10 shot, 1 fatally, at block party in Detroit

[Chan790]

13. It's actually about eliminating cultural bedrock of racial violence but whatever.

The flag is a symbol of a culture with its foundations in violence and racism which acts as a beacon to all of these nutjobs...a critical step of ending this US culture of racial violence is the destruction of the symbols of that culture. Germany had the right idea when they suppressed display of or support for the ideals of their defeated violent racist regime. Now we live in a country with freedom-of-speech and that is prized...but nobody ever promised anybody that they would not be looked down upon, reviled or denied social acceptance for the content of that speech.

SC wants to keep their racist flag...that's up to them. They should hold no expectations that the rest of us are going to respect them or their flag; I would expect that they should expect an increase in the sale of their state flag and lighter fluid. I'm pretty sure those shitty nylon reproductions burn as if they were made out of oil. (Actually, they are. Nylon is a petrodistillate synthetic fiber.)

Likewise, the assholes throughout the South can cling to their racist Confederate culture...but I think the rest of us should be a hell of a lot less accepting of it. Perhaps if we all openly told them what assholes they are for flying the "Stars and Bars" and whistling Dixie; made it clear that we will not associate with them and consider affirmation, idolization and nostalgia of that culture to be inherently racist and anti-American; that we will not allow our children to associate with them, that we view them based on the contents of their hearts to be terrible people, that we will never stop viewing them and the flag they stand for as enemies and traitorous...if we all made an effort towards being less accepting of contemporary Confederacy idolization; that we view it as exactly analogous to Nazism and it's supporters as Nazis...perhaps then it would finally die.

The Confederacy lost. Its leaders were racists and traitors guilty of treason, racial violence and oppression. To continue to support the Confederacy today is to condone the cultural roots of the Confederacy in ways that the rest of us have no obligation to legitimate by not opposing at every chance.