Hysterical Revisionism

Progress continues!

Here, anyway. History is repeating itself elsewhere.

The Moral Outrage Puritans of the world have, after failing to stop the evil hashtag of Gamergate, Have, in the aftermath of one young Mr. Roof's shooting rampage, looked to stamp out a new cause of all that is bad.

Bad Flags.

Yes, clearly the REAL threat to the world is Confederate Flags. If people can't fly or have Confederate Flags, they can't be racist!

According to some people, apparently just looking at this flag makes you a horrible racist.

Apple has removed all games from their shops that have the Confederate Flag. Apparently they believe seeing the flag even in it's appropriate context- or perhaps especially in it's appropriate context- will turn people into shooting-spree racists.

What simpletons they must imagine everyone who is not them to be!

If the confederate flag turned people into racists and homicidal maniacs, then the U.S. would be a smoldering crater crafted over years of endless war between the new Confederacy and the Fourth Reich created by Wolfenstein 3D.

But, that's absurd. Surely no one actually believes this is the case.

Surely.

This is a fascinating thing and could quite likely make you a better person to understand.

But Apple has decided to go further than just purging the Confederate Battle Flag for the bad feels it causes.

Don't shoot Nazis! Shoot... Germans. Yes, shoot those horrible Germans! Much better!

Meanwhile in the city of Tampa the shooting is being used by Mayor Bob Buckhorn to call for the removal of a Confederate battle flag from a civil war memorial.

Why?

“The fact that it is still flying over I-4 is not a celebration of the history of the South but a painful reminder of man’s inhumanity to fellow man. It does not reflect the amazing diversity of Tampa or the emergence of this state as a beacon of tolerance. It needs to come down.”

The flag makes them feel bad and reminds them of bad things that happened. It doesn't make them look good. 

Well, that's a good reason to hide and bury it. After all, isn't that how the saying goes?

'Those who bury their history and are never reminded of it will never repeat it because they don't really have an idea of what it was anymore.'

That doesn't sound right.

I would think said flag should stay for much of the same reasons he says it should go. A reminder of how far they've come, and of where they never want to go again- presumably.

And what good does it serve to attack these flags? Well, none. 

Assuming people aren't so insane as to sincerely believe Bad Flags make Bad People then it' s all about punishing people for either liking the flag for whatever reasons or simply trying to look like a better and more progressive person by hating BAD FLAGS. 

If you don't hate BAD FLAGS, maybe you're the BAD PEOPLE.

In doing this, they slap at a whole lot of people who could have any number of reasons for having some appreciation for the flag, for whatever valid reasons. Like representing the South in historical games in the Civil War maybe.

People slapping at wide swathes of vaguely defined people presumed to be monsters... This seems familiar. Oh, look at this.

Whoosh indeed.

Racism, folks, is a universal human flaw. It is, sadly, something you could not without merit accuse babies of. We are naturally predisposed to prefer people similar to us over people different from us. It is not an external evil, but rather an evolutionary trait that has outlived it's usefulness but cannot simply be purged from the human mind.

It must be recognized and struggled with constantly to the ends of seeking improvement. You cannot defeat it by accusing others of it and then attacking them any more than you could do this with any other human failing.

Not only is that lazy it actually makes it harder to encourage positive change in others while screaming idiots using such topics as a desperate means of collecting social capital have those others intractably defensive.

Worse than that is attempting to censor and purge the 'offensive' words and symbols of these others. When you silence the voices of others you set the framework in place to be silenced yourself.

They are not monsters, they are probably just plain wrong. Most of us are be it at a time or on a given topic, whether we know it or not. One of the problems inherent in being less than omniscient. 

Progress continues.