Octopus Overlords

Ever since Six Flags opened in 1961, the six flags that have flown over Texas have been a staple of the park.

No more.

As of Friday morning, the five flags other than the United States flag — representing France, Spain, Mexico, the Republic of Texas and the Confederacy — are being left to the history books.
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“We always choose to focus on celebrating the things that unite us versus those that divide us,” said Six Flags spokeswoman Sharon Parker. “As such, we have changed the flag displays in our parks to feature American flags.”
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“When Six Flags Over Texas was being planned during the Eisenhower administration, the founders settled on six themed areas and decided to use the historic fact of the flags of six nations that had flown over Texas as the basis of the themed areas,” Parker said. “Since that time, the park has moved on to incorporate many other themes. The Six Flags represent our brand across the world; no longer the themed areas of a park that opened in 1961.”

While Six Flags Entertainment operates 20 theme parks in the U.S., Mexico and Canada, only Six Flags Fiesta Texas in San Antonio and Six Flags Over Georgia flew all six flags. Those parks will now only fly the American flag as well.

Isgrimnur wrote:One Flag over Texas

As of Friday morning, the five flags other than the United States flag — representing France, Spain, Mexico, the Republic of Texas and the Confederacy — are being left to removed from the history books.

noxiousdog wrote:I am on board with taking down the Confederate flag with very few exceptions. I think this is one of the exceptions. They have the right to do it, of course, but I don't like the decision.

YellowKing wrote:I lived through the abolishment of candy cigarettes. I'll live through this.

Unagi wrote:

YellowKing wrote:I lived through the abolishment of candy cigarettes. I'll live through this.

abolishment?

LawBeefaroni wrote:

noxiousdog wrote:I am on board with taking down the Confederate flag with very few exceptions. I think this is one of the exceptions. They have the right to do it, of course, but I don't like the decision.

If they're going for a national brand it makes sense. I have no problem with the original six flags flying over parks in Texas but having them over a park in Illinois or New Jersey seems odd.

BTW, they aren't taking down the "Confederate Flag" (battle flag). They took that down a while ago. They're taking down the CSA First Flag (stars and bars).

noxiousdog wrote:Well, that's how much I care. I didn't even know it wasn't the battle flag. That makes the decision more odd, but that's corporate sanitization I suppose.

The new “Nazi Sense” mechanic adds a whole new gameplay dimension on top of Call Of Duty: WWII’s already intense firefights. Instead of just blasting away at every enemy soldier, players will have to consider whether each individual Nazi might be an otherwise decent person who just happens to be fighting alongside some real bad apples. Shoot a Nazi who’s actually a pillar of his community and is proud of his heritage and you’ll take a blow to your health or ammo. Shoot too many decent, hardworking Nazis, and you’ll have to start over from the last checkpoint.

Smoove_B wrote:I wonder what candidate Trump said back in 2015 regarding the Confederate Flag?

RunningMn9 wrote:That's just the flag. No one asked him about the beautiful monuments to treasonous rebels.

LordMortis wrote:

RunningMn9 wrote:That's just the flag. No one asked him about the beautiful monuments to treasonous rebels.

Like Washington and Jefferson.

RunningMn9 wrote:

LordMortis wrote:

RunningMn9 wrote:That's just the flag. No one asked him about the beautiful monuments to treasonous rebels.

Like Washington and Jefferson.

Or Lee or Stonewall Jackson. He wanted to know where it stopped. It stops where the treasonous rebels were fighting a just cause FOR liberty, rather than fighting for the right to keep enslaving other human beings.

So while Washington and Jefferson weren't fighting the American Revolution to end slavery, they were fighting a just cause. Lee and Jackson were not. It's not terribly complicated.

El Guapo wrote:Basically from what I can tell white supremacists pushed their noxious agenda, and they are getting tremendous pushback, such that their rally seems to have been mostly counter-productive to their cause.

Most of the white nationalist, far-right and “anti-communist” groups that spoke with TPM acknowledged that squeeze, in addition to their association with a gory rally attended by neo-Nazis and decorated Ku Klux Klan members, as a setback. But the gloss they put on it varied widely: A number of group leaders insisted that the exposure they received through the “Unite the Right” rally is worth any ensuing hardship, and that other social media and web domain platforms will crop up to service their needs. Others described the ongoing backlash as a huge blow.

“It went from a few hundred to well over 1,000 to now roughly 3,000 pretty quickly,” said ANSWER Coalition Boston organizer Nino Brown. “There are about 10,000 interested in our event, according to Facebook.”

A BLM-organized demonstration called “Fight Supremacy” experienced the same growth, raising more than $20,000 by Thursday night and suddenly expecting more than 10,000 attendees.

RunningMn9 wrote:

LordMortis wrote:

RunningMn9 wrote:That's just the flag. No one asked him about the beautiful monuments to treasonous rebels.

Like Washington and Jefferson.

Or Lee or Stonewall Jackson. He wanted to know where it stopped. It stops where the treasonous rebels were fighting a just cause FOR liberty, rather than fighting for the right to keep enslaving other human beings.

So while Washington and Jefferson weren't fighting the American Revolution to end slavery, they were fighting a just cause. Lee and Jackson were not. It's not terribly complicated.

El Guapo wrote:To some degree, I feel like people on my Facebook feed are overly freaking out about what Charlottesville represents. White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis rallied there to try to preserve the Robert E. Lee statue and to try to rally white supremacists more broadly. The Charlottesville mayor is still pressing ahead with trying to remove the statue. Efforts to remove Confederate statues and symbols are accelerating. Trump himself mealy-mouth supported them, but bipartisan figures across the country are roundly and severely condemning him for it.

Basically from what I can tell white supremacists pushed their noxious agenda, and they are getting tremendous pushback, such that their rally seems to have been mostly counter-productive to their cause.

El Guapo wrote:but it's not the same to have a statute of them as it is to have statues of Confederates.

RunningMn9 wrote:

LordMortis wrote:

RunningMn9 wrote:That's just the flag. No one asked him about the beautiful monuments to treasonous rebels.

Like Washington and Jefferson.

Or Lee or Stonewall Jackson. He wanted to know where it stopped. It stops where the treasonous rebels were fighting a just cause FOR liberty, rather than fighting for the right to keep enslaving other human beings.

So while Washington and Jefferson weren't fighting the American Revolution to end slavery, they were fighting a just cause. Lee and Jackson were not. It's not terribly complicated.

Kraken wrote:

El Guapo wrote:To some degree, I feel like people on my Facebook feed are overly freaking out about what Charlottesville represents. White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis rallied there to try to preserve the Robert E. Lee statue and to try to rally white supremacists more broadly. The Charlottesville mayor is still pressing ahead with trying to remove the statue. Efforts to remove Confederate statues and symbols are accelerating. Trump himself mealy-mouth supported them, but bipartisan figures across the country are roundly and severely condemning him for it.

Basically from what I can tell white supremacists pushed their noxious agenda, and they are getting tremendous pushback, such that their rally seems to have been mostly counter-productive to their cause.

Are you going to the rally on the Common tomorrow? I'm inclined not to, since the last reports I saw were predicting around 200 Nazi-lites vs. 20,000 opponents. But if you're going maybe we can meet up for a picnic.

El Guapo wrote:

Kraken wrote:

El Guapo wrote:To some degree, I feel like people on my Facebook feed are overly freaking out about what Charlottesville represents. White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis rallied there to try to preserve the Robert E. Lee statue and to try to rally white supremacists more broadly. The Charlottesville mayor is still pressing ahead with trying to remove the statue. Efforts to remove Confederate statues and symbols are accelerating. Trump himself mealy-mouth supported them, but bipartisan figures across the country are roundly and severely condemning him for it.

Basically from what I can tell white supremacists pushed their noxious agenda, and they are getting tremendous pushback, such that their rally seems to have been mostly counter-productive to their cause.

Are you going to the rally on the Common tomorrow? I'm inclined not to, since the last reports I saw were predicting around 200 Nazi-lites vs. 20,000 opponents. But if you're going maybe we can meet up for a picnic.

Thinking about it, but realistically probably not. My family and I are scheduled to drive out to central / western MA (a town called Hardwick), where my in-laws have a plot of land and which has a festival of some type. If I am back in the Boston area in time, and depending upon what I am seeing on Facebook, I would like to go check it out. But I doubt that I will be.

But if I wind up going I can shoot you a PM in case you are in the area.

But there was one thing that apparently worked somehow. How do we know that it worked? Well, because the nazi numbers have been dwindling ever since, and they even cancelled their rally last year, in August 2016.

So, what was this secret method, this anti-nazi repellent that made them go away?

It was mockery.

There is a German initiative called EXIT that aims to help nazis quit the scene and stop being nazis. Apart from providing help and counseling, they also try to actively reach out to nazis. One way they do it is through humor.

One time they made black t-shirts with some sort of German nationalistic imagery on the front. A skull with the word “national rebels” or whatever. They passed these out for free at nazi rock concerts. But the nazis who took their new shirts home and washed them had to witness them losing their color and their artwork and turning out white with a logo that said: “if your shirt can change, so can you.” They were trojan shirts.

There are several initiatives like this in Germany.

Bad Nenndorf teamed up with an initiative called Rechts Gegen Rechts (right vs right), and they came up with a plan that had worked well before in Wunsiedel, the place that had seen the nazi rallies to the grave of Rudolf Hess.

The idea was simple: the nazis were to rally against themselves.

Contributors from Bad Nenndorf made a pledge that for every meter that was being marched by the nazis, they would donate a certain amount of money to initiatives like EXIT.

So for the next nazi march in August that year, the people of Bad Nenndorf decorated their town. They made sure to use lots of colors and especially lots of pink, because they wanted their town to be pretty for the nazis.

There was only one problem: the police had told everyone that it was illegal to hold any sort of counter-demonstrations within the corridor next to the nazi rally. Security concerns. Luckily the people of Bad Nenndorf found a workaround: private parties!

Virtually every house along the route of the nazi parade became the location of a party that just so happened to be on that day. The owner of the house would pass out written invitations to his friends and everyone else who wanted to come and celebrate, and the police would let them pass through. After all, those people weren’t there for any counter-demonstrations, but for private parties. A lot of private parties.

That year, when the nazis came marching into town, they could not believe their eyes. The whole town was decorated, there was loud music and partying going on everywhere, and people seemed happy that they had come. There were markings on the road, indicating how far the nazis had marched in their quest to raise money against themselves. Ten meters. One hundred meters. One thousand meters!

And the people would be cheering the nazis on. “Come on!” they would say, “you can do it, keep going!” There were even rumors of individuals trying to hand out bananas to dumbfounded nazis.
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Actually, I think that the nazis aren’t just fine with the Antifa punching them, they actually enjoy it for two reasons: first, it’s part of their identity. I don’t claim to know much about the psychology of the common nazi, but there are a few tropes that seem to be clear: manliness is important, the seriousness of the mission is important, the heroics of standing against adversaries are important.

Being attacked is part of the nazi identity.

Second, any attack on them can be used by them against the rest of society. They can point to their bruises and say: look, you are not better than we are! And this is precisely one of their central storylines: Axis vs Allies, Buchenwald vs Bad Nenndorf, nazis vs Antifa – they want everyone else to think it’s all the same, that there is nothing particularly bad about being a nazi.

And yet there are some things that nazis seem to be unable to cope with. The little town of Bad Nenndorf being all colorful and nicely decorated for them is one of those things. People applauding the march of the nazis, people playing loud music, people toasting with beer and laughing at them is another thing.

Moliere wrote:I Don’t Like The Antifa

But there was one thing that apparently worked somehow. How do we know that it worked? Well, because the nazi numbers have been dwindling ever since, and they even cancelled their rally last year, in August 2016.

So, what was this secret method, this anti-nazi repellent that made them go away?

It was mockery.

[...]

Kraken wrote:

El Guapo wrote:

Kraken wrote:

El Guapo wrote:To some degree, I feel like people on my Facebook feed are overly freaking out about what Charlottesville represents. White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis rallied there to try to preserve the Robert E. Lee statue and to try to rally white supremacists more broadly. The Charlottesville mayor is still pressing ahead with trying to remove the statue. Efforts to remove Confederate statues and symbols are accelerating. Trump himself mealy-mouth supported them, but bipartisan figures across the country are roundly and severely condemning him for it.

Basically from what I can tell white supremacists pushed their noxious agenda, and they are getting tremendous pushback, such that their rally seems to have been mostly counter-productive to their cause.

Are you going to the rally on the Common tomorrow? I'm inclined not to, since the last reports I saw were predicting around 200 Nazi-lites vs. 20,000 opponents. But if you're going maybe we can meet up for a picnic.

Thinking about it, but realistically probably not. My family and I are scheduled to drive out to central / western MA (a town called Hardwick), where my in-laws have a plot of land and which has a festival of some type. If I am back in the Boston area in time, and depending upon what I am seeing on Facebook, I would like to go check it out. But I doubt that I will be.

But if I wind up going I can shoot you a PM in case you are in the area.

Sounds good. We are also planning to skip it if the nazis are seriously outnumbered, as expected, but we're only a 30-minute T ride away if it turns out differently. If it really does remain a free speech rally, I support that anyway -- yes, even for alt-right types. But if actual neo-Nazis are really marching on Boston Common, I can't ignore that.

Moliere wrote:Nation Rallies Around Ronald McDonald Statue That Embodies Country’s True Heritage

Defiant wrote:Speaking of which, another statue of the Confederacy gets dismantled:

Holman wrote:Kentucky clamed neutrality but then declared for the union when CSA troops invaded.

em2nought wrote:If there was a rebellion over "states rights" versus the growing power of the federal government today could it be a just cause?

em2nought wrote:If there was a rebellion over "states rights" versus the growing power of the federal government today could it be a just cause?