(09-20-2017 02:32 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote: (09-20-2017 01:25 PM)JustAnotherAustinOwl Wrote: South Dakota Republican posts "All Lives Splatter" Meme of car running over protestors, saying "I think this is a movement we can all support."
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nati...683589001/
Stay classy Republicans!
As an aside, it has always struck me as odd that the Republicans in may facebook feed often post odes to "freedom" and "liberty" and how great it is to have them and next a post about how if you are protesting or otherwise criticizing 'Merica you should GTFO.
In a similar vein, I've never understood the logic that equates criticism of something with either a loathing of it, or being unsupportive of it. It is not outside one's abilities to both think that a country is flawed and still want to be proud of it, contribute to it, be a part of it, etc.
I can't speak for others, but here are a few thoughts:
- Yes it is fine (and healthy and necessary) to think that the country is flawed -- not least because it damn sure is.
- But some folks not only criticize national flaws, but seek to denigrate the very symbols of the nation. That is NOT cool. It is legal, and protected, but it is not cool.
- It just so happens that national-symbol-denigrating is a tactic of the left much more than of the right. The dichotomy probably wasn't always so pronounced; the images of American flags carried proudly in civil rights rallies come to mind.
- Of course, the fact that leftists do it makes rightists hate it, and the fact that rightists hate it makes leftists do it (proving again that the best way to deal with obnoxiousness is to ignore it). Each entrenches its view that the other side is crackpots for thinking the way they do.
And to really go out on a limb, it seems that there is some modicum of moral (if not legal) truth to the idea that if you despise a place so much that you would denigrate its most important symbols, maybe you really have slipped from civic disagreement to irreconcilable malcontentment, and perhaps you should go somewhere else. Freedom of movement is every bit as time-honored here as freedom of speech (funny how those go together: the countries that won't let you speak are also the ones that won't let you leave). At any rate, this nation of immigrants is entitled to wonder: if you hate a place (any place) that much, why would you stay? Conversely, if you don't really hate it that much, but just want (as most of us do) to perfect it, why do you have to go around denigrating its symbols?
Anyway, just thinking aloud.
