Off Topic Politics Thread

I get what you mean - I read an interesting article on the Confederate flag the other day (I'll have to dig it out) and I could see that flying it isn't necessarily racist, but many deem it that way. Much the same to me that if a skinhead is waving the union jack in my face I feel threatened, but I don't feel threatened if I am outside Buckingham Palace in a crowd of flag waving people.

 

That's the thing with symbols - they mean different things to different people. I personally get offended at the idea that the far right have a monopoly on patriotism and Britishness.

I think many black Americans see the Confederate flag as a threatening emblem. But to many white southerners, it's still their flag in a way the Stars and Stripes never will be.

I distrust all flags for that reason really. I wouldn't have a St George's flag on my lawn because I wouldn't want anyone misinterpreting it, but I have had little car window flags during the World Cup (not for long, obviously).

Statues are different though. I do understand how Robert E Lee on a pedestal in a park is offensive to some,but it's only a sodding statue. I'd have left it alone because to me, tearing it down is even more offensive than leaving it there for pigeons to crap on.

There is a statue of Oliver Cromwell in front of the House of Commons. A great Parliamentarian, who established the primacy of Parliament over Monarch, and in doing so paved the way for the slow birth of democracy. But to many, a religious fundamentalist and tyrant, and to the Irish a brutal English imperialist. I'd be pretty pissed off myself if someone suggested taking his statue down.

 

I suppose it is just that slavery is still so raw in the US consciousness - to think that in our generation there still was segregation in the US is quite something. Also one thing I have always found amazing that in the same generation the US could go from segregation to voting in a black president.

 

There are probably a few people still alive whose grandparents were born into slavery. So whilst it's not living memory, it's still a pretty strong folk memory.

America is fascinating - so progressive, yet often so backward at the same time. In my opinion, it'll be years, decades even, before a European country elects a black President or Prime Minister. Things move a lot more quickly - and violently - in the USA.

 

No idea of what local sentiment is, but at the very least it should have been sold to a museum if it was going to be taken down, not destroyed. I don't know how violent protests from the left discourage violence from the right...


Donald trumps comments are pretty much expected though. Just another faux foe to scare his electorate with.

The Mexicans are out to get us! The muslims are out to get us! Enviromentalists are out to get us! North Korea is out to get us! The left is out to get us!
But don't worry i will protect you for i am strong! And when nobody gets you you will know that it was i, Donald Trump, who stopped them! (and absolutely not because none of them was actually going to get you in the first place)

 

They are not destroying the statues, they are putting them in storage while they build a museum. The problem with America is many still celebrate a losing side. Many still see the confed flag as a flag of honour.

The war was 100% about keeping slaves and other racist ****, it's a bit like Germany having statues of Hitler etc all over the place. The real problem is the Southern leaders should have been killed when the war ended, it's to many they are deemed heroes.

 

The one that was pulled down by the protesters in that video was wrecked by the impact with the ground.

 

Yes, but Europe has done so many progressive things before the States. Woman leaders for example. Woman's rights, Abortion. Basically, anything where peoples rights are concerned If we do things a little more slowly it's probably because we do things with a little more maturity

If you kill them you turn them into martyrs. It's a no win situation.
Truth is, in the face of education and evidence, people will often choose to remain ignorant because it suits them.

 

I can't agree with that, & I doubt many historians would either. Slavery may have been the fundamental issue that caused the Confederacy to break from the Union, but to say the Civil War was 100% about that one factor is just plain wrong...

 

And when you mention that the English are not the first Britons so they should leave our shores they get totally incensed as they don't know their own history. Show someone a map of Britain with Cornwall marked as West Wales and they get completely enraged. OK, it was about 1000 years ago but I'm more British than any English(man)

 

Point out that Wessex was the last Saxon kingdom and the cradle of the English nation and they look at you like you're nuts

 

That's protesters angry how the president is basically a Nazi.

 

Slavery was one of the biggest reasons. The leaders treating poc like **** shouldn't be celebrated. That is the whole problem in the states.

The confed are still cheered for, still have celebrations etc. While in other countries the past is in museums, so people learn about the mistakes.

 

According to this article that is the reason for the southern states i.e to protect slavery but the northern states main reason was to get the United States back together. The north didn't agree with slavery so would have abolished it as they did. This article seems to suggest that slavery was not the north's driving concern.

https://www.civilwar.org/learn/articles/10-facts-what-everyone-should-know-about-civil-war

 

Yeah, it was. And Slavery was a crime against humanity, the scars of which, as has been pointed out elsewhere on this thread, are still a long way from having healed.

The same thing could be said about the genocide against the Indians, much of which was conducted by the same Union army which had defeated the Confederacy and emancipated the slaves.

 

To many in the North, maintaining the Union was far more important than abolishing slavery. Indeed, not all Northern politicians were abolishionists.

 

I said one of, not the one.


This is why the statues are being removed
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/16/why-is-the-us-still-fighting-the-civil-war

Also free speech in America is another big problem. They take old as rules way to seriously, especially rules that should be changed. Hate speech isn't free speech in my opinion.

 

Beefy, how do you feel about the statue commemorating Bomber Command, in Green Park, London?

By just about any reasonable standard, the firebombing of Dresden was a war crime - reads Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5 for insight into how bad it was. But I wouldn't advocate taking that statue down, because why offend all those families who had loved ones who crewed those bombing missions - the attrition rate for which was horrific?

My mum lived through the blitz, by the way. I don't suppose the German children crying in their beds were any less innocent or afraid than she was.

Nothing in life is ever straight forward or unambiguous. Trump is still a bully and a racist, but not all his supporters are.

 

All Trump's supporters are either racist or they are supporting a racist. Both can be equally as bad.

And I would take it down and put it in a museum.

 

Fair enough.