started because those racist pieces of **** wanted to keep owning people. I don't give a **** who you are, if you support that ******** you are at the very least a closet racist, and I have very little time for denials of racism from someone wearing/waving a symbol of people who mostly just wanted to own slaves.
The issue is the escalation to lethal force in a situation that had ZERO requirement or justification for lethal force. Think of it this way: Police here also carry tasers. What would happen here in the same scenario? 1) Officers with actual training in subduing a drunk person in a two-on-one situation manage to handcuff them with minimal harm, because how on earth do you mess that up? 2) Officers need to escalate use of force to batons and several questions are asked as to why they needed to do so in order to restrain a single person. 3) Somehow a taser is still stolen and discharged to no effect (as it was in the case with Brooks). Tasers require a cartridge change before they can be refired. Do the police then 3a) Proceed to scenarios 1) or 2) as the guy is now 'armed' with a small plastic box 3b) Call in SO19 Placed in order of likelihood of "happens all the time" to "why are you even employed here?"
As if a Trump acolyte rally in Tulsa of all places one day after Juneteenth wasn't divisive enough... Tweet— Twitter API (@user) date
It was originally scheduled for the 19th but Trump moved it when he realised that the public thought it was a true dick move having it in that location on that date. Scheduling it for Tulsa on the 19th was, of course, completely deliberate - I'd imagine that Trump is too ignorant to have done it off his own bat, so I strongly suspect the hand of Stephen Miller on this one.
DXR_13KE wrote he found it weird the flag was flown. I shed some light on the issue. I wasn't voicing support.
The way you posted it was very "justifying racist ******** with some other ********". The biggest reason that flag was created, and is still flown, is because the people flying it wanted to own Black people. Further, the creators genuinely believed that Black people were lesser than white people, that their "natural" state is to be subjugated by white people. That is all that flag stands for. That is the main reason the confederacy fought the union. To suggest anything else is to gloss over what the racist pieces of **** who came up with that dumbass flag were. Anyone who believes that flag means anything else is lacking a lot of basic general knowledge.
I mean.. I suppose it is America, but damn. I expect some more of people than "Muh grandpappy owned people and he was a greet man". Although the John Oliver bit on the confederacy with the white guy arguing that his family wasn't racist because slaves were expensive is perhaps a pointer in the opposite direction..
For me it as weird as modern Germans flying nazi flags because of the "struggle for " Lebensraum and "the collective trauma of war".
That doesn't change the fact that the flag represents different things to different peoples, as flags so often do. As pointed out post #421
Tell you what, let's do a little history, shall we. The confederate states of America existed for four years. The Confederacy was never recognised by any other government (At least, not officially, unless you believe National Treasure - But if you believe that, then you've got other problems) owing to work by the Union. A large part of this lack of recognition was also because the Confederacy didn't win consistently on the battlefield. The first flag was fairly short lived. It represented the first seven states to join/start the Confederacy. I know, I know, citing Wiki is never good, but their image hosting for flags is pretty indisputable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America_(March_1861_–_May_1861).svg The second was a fairly major redesign, and more reminiscent of the flag used by modern racists and morons; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America_(1863–1865).svg In that it has the blue cross and the red background - But it was a corner piece in the main flag, which was white. <insert joke about surrendering>. The third was proposed, exactly the same as the second flag, but with a red bar to the right. I don't believe it was ever flown. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America_(1865).svg Those three are the three main flags of the confederacy. The others, of which there are a few as there were variations for different battle units, were not flown at Richmond and nor, I believe, at the Alabama Capitol where it all started. Officially, anyway. The closest flag to the currently used "Confederacy flag" is actually the CSA Naval Jack - Although it has a lighter blue. The next closest would be the "Southern Cross" battle flag. Which, I believe, is closer in colour match to the modern day flag, but it's square. Why's that important I hear you cry. Well, because it means that whoever selected the modern rendition of the flag as a symbol of their racial hatred was both educated to a standard that most people today aren't, and it also means they're about as dumb as racial hatred itself. It was used briefly in World War II, although the commanders who flew it were often ordered to stop flying it. During and after the war, even. https://books.google.de/books?id=zs0VJTbNwfAC&pg=PA67&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1952/04/04/84248020.html?pageNumber=3 That second link took a damn long time to load for me, but there we are. It was also used by the Dixiecrat (States' Rights Democratic) party. For their one shot at a presidential election (1948), and their platform was basically racism. They opposed racial integration, they wanted to keep up with white supremacy, and they wanted to retain the Jim Crow laws. They were pretty short lived by all accounts. Took their shot, missed, and ****ed back off. Georgia (Which, honestly, is competing really hard to get into the "League Of Joke States" as far as I can tell) reintroduced it in the mid fifties after the Brown Vs. Board of Education decision. 'cause segregation sounded cool to the state government I guess. However, the real crux of this flags usage is really funny. Because it's so dumb. Why, I hear you cry, is it so dumb it's funny? Well, to me it's funny for these reasons; 1: Supporters of the flag (Which, I must reiterate, was never actually a flag of the Confederate states, just a battle flag (Square, though) and a Naval flag) claim it represents a southern history and identity which is distinct from the rest of the United States. Some even go so far as to claim that it represents the era of Southern sovereignty. Which lasted about four years, during which it was so mismanaged and mislead that it lost and was forced into surrender. So.. Let's immortalise being useless? Go team? 2: White power groups used it, such as the Ku Klux Klan, on the basis of the "Cornerstone Speech" by Andrew H Stephens - One of the leading members of the Confederacy. The speech covers a lot of things, but the main takeaway is white people are allowed to own black people because, let's quote the man here; Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. Sure sounds racist as **** to me. And given who he was when he said that, and the purpose of the Confederacy, I'm wholly confident that the Confederacy and any celebration of it is wildly racist at absolute best. It's also hard to deny such clear cut phrasing is racist. It's pretty much the dictionary definition of racism. If Americans weren't so sodding shite at history, the American dictionary should just have this asshat's picture next to racism and this sentence. The whole speech, I believe, if you want to read it; https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/cornerstone-speech/ 3: The original format, IE: Square, is partially in use by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Who might not be racist, but are definitely ignorant. And pretty stupid. One of their projects was/is the opening of 'The National Confederate Museum'. In a way, I think the confederacy (Along with all its flags) belongs in a museum. But given that these people can't admit that their ancestors (Although in 150-160 years isn't that just grandpas and great grandpas? I'm not sure at what point ancestors is used to disguise how recently some asshats existed..) were fighting for racism and inequality it's a fairly sure bet that the museum will be/is unnecessarily wrong about a lot of things, and paint the Confederate soldiers as brave men fighting the aggressive northern Union. Or something equally dumb. 4: There is a subset of people who will shout into your face how the Confederate flag is a symbol of rebelliousness, of southern sovereignty, and definitely not racist. But for all their love and respect of this sovereign southern states, haven't even heard of the Cornerstone speech and don't know that during Lincoln's campaign secession was threatened were Lincoln to be elected, because Lincoln didn't support the expansion of slavery. This is, to me, is monumentally dumb because they still live in the Union. If it offends them so much, they should start another civil war. Or leave. Or have a nice big mug of shut the **** up juice. 5: It's not even "the" goddamn Confederate flag for ****s sake. These people holler and yell that their history is being wiped away and they don't even know it well enough to know their flag is ****ing wrong. 6: A lot of Confederate memorials and statues weren't raised until long after the war, and a good number of them were raised shortly after there was a victory for people fighting for racial equality. Even into the 1970's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Confederate_monuments_and_memorials Look at that list and tell me that the dates of some of them aren't too coincidental for comfort, and in places that had fought to keep racial inequality. D'you know what that means for people who claim it's not racist? They're really goddamn stupid. How about for people that use it as a race thing? They're really stupid. Because they're using the wrong flag. And they're racist, which is stupid on a whole bunch of other levels. No, I refuse to accept that a short lived flag such as the CSA Naval/incorrectly formatted battle flag is anything but racist and stupid. Anyone who claims it means anything else need to read a book and shut the **** up. Your defence that you're claiming it's just what other people believe is ********. Throughout this thread you've been writing some hilariously misogynistic posts, arguing the nature of race, and all but defending the people who wave this verkakte flag. The Confederacy was deeply racist. Its existence was laid on the foundations of wanting to enslave black people because they were viewed as lesser beings. Anything else is set dressing on that racist stage. This flag is the modern embodiment of racism, and to entertain the notion that it's anything else is rooted in a deep ignorance of the damned thing and its origins. Edit: I had a shower, and have a TL;DR. TL;DR: Anyone waving the CSA Naval/Incorrect-format Battle Flag is either dumb or racist. Those are the only two reasons that flag gets waved.
D'you know what lasted longer than the Confederacy? Webvan, generally considered to be the best example of the idiocy of the dot-com boom.
Other things that lasted longer than the Confederacy: - the Beany Baby bubble - the Austin Allegro - the Commodore VIC-20 - 1970's men's jumpsuits (what has been seen...) - my wife's sourdough starter
