Amazon and eBay ban confederate merchandise

boing
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The Generically.

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No weirder than a singer hitting the heigh notes — in fact, significantly less weird. The number of flags sold is going up.

Up is the same direction as more in our shared spacial model of abstract notions. You turn the volume up. You up your level of activity. The rent is too damn high. Conversely, you turn down the volume. You lower your expectations. You spend down your inheritance.

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I shall refer to the Dwarves of Discworld.
Dwarves in contrast to humans, see deepness and downward as better and preferred to higher and upness.
Their elected leader is the Low King, lower being better than a High King. A dwarf who is not feeling very well will be feeling quite up where a dwarf feeling down is in the best spirits. Lowlifes are the ones each dwarf hopes their son will spend time with. All a matter of cultural perspective.

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Something like this, maybe? :

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HAHAHAHA!!

Etsy banned “metaphysical” magic spells
 but they haven’t banned the “rebel flag”, yet.

https://www.etsy.com/ca/search?q=rebel%20flag

See also: “Confederate Flag”

https://www.etsy.com/ca/search?q=confederate+flag&ref=related

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Um, no one is saying “Don’t take reasonably about guns because we’re talking about a popular racist flag instead!”

Many are having the gun discussion, yet again. But given the affection that Roof and others of his ilk have for this particular flag and the ideology it represents, this moment and this flag are a chance to loudly reject that ideology. And who knows, maybe make that common and terrorizing symbol a little less common in the process, which doesn’t sound at all like a bad result to me.

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I very much doubt that it will be removed from every store online. I sure won’t miss it if mainstream retailers stop selling it though.

There’s no law in the U.S. against wearing or selling fascist armbands but most places don’t care to sell them. That might pose a slight inconvenience to, say, a theater group putting on a period drama set in 1930s Europe but it’s not what I’d call a serious infringement on free speech.

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reasonable discussions are so much harder than knee-jerk reactions. they require patience, listening, give and take. americans aren’t willing to do the hard things anymore. i don’t know why. we spent and built our way of the great depression, we fought our way through wwii and provided the arms to let others fight their way out of wwii. we put the effort and resources into putting men on the moon but we don’t do things like that anymore and i don’t now why.

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No less weird isn’t saying much, because these are instances of the same idea! The thing is that more isn’t a direction at all, it’s an amount. Spacial models of abstract notions seems like a fundamentally unclear practice which there is no need for, and I think it often hinders people from conceptualizing quantitatively. High and low are relative, and don’t suggest a continuum. More and less are still relative, but are at least a bit more accurate, and aren’t any harder to say. Not only are the idioms spacial, but spacial relationships aren’t even really explained by pairs of opposites.

For example, “high” notes could be said to be more frequent. The number of flags (not that I have seen any numbers) are perhaps greater. Likewise, I would probably refer to more volume, more activity, excessive rent, less volume, lesser expectations. Such a modifier isn’t even needed for for simply “spending your inheritance”. It boggles my mind that I live in a world where “Lesser prices!” is confusing to people when compared to the oft celebrated “Low prices!”. It is so counter-intuitive!

Edited to add: People often even use location modifiers for actions, adding no apparent meaning, such as: “use it up” or “wash it down”. How does this become more meaningful than simply “use it” or “wash it”? AAIIIEEE!!!

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I totally understand the outrage at the underlying racism of the rebel flag and I agree it has no place on state flags or government property. But, growing up in '70s and '80s and seeing it on the General Lee and Skynrd and other’s album covers it was taken as a symbol of Southern pride without the racist baggage. We just weren’t as sophisticated back then. Maybe Southerners need to come up with a new flag that represents their pride, one that people of all colors can get behind.

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Or rather was presented as a symbol of Southern pride without the racist baggage. Plenty of people (particularly non-white people) still saw it as a symbol of racism, but those concerns were largely ignored.

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I tend to never be offended, but this makes me no less opinionated. I don’t need to be reactionary to debate what I find interesting and/or topical.

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So you’re saying business owners need to conduct a “reasonable discussion” before deciding whether to join others in refusing to help promote racism by selling this obviously racist flag? I mean, how much more “reasonable discussion” should it take?

If the multipronged rejection of this flag and the ideology it represents becomes a “movement,” as one part of the larger and ongoing antiracism struggle, I don’t see a problem with joining it. I support these sellers who are refusing to sell this racist rag, just as I would support their decision to sell any other racist or fascist products. It’s a free country, as they say, and that includes the freedom to refuse to sell stuff that you don’t support.

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Way ahead of you.

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if you’ll please look at the context of the post i was replying to the reasonable discussion i was referring to was about guns and gun control not about the confederate battle flag which i have long considered morally equivalent to the nazi flag of germany. believe me when i say that in the states a reasonable discussion about guns and gun control is going to be a very hard thing indeed.

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Okay, I do believe you there, and sorry I jumped the gun (oops). Yes, for a reasonable debate to occur on guns and gun control any time soon does seem impossible. Good to gather that you find little to debate on the Confederate flag issue.

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It does not represent racism for everyone but it is associated with racism for enough people that it should not be displayed on government property or in any context associated with the state. Ebay and Amazon are free to choose what they allow people to sell through their sites.

It still does nothing to make it harder for some freak who wants to kill a bunch of people to get a gun and kill a bunch of people.

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Of course, but it does do something to discourage any white freak from aiming his murderous hatred at certain people just because they aren’t white. And besides, various ways of rejecting this flag also show support for black Americans, by recognizing that the widespread tolerance of the flag itself has basically been an assault on them.

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No, quite the opposite. Research indicates that such models are extremely important; we are built to do this, at the physical layer of the human mental architecture. We need to do this.

But I’m afraid I really can’t do that topic justice - I read it, I don’t teach it!

I strongly recommend the works of George Lakoff and Eleanor Rosch if you are interested in the embodied mind and its relationship with language.

In the context of this discussion, their work on categories and prototypes is very significant; racism is a categorization error. It’s falsely ascribing characteristics (such as evil, stinky, depraved, etc.) to a group because of bad prototyping.

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