So they finally
removed the Confederate flag. I support this decision. But only in the most negligible of ways.
No, the thing that has bothered me about the whole thing almost from the start is...
how and
why in the fuck did this become a thing all about the Confederate flag at the South Carolina capitol? Yes, yes, I know, "symbol of racism and oppression" and all that shit, and that's bad I agree. Yes, the murderer apparently was indeed a huge racist fuckwit, true enough. But it
wasn't a goddamn
flag that killed those people in that Charleston church, and that's what set this whole thing off. The fact that these terrible murders were essentially
hijacked for the purpose of a petty political argument about whether we should or shouldn't take down a fucking
flag is just rather disgusting to me.
On the first day or so after the shootings, when
President Obama was justifiably ranting about all the rampant gun violence in this country and such, I was hopeful that maybe, just maybe,
finally something might possibly
start to be done about this issue. I was wary, as usual, of the NRA and whatever other stupid asshats starting up their jackass braying (
which they did, of course) and their attempts to put brakes on the whole discussion as they are forever wont to do and so on and so forth, but I was still hopeful that, despite all of that, maybe, just maybe, this would be the straw that broke the camel's back for the greater American public in general and maybe, just maybe, this whole gun issue would
start to be dealt with, finally. What a fool I was.
Because then, inexplicably, it seemed to become
all about that fucking flag. Even the murders themselves seemed to fall by the wayside when the talk about this goddamn flag started, and whether it should stay or should be removed or whatever. I barely give a rat's ass about this piece of shit flag, either way. It can be taken down like it was, or it could have flown there from now until the end of time... its removal isn't going to bring those people back. Its removal isn't going to bring back anyone else that died in senseless gun deaths like this. And, most importantly, its removal isn't going to prevent future deaths for similar idiotic, evil reasons.
I'd been trying to stay silent on this issue, but seeing the video on the news of that huge crowd of people out there cheering the removal of the flag like it was some sort of huge victory just set me off, because I personally don't think the fate of that flag, whether it got taken down or not, was even
remotely important compared to the issue of all the asinine gun violence that plagues this country, not all or even most of which is racially motivated. I think the flag issue was completely irrelevant to that, but yet it somehow became pretty much the
only issue in the wake of the shootings. Go fucking figure. Now that the flag is gone, can we finally maybe turn our attention to the much more important issue of guns in this country? Yeah... I'm not going to hold my breath on that. Maybe the
next big, inevitable, high profile gun murders will be the straw that breaks the camel's back on this issue? Nope, not going to hold my breath on that one either.
I'm done, for now.
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