jameseb said:
Mmm, its like those in Russia who still call for the return of the Czars, waving a Russian flag that flew over tyranny and hate as well, or those hundreds of thousands who long for the days of Red Russia and hail mass-butchers like Stalin who murdered millions of Soviet citizens. Every country has its idiosyncrasies, but for me the purposeful closing of eyes or sheer ignorance, as you put it, has never blazed with such utter clarity as it has right in the heart of Russia itself. But this isn't a discussion about eye-closing Russians nor Southerners. Just an issue of whether or not a flag can be a "hate symbol."
Hm. Not sure what point you're trying to make here, Eric. I think you're purposely trying to offend me, but you missed the mark a bit - I'd put the US and the RF about equal on the FUBAR scale. I'm not particularly attached to either. You missed the mark on your reference, though, too - while it's true that there are people who long for a return to tsarist or Soviet times, the history generally isn't viewed with quite the same romantic foggy lens that I have observed folks using to observe the Confederate South. Russians know full well that the USSR and the Empire were lousy. It's just a matter of whether it's lousier now in the RF or was it lousier back then. I personally think the RF is headed in a better direction, but then again, I'm not a disabled war veteran begging in the street for food because the country that was supposed to provide my pension no longer exists, so it's easy for me to not mourn the passing of the USSR much.
I've never known a nation that didn't have people that took a certain zeal in waving their flag patriotically. As for the Confederate flag, it matters not if the flag represents a nation that has disappeared. Its actually irrelevant.... to us it is about our heritage, not an active government. To draw a comparrison, you use the Russian flag icon... though you are not Russian, it represents your heritage or pride.
No pride or heritage. Just affiliation. And you'll note that above my post it's a flag currently in use, not a historical one, like the Confederate flag. The RF's flag not my heritage. How could it be? The country, the RF, didn't exist when I was born, when my parents were born, when my grandparents were born. I've little attachment to it, or to the flags that preceeded it - none really represent my experience. I don't see how the Confederate flag relates to anyone currently living's experience, either. It seems a bit odd to me that people would choose to represent their "heritage or pride" with a flag of a pseudo-nation in which their great-to-the-x-degree-grandparents may have lived and participated for the few years of its existence, especially when they KNOW that said flag is very offensive to many of their fellow countrymen and women.
Well, we can certainly hope that Russia too will strive to "progress" as much as we have.
See, I think this is supposed to be a dig too, but...yeah, I do hope the RF will progress to at least the US's level of economic strength. I hope it follows a different model of governance, though - the disturbing trend of corporate governance is spreading through the New Russia much as it has the US, and I don't like it a bit. One hopes that Putin's attacks on the oligarchy may have curbed this tendency at least somewhat, although his own autocratic tendencies are barely preferable (and somewhat comparable to current US trends as well, I might add, but that's a topic for another thread). I would like to see a government in the RF far more progressive than that of the USA. Again, a topic for another thread, so I'm not sure why you brought it up here.
The Bible is as much a symbol to hate groups as the Confederate flag ever was... in fact, more so. I doubt there are many people who aren't familiar with the Bible's references to master and slave.... verses that hate groups have long, long used to support their belief that there is nothing wrong with the practice, and use it to in their own warped interpretation to support that some people are superior to others. Those verses in the Bible certainly make it very, very un-PC.
The problem is that many of these people who are "familiar with the Bible's references to master and slave" are not familiar with history. Judaic concepts of slavery were far different from those applied to the enslaved Africans in the New World, in terms of heritibility, rights of the enslaved, obligations of the master and slave, to name a few aspects. But again, that's rather off topic. I know it's been discussed in other threads on this forum, but perhaps it's time to restart that discussion and refresh people's memories.
(But thank you so much for the gifts and blessings! 
