6.12.20: Discussing Confederate symbols
Plus the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone
June 12, 2020.
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Results from June 11, 2020
Question 1: What's the main factor that would keep you from resuming normal activities even if things begin to reopen?
Weird questions. Nothing is stopping me right now but I'm also still not visiting my 91 year old diabetic grandmother who has half the internal organs of a normal human and survived polio. But like otherwise I'm ready to resume, be smart, be aware of the situation in a given area and adjust behavior patterns accordingly.
And…
People. I don’t like people.
Oh.
Question 2: Do you have a favorable or unfavorable view of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle?
It seems this story hasn’t quite broken through for Tina users.
The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone is a roughly six-block area of the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Seattle that has… declared its independence.
RE: CHAZ - very fun to see the very right-wing/libertarian and left-wing factions of my family back in Washington coalesce on this topic. The anarcho-socialist zeitgeist of the PNW lives on without the government!
To clarify on the CHAZ: you need an option for "I am highly amused by the CHAZ." It's amazingly entertaining to view from afar, purely because it's such a great example of how quickly this anarchic/communist utopias fall apart.
Question 3: Would you support or oppose prohibiting the display of the Confederate flag in public?
I hate seeing the Confederate flag and abhor everything it stands for, but I worry about the free speech implications of “banning” its display by private citizens. I’d be thrilled if we could all just agree, socially, that it’s gross and should go away. And if state governments could decree that it won’t be displayed at government buildings, that would be great too.
Regarding the question about the Confederate flag, I think it should be framed around another question to anchor respondents or at least contextualize their response around their broader views of freedom of expression and freedom of speech. The way it's phrased now kind of forces you to think beyond the visceral response of "Do I like the Confederate flag myself?" to "Are there underlying principles I believe in that lead me to NOT ban the Confederate flag, even if I don't like it myself?" Not sure how commonly people actually do this second-order thinking. I shouldn't underestimate Tina users though :)
Never, ever, underestimate Tina users.
Question 4: Would you support or oppose removing statues of Confederate leaders from public display and moving them to museums?
The support for removing Confederate statues is higher than support for banning the Confederate flag, perhaps because of the dynamic noted by the anonymous user above — even if people don’t like the flag, they’re uncomfortable with outright prohibitions.
For the confederate questions, I think we should’ve torn down all that stuff from the start. They’re symbols of an unconstitutional and treacherous act taken to continue an evil institution.
Also, I support Confederate monuments being moved to museums, but not displayed as part of permanent exhibitions. I am generally in favor of destroying them, but I also see them from the eyes of their artists, etc. They are still a part of history. They are part of the history we're building today. Displaying them feels uncomfortable no matter what, and maybe that's why we should keep them. That said, they should only be on display in a setting where they are accompanied by intense contextualization of crimes committed. They should exist to make us uncomfortable and sad about their role in our past.
Others shared that the statues represent a part of history that we cannot erase, or that those symbols may represent other things to other people. (One of our anonymous users attended Robert E. Lee School in Richmond, Virginia.)
Still, there seems to be broad popular support for removing these Confederate symbols from public view.
Question 5: How do you perceive the moment that we're currently in?
Time will tell.
This moment will pass for many as a fad, but it will similarly move enough people a little bit forward to have a lasting impact. So it is a mix of both
We're in a period of deep anxiety and angst.
Unfortunately I think we’re in “a social fad that will have limited long-term impact” but, I really hope that “We're in the middle of significant social change.” Change is extremely difficult for most people.
I really don’t appreciate the structure of the last question’s answers. I feel like there are different answers that don’t have a liberal slant to it or make somebody who doesn’t think this is a huge social change guilty about not thinking it’s a huge social change.
But there was an “Other” option!
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