NASCAR flag ban flops

The response of NASCAR fans to CEO Brian France's call to put away their Confederate flags was pretty much predictable. If anything, there were more Stars and Bars on display at Daytona than in other years.

If anything, it gives you some idea of how out of touch the billionaires who run the big show are with their fan base. It's not a crowd that goes in for political correctitude, and I'm OK with that.

There is something fundamentally phoney about banning cultural symbols on the basis that seeing them may cause someone to feel sad or angry. So the Confederate flag reminds some people of slavery? So what? America was built on slavery. Why pretend otherwise now? Besides, it seems to me that it's more white liberals taking umbrage than actual descendants of slaves.

This flag flap arose out of the recent mass murder by a messed up white kid who took a few selfies with that flag. That's a tragedy that could lead to some good if it lead to discussions about alienated youth, mental illness, prescription drug side-effects, or gun control.

America isn't willing to have any of those discussions, so instead, the conversation veers down this irrelevant dead-end side-street over a symbol.

Why banning the Confederate flag is stupid

So far, we've got a lot of "voluntary" bans; Walmart and Amazon and so forth putting a finger to the wind and responding accordingly.

That's kosher, I guess. They are market-driven companies responding to the demands of the market.

I think we have to respect their freedom to do what they do in terms of what they stock on their shelves.

What we should be all over them about is wages and working conditions.

But that's another discussion.

Sadly, it's not hard to see where politicians are going to start cashing in on the issue-du-jour and try to legislate the Confederate flag into oblivion.

That would be a massive mistake.

In the first place, that's a move that would run face-first into the first amendment.  Secondly, that would motivate a lot of your second amendment stalwarts to notice the first.

Bingo!

Every public square in America will be overtaken by flag-waving open-carry aficionados, and you know what flag they'll be waving!

Why are nine dead in Charleston infinitely more newsworthy than nine dead in Waco?

On May 17 local police and several federal law enforcement agencies were involved in the shooting of 27 civilians in Waco Texas, nine of whom died of their injuries. The Waco Police Department immediately came up with a far-fetched yarn about a pre-meditated biker battle, into which law enforcement was only drawn when they themselves became targets. The story hit the headlines but had virtually disappeared within 36 hours.

One month later a mentally unstable sociopath murdered nine people in a Charleston church. That story too hit the headlines, but unlike the Waco murders, this story has staying power. A week after the fact, the Charleston nine remain at the top of the news cycle, while the Waco nine are long forgotten.

Why?

Why has one story been suppressed while the other gets non-stop headline treatment across all mainstream media platforms?

After all, Waco is the more important story.

Charleston is about race, hatred, mental illness, and above all, the frightening access that mentally ill people in America have to firearms. Since that latter point is not a discussion America is willing to have, the conversation instead turns to symbols.

Maybe it's time to ban the Confederate flag...

Waco, on the other hand, is about the deliberate perversion of due process. It's about half a dozen government agencies conspiring to deny justice to those caught up in the case. It's about shielding the culpable individuals and organizations from being brought to justice. More than that, it's about the national media colluding in that conspiracy.

Nothing to see here, folks...