Thought for the Day

[fred41]

I'm told that a true patriot would stand erect for the National Anthem. I for one, never found any flag to be all that arousing. Personally, I think standing erect for the flag is a disgusting fetish.

I disagree

[broncofan]

I was hoping you two could at least lay out some arguments rather than us watching two extremists state their opinions.

I'm a moderate so I stand half staff for our flag. And yes that's the best joke I could come up with.

And I don't own a confederate flag but if they come in two ply, I can celebrate my heritage during every trip to the toilet.

[broncofan]

Which reminds me that I do think every statue of a Confederate general is an insult to African-Americans. It's an insult to the idea of patriotism as well since they were traitors. In my view every city should do what they can to make sure we're not memorializing them in our public squares. People make all sorts of disingenuous arguments about what these things mean to them when really it's a big fuck you to a lot of people.

For my part, I don't think every statue of a problematic or racist person should come down but every country that has committed atrocities against people should do what they can to memorialize the victims and not the perpetrators. We have to have some sense of responsibility for our history and send a clear message of repudiation for our villains.

Also, the idea of venerating our flag while violating our Constitution is tiresome. A flag is a symbol and when I've handled a flag I've tried to handle it with respect. But one cannot make demands about the flag once they've fired every person in a position to investigate them and directly ordered police to move on peaceful people. I'm not making demands or anything and there are some nice Republicans but I think the Republican party should probably shut the fuck up about the flag for a century after this administration.

[Stavros]

"President Donald Trump denounced the Supreme Court on Thursday for upholding a program allowing young, undocumented immigrants to remain in the United States, accusing the court of "shotgun blasts" in the face of conservatives."Do you get the impression that the Supreme Court doesn’t like me?" Trump tweeted after the immigration ruling that came three days after the court ruled against the administration in a LGBTQ rights case."
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/p...on/3213679001/

Not everything that happens in the USA is about you, 'Mr President'. There is a word for leaders who say 'L'état c'est moi'.

[trish]

I was hoping you two could at least lay out some arguments rather than us watching two extremists state their opinions.

I'm a moderate so I stand half staff for our flag. And yes that's the best joke I could come up with.

And I don't own a confederate flag but if they come in two ply, I can celebrate my heritage during every trip to the toilet.

My prior post was more joke than opinion. Still, now that I’m thinking about them...really really hard...flags that is...I’m not getting at all erect. Sorry.

I can understand that flags are sometimes convenient for identifying the loyalties of ships at sea, or letting a distant observer know who just took the hill. But I gotta say, it seems to have really developed into a sick and divisive fetish. I love my country, but I’m not so hung up on the flag (nor the National Anthem for that matter). I think is might be nice to mix it up a bit. Adopt new anthems and new flags every so often, just to keep it fresh...you know, like we do with coins.

As for confederate statues: they should all come down. They were traitors and most of them were ‘erected’ during the Jim Crow era. We not destroying history, we’re correcting the prior miss-telling of it.

As for statues of racists: Let ‘em stand. I’m afraid if we took ‘em down we wouldn’t have any statues left. Racists, non-racists: I’m sure there’s “very fine people on both sides.”

Is there a difference between symbols and signs? I don’t know. But it seems to me there might be. The American flag has come to symbolize the country, it’s aspirations, it’s culture, it’s people, it’s laws, the etc. etc. etc. I don’t think I like symbols. They’re too big and too undefined and ultimately, it seems, too divisive. The symbol becomes more important than the actual ideals. We fetishize it. I like signs. It’s nice to know that ship sailing over there isn’t a threat (if you can trust the flag they’re flying isn’t false). We can't live without signs. I'm not sure we can live with symbols.

[Stavros]

In 1968 the residents of El Palo Alto campaigned to have their city renamed Nairobi -I wonder if the US should engage in a 'Great Renaming' to propel its citizens into a fresh, vigorous and optimistic future? Take Georgia, for example, named after His Imperial Majesty, King George II -why not change its name, to, oh, I don't know -Wakanda?

[fred41]

My prior post was more joke than opinion. Still, now that I’m thinking about them...really really hard...flags that is...I’m not getting at all erect. Sorry.

I can understand that flags are sometimes convenient for identifying the loyalties of ships at sea, or letting a distant observer know who just took the hill. But I gotta say, it seems to have really developed into a sick and divisive fetish. I love my country, but I’m not so hung up on the flag (nor the National Anthem for that matter). I think is might be nice to mix it up a bit. Adopt new anthems and new flags every so often, just to keep it fresh...you know, like we do with coins.

As for confederate statues: they should all come down. They were traitors and most of them were ‘erected’ during the Jim Crow era. We not destroying history, we’re correcting the prior miss-telling of it.

As for statues of racists: Let ‘em stand. I’m afraid if we took ‘em down we wouldn’t have any statues left. Racists, non-racists: I’m sure there’s “very fine people on both sides.”

Is there a difference between symbols and signs? I don’t know. But it seems to me there might be. The American flag has come to symbolize the country, it’s aspirations, it’s culture, it’s people, it’s laws, the etc. etc. etc. I don’t think I like symbols. They’re too big and too undefined and ultimately, it seems, too divisive. The symbol becomes more important than the actual ideals. We fetishize it. I like signs. It’s nice to know that ship sailing over there isn’t a threat (if you can trust the flag they’re flying isn’t false). We can't live without signs. I'm not sure we can live with symbols.

I agree.



lol. Actually, I didn’t flesh out my previous post because I didn’t believe it was a disgusting fetish (and I was too crushingly hungover to type more than that), not because of an overwhelming feeling of patriotism. I simply don’t have a problem of standing for the flag. I believe, for most people it’s probably just a perfunctory ritual learned from early on at ball games and assembly in school (do they still have that?). I don’t see it as an evil, until of course - it becomes weaponized, as things far too often are (My patriotism beats your patriotism...that sort of thing. Kinda like religion). It’s funny though, I suppose if you’re born here, it probably gets taken for granted, simply because then, it wasn’t really a choice. But when people often choose to come to this country and go through the citizenship practice...quite often they become proud (of the flag, the country and themselves). I guess it will always mean different things to different folks...and it’s still kind of cool to watch an athlete at the olympics well up when they show the flag and play the anthem. Sometimes I just really don’t always want to be cynical about it.

The whole Confederate thing is horseshit. Get rid of the flag and put the statues in the museum of hate already. As others have stated previously - even if it doesn’t always represent racism to people (whoever those people are) , they lost a war at an attempt to secede, for the very worst of reasons. You generally lose the right to be represented heroically in bronze ...and to keep a bull shit flag.

P.S. Love the “very fine people on both sides” ..

[blackchubby38]

This is a post that I made three years ago. It seems relevant given what's been going on in the world recently:

I have always had an interest in history. I constantly read and watch documentaries about it. When it comes to American history, you have to accept the good with the bad. I also believe that the great things that this country has accomplished should not be diminished by the ugliness that has been part of our history. At the same time, that bad shouldn't be rationalized or defended as "well that's the way things were done back then".

When it comes to the symbols associated with the Confederacy, I think they need to be taken into context. When the Confederate flag is being used by the Klan, White Nationalists, or Neo Nazis during a march, it becomes a symbol of hate. The flag decal on the General Lee on the Dukes of Hazard television show, was no big deal and is not a reason to have a show that ran over 30 years ago yanked from a cable network. While I wasn't personally offended by the Confederate flag being flown over the South Carolina statehouse, it was time for it to come down.

When it comes to the people that were associated with the Confederacy, I think you have to look at them with historical perspective. While obviously I'm glad that the Union won the war, I can understand why certain people fought for the other side. As a person who likes reading about military history, I can appreciate their brilliance and valor in battle. But since they did lose the war, they shouldn't have been celebrated with monuments or have parks named after them.

[KnightHawk 2.0]

"President Donald Trump denounced the Supreme Court on Thursday for upholding a program allowing young, undocumented immigrants to remain in the United States, accusing the court of "shotgun blasts" in the face of conservatives."Do you get the impression that the Supreme Court doesn’t like me?" Trump tweeted after the immigration ruling that came three days after the court ruled against the administration in a LGBTQ rights case."
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/p...on/3213679001/

Not everything that happens in the USA is about you, 'Mr President'. There is a word for leaders who say 'L'état c'est moi'.

Just two more examples from the Clueless Buffoon on not understanding how the government works. and is throwing another temper tantrum because he didn't get his way. and nobody likes him,expect for the enablers in congress and the senate,who've been allowing him to get away with the despicable acts he's been doing over the last 3 years. and agree everything that is happening in the United States is not about him.

[Stavros]

This is a post that I made three years ago. It seems relevant given what's been going on in the world recently:

I have always had an interest in history. I constantly read and watch documentaries about it. When it comes to American history, you have to accept the good with the bad. I also believe that the great things that this country has accomplished should not be diminished by the ugliness that has been part of our history. At the same time, that bad shouldn't be rationalized or defended as "well that's the way things were done back then".

When it comes to the symbols associated with the Confederacy, I think they need to be taken into context. When the Confederate flag is being used by the Klan, White Nationalists, or Neo Nazis during a march, it becomes a symbol of hate. The flag decal on the General Lee on the Dukes of Hazard television show, was no big deal and is not a reason to have a show that ran over 30 years ago yanked from a cable network. While I wasn't personally offended by the Confederate flag being flown over the South Carolina statehouse, it was time for it to come down.

When it comes to the people that were associated with the Confederacy, I think you have to look at them with historical perspective. While obviously I'm glad that the Union won the war, I can understand why certain people fought for the other side. As a person who likes reading about military history, I can appreciate their brilliance and valor in battle. But since they did lose the war, they shouldn't have been celebrated with monuments or have parks named after them.

I can understand the basic principle you use to condemn the sins of the past while seeking to heal its wounds, for if the parties to a conflict never find a way to accomodate each other, there is no end to the conflict, whatever forms it takes.

The problem is that the history of your country is replete with a determination by some people, whether they are in organized groups or not, to deny Black people the place they deserve in the writing of that history, and I am not sure if the South, in some respects, has ever been reconciled with its defeat, even less the right of its Black citizens to be considered their equal.

It means that Americans, or anyone without proper tuition, live in ignorance of what Black Americans have achieved, when they achieved it, and why so often an 'Age of Achievement' was replaced by an 'Age of Failure'. It would be like the 45th President not only saying, as he has, that Black people are stupid and lazy, but adding, as if it were a generous concession, 'but they are good at sports and can play music very well'. But it becomes deeply problematic when the writing of history becomes an opportunity, not to record it, but to re-write it in order to eliminate people, ideas, movements that the historian doesn't like, to justify the present and those who benefit most from it. So many statues of men appear long afte they were dead, to honour them more for their present meaing rather than their past 'achievement', given that so many were in fact, like the Confederate Generals, losers. Indeed, are these statues not intended to reverse the historical record in some way? As with Robert. Lee in Richmond, so Oliver Cromwell outside Parliament, once the most hated regicide in England, erected in 1899 to remind 'us' of the moral superiority of the British Empire, opposed to the corrupt influence of Roman Catholicism on 'Home Rule' for Ireland.

Because Race in America is a state of mind as well as a state of fact, you have to go beyond Slavery and the Civil War to ask how the country dealt with the aftermath of those two processes. I argue that you find that from an initial fear, indeed, terror, that freed slaves were going to run rampage across the South in violent revenge on their former masters -the fear that led to the first Federal laws on gun control- you find that by the end of the century, Black Americans who had passed the National Civil Service Exam had become an integral part of the US Administration mostly but not solely empoyed in Washington DC, educated, responsible and utterly committed to the Republic.
Add in the cultural explosion of the early 20th century in the music of Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver, and you can see Black Americans not only proving themselves worthy as equal citizens, but shaping the destiny of popular music that would take American music across the world. Aside from the European classical tradition imported by immigrants, American music at one time was Black music, and Black music was American music.

Yet in the first two decades of the century, Roosevelt, Taft, and crucially, Woodrow Wilson, embarked on a sustained campaign to rid the US Administration of its educated and responsible Black employees. It had nothing to do wih efficiency, it wasn't budget cuts leading to job cuts, it was, in stark language, racism, and it came from the very same people who had defeated Slavery and won the Civil War. Thus-

"“Long ago we determined that the Negro never should be our master,” explained one of Wilson’s administrators, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury John Skelton Williams. Williams vowed “stern, final, definite prohibition” of any “social or political equality.”
Wilson appointed white men to important executive positions usually held by leading black politicians, and racist bureaucrats went out of their way to humiliate, demote, and dismiss ordinary black clerks."
https://theconversation.com/how-the-...stration-52200

When I was an undergraudate, my first impressions of Wilson was of the President who brought the US into the First World War in 1917. It was a decisive move because it tilted the balance of power away from Germany, to the extent that the Germans were unable to reap any benefit from the Bolshevik Revolution and the end of the war with Russia in March 1918. Wilson went further and in his 13 Points offered an aternative 'World Order' to that of the European Empires which in some respects -National Self-Determination' for example- was not so different from what Lenin called for. So revered was Wilson that the first Chair in International Relations in a UK University was established at Aberystwyth in 1919, and it was not until years later that I discovered what an appalling racist this man was.

You might argue this is a good case for reconciling the good with the bad, but if it is also the case that he was reflecting the morals and politics of his age, is not also true he was only representing one trend of that age, that he was also repudiating the morals and the politics that had enabled Black Americans to improve their social and economic position while also contributing to the progress of the USA?

In this attempt at a balancing act, it is difficult to reach a moral conclusion about a man so morally compromised. He did not need to expel Black Americans from their positions, it was not a necessity -it was a choice. Indeed, one wonders if history is being re-written today, or if it is in fact, the same unbroken narrative of American history that has seen multiple and diverse people -freemen and slaves- make the US what it is today, but rarely appear in its history as the equal creators of that history, because of a need for a few privileged White folks to hang on to their High Command of that narrative.

And is there not a danger that this complex history of inclusion and exclusion, of grudging respect from some, sneering dismissal from others, breeds the resentment that provokes violence on both sides, locked in a monotone narrative of permanent victims?

It seems to me that the divisions that exist in the US run so deep that reconciliation is impossible right now because there is no common ground in the narrative that explains it, no common ground that can end it. Just as there are historians who interpret the Civil War, not as a fight for freedom from slavery, but the birth of the Imperial Presidency the Founding Fathers were opposed to, that Lincoln tolls the death-knell of the American Revolution, and individual liberty as a 'sacred' right.

To paraphrase Ophelia, 'We know what America is, but not what it might be' -history cannot answer the question, because you are still trying to define who you are, and who your country belongs to. On that level, so are all, in the UK, in France -but owing to your size, you are 'writ large' on the world stage. And a gripping, fascinating narrative it is too. I wish you well in your attemp to shape the future, but your past shakes it weary head.