Well now we're talking, finally!
I'll disregard the first part, since I guess that since you consider 'divisive' a value judgement while I consider it merely descriptive we'd come to no agreement anyhow.
Just a note: I'm not at all claiming that the guy was right to burn that flag or anything - it was bad that he did that, and it's a fame the heirloom is gone. All I'm saying is that just reflexively declaring the guy an asshole (or a bastard, or whatever) is not the right reaction.
Then make your argument for why someone who steals and destroys their peer's family heirloom is not an arsehole. Stealing something that important to someone else is an arsehole move, burning it for no personal gain except to cause harm and erase your peer's cultural symbol is an ISIS-tier arsehole move. Should be self-explanatory why someone doing nothing but being an arsehole is one.
Note how in what you write that guy has turned into a caricature, someone who does nothing but burn and destroy? That's why I'm against the 'what an asshole' reflex. Not only does it make communication with the other side impossible, it also stands in the way of questioning one's own assumption - in this case that a CoE symmbol is necessarily or exclusively a cultural one, and that the act of burning it was motivated purely by the desire to cause harm and hurt the other person.
Lemme get back to the Confederate flag analogy. Don't worry, I'll defend the flag-bearer too this time, so bear with me.
So a
guy in Alabama or wherever brings a flag to school. In Birmingham, let's say, just to be really on-the-nose about it. It's something handed down from his great-great-grampa, who brought it home from the Civil War, fighting for the Confederacy. During show and tell he gets up and talks to the class about the thing. How it's a coveted heirloom, and how his great-great-grampa fought in the War, and so on and so on.
By the end of the day, the flag's been burned, and both him and the guy who did the burning - a black fellow - return home with a few more bruises than they had when they got up that morning.
To the black guy, that flag's a political symbol - a reminder of all the suffering he and those like him have had to endure, and continue to endure. The first dude bringing it to school, talking about his oh-so-heroic slavery-defending cracker grampa - a provocateur. Of course he spoke up against that, and words led to more words, and words led to action. Burning that flag in the end was a symbolic act to counter the symbolic act of bringing it to school. It was legitimate defense against continued oppression.
To the white guy, the flag's an heirloom, and one with cool stories attached, too. He doesn't see why the other dude got so upset about it: The war was about states' rights, his great-great-grampa was a poor man anyway, didn't own a slave in his life, and honestly it's a free country - ever heard of the first amendment? When the black dude started insulting him and his family, of course he stood his ground - that's what you're supposed to do, you shouldn't bow to brute force. The flag being burned is a terrible loss for the family, and it was done for no good reason at all, which makes it all the more senseless. The guy's an ass, pure and simple.
What I'm getting at is: Both ways of telling the story have their merits, and to resolve the underlying societal disputes, we have to understand both of them. Burning someone's stuff is wrong, for sure, but it's so drastic, so unusual, that it's practically certain there's something deeper going on. Ignoring that - reducing the participants' actions in a vacuum, or from only one of these possible perspectives - means closing one's eyes to the actual problem, in favor of concerning oneself with a strawman.
Here, of course the black dude was wrong - you shouldn't burn people's stuff. The white guy should've done better, too, though - anyone putting half a thought into the matter should've realized that others maybe wouldn't see that flag the same way he did. Doesn't mean it's his fault the flag was burned, but it does mean that slapping a guilty verdict on the black guy and moving on misses the point.
Applied to the issue at hand: It's a ridiculous proposition that there's any danger of English/British/Loyalist Northern Irish culture in Northern Ireland being erased. To the guy carrying the flag to school it may have only thought of it as a cool story to tell, but it's perfectly reasonable for a Republican Irish guy to see it as an enemy symbol.
Remember, we're talking about a place where they ended the drive to even out the confessions in the police only a few years ago - and they did so even though that drive failed, and the force is still 90% Protestant, while the country itself is split roughly 50/50. It's a place where the government still is covering the soldiers who massacred unarmed civilians on two
separate occasions. It's a place where both Loyalist and Republican
terrorists have killed scores of people - some military, some police, and far too many civilian - in shootings and bombings. It's a place where they had to
separate neighborhoods based on confession, for fear of violence from both sides, and even in 2012 about 70% of folks there still thought them necessary. In a word: It's a place where there should be considerable sensibility by now that you need to take care in what you do and how it is perceived.
It's possible that the guy really just was an ass. Considering the situation however it's not advisable at all to consider that the default answer.
Ninjaedit: I tried that, but I got the distinct impression that LW wasn't exactly interested. I hope the above is sufficient to clear out any misunderstandings or ambiguities.
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Topic: [MILK] There were 12 eggs here what did you do with them? (Happy thread?!) (Read 15846611 times)