Covid 19 conspiracies dump

[Irreligious Atheist]

You're the one who was wearing confederate battle flag gear not long ago. Not me. Clearly there was a reason you chose to buy that gear, and you could see at the time that the flag is nuanced and means many different things to many people and is not like the Nazi flag, but now that you've all of a sudden decided that it's unacceptable, you sit on your high horse and assume things about the people who choose to associate with the flag, like you did. Should you be cancelled for wearing the flag in the past?

Yeah, the reason was because I liked "Sweet Home Alabama", and because, from where I stood then (probably 2009 or 2010), it looked like everyone involved, from the band to whatever Walmart or Target I bought it from, decided the issue was settled. Unfortunately, between Dylann Roof shooting up a black church while posing with the Confederate Flag, a bunch of racist asshats in Charlottesville cheering on violence at anyone who wanted to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee, and a cop brazenly deciding to publicly asphyxiate a black dude for passing off a fake $20 bill (and technically resisting arrest, not that it justified keeping it going for so long), it turned out it wasn't. And from the looks of it, practically everybody who bought into the "heritage not hate" idea in good faith has abandoned it by this point.

And, frankly, even if I never bought into it, I'd still be against 'canceling' anyone who did but eventually repudiated it. I never wanted to be one of those wokescolds who wants to find an excuse to ostracise anyone who did anything problematic, even if they ended up seeing the error of their ways eventually. If nothing else, I believe we should always keep this point in mind:

(Admittedly, Keynes might not have said those words; doesn't make the point any less valid.)

Since you're still hung up on the difference between the Stars and Bars and the Stars and Stripes or whatever nickname they've come up with for the Canadian flag, here's one question I keep in mind:

Admittedly, with such a massive issue as systemic racism, it's probably fairer to ask "Have you at least tried to rehabilitate yourself?" There's a lot of right-wing groups that fly the American flag because they see their fucked-up vision as being what America should be. While the left, in my experience, tends to eschew the focus on these sort of random symbols, (because we tend to favour substance over style in our views), they still see something positive in the sort of ideals America and its flag represents, even some things the Right likes to claim they support: things like freedom, equality, or opportunity. We'd just prefer if we actually walked the walk.

And on Canada, from what I understand, they're at least trying (and, if I understand it correctly, doing  a better job than in the US) to rectify all the problems that have resulted in them getting a raw deal from the white people who run the country for centuries. Hell, from what I understand of Justin Trudeau's blackface controversy, it looks like he's at least done what he can to not be that sort of jackass anymore.

As for the people who still use the Confederate flag? Well, if they're politically engaged at all, it's pretty obvious where they stand. You could probably find a hundred groups that both use the Swastika and advocate for left-wing causes (even if they're all based out of Asia, where the Dharmic religions are still likely to use it, particularly the Jains, who A: made it a MAJOR religious symbol, and B: have a belief system that's probably the furthest thing you can possibly get from Nazism) before you find one group that waves the Confederate flag and actually believes in racial equality. Especially now.

And given that these truckers are from Canada, the idea of them using it strictly to celebrate their heritage is laughably unlikely. And, frankly, it's just icing on the cake in the whole recipe of "what the fuck is wrong with these people."

I take your Dylann Roof and George Floyd and I raise you a 9/11, countless other terrorist attacks, honour killings, throwing gays off roofs, grooming gangs, clit choppings, etc. Do these things make it unacceptable for a Muslim to own a Quran? No, you say? But one mans actions, Dylan Roof, make it unacceptable for anyone whatsoever to fly a flag? Yeah, that logic may work for you, and I know that's the wokeist narrative the media pushed that we're supposed to buy into, but I'm not buying it for one second. Why did you ignore my Quran comparison?

Helios is the same as a white nationalist, but only the opposite side of the coin. They operate in the exact same manner. Mostly on emotion, and drenched with hatred for others. The white nationalists hate the Jews because the Jews kick ass and take names and some white people are jealous, and they hate the symbol of the Quran. In the same manner, Helios has just replaced the Jews with the whites, and the symbol of the Quran with the symbol of the stars and bars. As far as I go, I don't hate either side. I'm here judging people on their actual actions and beliefs. Not crying over symbols. If Helios had his way, people who associate with the battle flag would be de-personed, scrubbed from the internet, and locked up in prison for hate speech. In the same manner, white nationalists want to ban immigration from Muslim countries, because they hate the Muslims like Helios hates the whites. Like I said, one in the same. Two sides of the same coin.