Well, sense and decency have prevailed. It's being taken down

Defenders of the flag can now join the illustrious ranks of those who opposed women's suffrage, black civil rights and same-sex marriage on the wrong side of history.

You accusing graelig of being sexist/racist basically proves his point, where he explained his position pretty rationally (Even if you disagree with his logic), and you attempted to shout him down. In fact, I don't even think he even mentioned women at all in his post, other than saying Sarkeesian got hatred pulled off of steam.

NO ONE IS CALLING FOR THE FLAG TO BE BANNED.

Not according to the news. It has been on our local news radio stations about different groups calling for the flag to be banned. The US House of Representatives voted to ban the flag from all federal cemeteries, Amazon has banned the sell of the flag from their site, Walmart has banned the sell of the flag from their outlets. Today they are removing the flag from the South Carolina and the news is are already talking about groups rallying for making them take down statues of war heroes that fought on the Confederate side.

All this discussion has shown me is that people are too damn worried about political correctness to bother with looking at historical fact. Abraham Lincoln stated, before the south seceded, that he had no intention to end slavery, but that didn't seem sincere to some states in the south and they separated from the north. The Civil War started with the intent to reunite the north and south. Slavery didn't become a battle point until Lincoln started using it as a bargaining chip by basically saying, "End this war, rejoin the United States by this date, or I'll free your slaves." When the date passed with no surrender, Lincoln freed the slaves in the south, but didn't officially free the slaves of the north until the end of the Civil War.

The Confederate flag only came into being after a Confederate general had the flag changed due to concern for his soldiers. The north and south battle flags were so similar that he feared friendly fire.

Everyone is concerned about feelings and ignoring truth. The American flag can be argued as being a symbol of the same thing the Confederate flag, both sides had slaves and didn't free them until Lincoln freed them. I stated, I was curious when a feminist would start calling for the American flag banned (a feminist started the petition to have Target ban GTA V in Australia), but truth is that there is a much more powerful group that right-wingers are scared will go after the US flag next, liberals. The Washington Post had an article where it talked about how right-wing people are concerned the liberals will go after the American flag at some point and don't see it stopping at the Confederate flag.

As pointed out in the article, those who are easily outraged could claim the US flag is a symbol of war and oppression that should be removed. Where does it end?

Defenders of the flag can now join the illustrious ranks of those who opposed women's suffrage, black civil rights and same-sex marriage on the wrong side of history.

The "wrong side of history" is an extremely subject argument and saying. If we had lost WWI or WWII or any other war the winning side could argue we are on the wrong side of history.

You accusing graelig of being sexist/racist basically proves his point

It proves that when he demonstrates sexist/racist behavior there are people willing to call him out on it.
He had hoped to set up a straw man so that if he did get called out on it it would loan some credence to his post and, by nature of a straw-man argument, somehow also validate the rest of his post. I can do the same thing right now. Ahem: They might call me a social-justice warrior for pointing out racism and standing up for equal rights, but all viewers beware they are just trying to shut us down and silence us!

By saying that the simple fact that his post was called racist proves his whole point you’ve just bought into his game hook, line, and sinker. What it really means is that he knows he is saying racist things, therefor he can predict that people will call him out on it. If I were to try to make the claim that the world is flat, I would be wise to suggest that I am in a more knowledgeable position than the rest of you by suggesting that I am already aware of what counter-arguments you will try to make.

He flooded his whole post with straw-man arguments.

any company that sells it will be attacked as a racist hate-oppressor.

This is called capitalism. Companies respond to what the market desires and tries to shy away from bad publicity. When a company decides that it is better not to sell something than to sell it, it tends to be a clear indication of a majority opinion, because they honestly only care about the bottom line. The fact is that it has gone from the silent majority to the vocal majority.

So you get in a situation like Glenn Beck where he is wildly popular but can't get on TV because advertisers are afraid to be called nazi oppressors.

Glenn Beck claims to have a rare neurological disorder, which he “cured” by spinning around in a gyroscope.
He can’t get on TV because he is a nut-case. His brand is poison. Welcome to capitalism, where companies try to drive profits by not looking as if they support mentally insane people.

If you work in IT and show concern over h1b program which is draining your pocketbook dry, you are racist.

At Facebook, a company that is actually a bit focused on diversity, they have 55% whites and 36% Asian.
Most companies have a ratio much larger for whites. If you show concern over H1B then you are an insecure lot who must have skills so low as to be worried about losing your job to a minority. This might actually include some racial ideologies, which means it may very well be justified if you get called a racist for being apposed to it.
These 2 points are clearly illustrated by taking a look at the opposite side of the spectrum.
I’m perfectly fine with H1B, because I welcome diversity in the workplace and my skills are such that I will not easily be replaced. If I am, I wouldn’t direct my anger at someone who was given equal rights to my position as I was. I would assume he or she bested me at something and deserved the position more.

In order to be against H1B you have to be either racist, arrogant, or insecure. You have to think you are entitled to your job and that minorities shouldn’t have an equal chance at it. Which makes you an asshole in any case.


Ultimately it’s a post full of jibberish and rightfully deserves to be mocked.
And no one should have to apologize for mocking it, nor defend him- or her- self for doing so.

But what do I know? I’m just a social-justice warrior, right? Not, say, someone who just has a reasonable outlook on life and considers all people equal.


L. Spiro

You accusing graelig of being sexist/racist basically proves his point, where he explained his position pretty rationally (Even if you disagree with his logic), and you attempted to shout him down. In fact, I don't even think he even mentioned women at all in his post, other than saying Sarkeesian got hatred pulled off of steam.

I fail to see where this "shouting down" happened. It's a common pattern I notice that those of the more extreme positions (whether this is left/right or whatever else) seem to conceive every tiny bit of criticism or even not-completely-agreeing-unreservedly as an attempt of "shouting down" or something similar.

If you have a controversial opinion you need to be prepared to back it up with something convincing and defend it with more than just pathos. And more pathos. And then playing the victim.

The fact is that it has gone from the silent majority to the vocal majority.

You meant to day "silent majority to the vocal minority", didn't you?

At Facebook, a company that is actually a bit focused on diversity, they have 55% whites and 36% Asian.

I don't know what the job situation is in the US now, and accepting that this thread has deteriorated to something completely unrelated to what started it, are you sure race has anything to do with that type of immigration questions at all?

I would be surprised if that 55/33 figure was much different in tech immigrants, though an uneducated guess would be probably Asians are a somewhat large majority figure instead.. as I guess most educated white people are in countries already offering employment including competing with the US for immigrants (though I wouldn't be surprised if quite a few came from Europe and Russia).

I talked to a guy here in Sweden who was going to go work for Apple, but they didn't manage to import him.. though it was a while ago so perhaps he got to go later on. Also heard of California companies proposing a city on international waters a while back, to mitigate simply not being able to find enough people to hire.

I've sort of been under the impression that the world-wide tech-industry could and would employ twice as many people if they were available and well trained... there's just so much more cool stuff we can build with our current level of technology than there are people actually building it.

In my opinion, when it comes to immigration, a much more important issue is the fact that we're so focused on money that we import people who just want free Wifi and a nicer house, instead of ideological immigrants. Today's immigration is pretty much a business deal, where people go to countries whose policies they would actually oppose, but accept during salary negotiations. Also it's long-term unsustainable by induction (though I guess we got a century more to go before really needing to worry about that, at which point we might get our bulk natural resources from space..). We've basically replaced natural population growth by trying to grab as many of the valuable people we can from other parts of the world.

It proves that when he demonstrates sexist/racist behavior there are people willing to call him out on it.
He had hoped to set up a straw man so that if he did get called out on it it would loan some credence to his post and, by nature of a straw-man argument, somehow also validate the rest of his post.

I disagree with this. I don't think he tried to validate the rest of his opinions, the only point he tried to prove was "some people in the debate don't say their opinion because they get insulted/shut down/accused of racism/misogyny". He was then called an idiot, a racist, and a misogynist despite not mentioning females in his post.

Definately on point with your observation of capitalism, though. This void should be filled by smaller businesses who don't mind the bad PR selling confederate-oriented merchandise. The alternative would be what, forcing stores to sell merchandise?

I fail to see where this "shouting down" happened.

Defenders of the flag can now join the illustrious ranks of those who opposed women's suffrage, black civil rights and same-sex marriage on the wrong side of history.

It's actually impressive how completely and utterly wrong he manages to be in almost every single post.

Out of curiosity, did it hurt when you were dropped on your head?

I know you honestly believe the nonsense you write but please, just stop.

Where does it end?

When the news cycle gets bored and finds something else to cover.

I still fail to see that "shouting down" part. There is obviously a lot of disagreement with what Graelig says. Well, not that obviously because after the last few weeks I would imagine most people here just replace Graelig's posts with mental white noise instead of having to read it (that's completely unrelated to politics though, he gathered most of his WTF-score in the technical forums). According to your quotes the only one who actually took Graelig up on it was ChaosEngine and I really cannot see what exactly you are complaining about.
ChaosEngine strongly disagrees with Graelig and he says it what I would consider an acceptable manner. Certainly more polite than I would be willing to manage considering what I have read in the last few weeks and reading in here.

I don't see a lynch mob here, drowning everything he says into dozens of posts within minutes or whatever could reasonably count as shouting down. I'm not sure what would count. One person disagreeing certainly does not. Even if we add Spiro and me (and we both more dealt with Graelig-effects than with Graelig himself), that's nine posts over the course of 24 hours and some of them were about you and completely unrelated.

I meant chaos specifically was shouting him down. In fact while writing the post I orinally had "With people shouting him down", and I changed it to "With you shouting him down" because it predominantly came from there.