tippy2k2 said:
It is a 99.99999% chance that it was a knee-jerk overreaction by Apple that will almost certainly be fixed once someone at Apple realizes how incredibly stupid that decision was.
Whichever side of the #takeitdown debate you fall on, there are very very very very very very few people who would argue that having the flag in your video game that is set during the civil war is using it with hatred.
Pretty much this. In its own historical context, the Confederate flag should absolutely exist. Any flag, or uniform, or whatever should exist in its own historical context within a game, or movie, or whatever. One of my minor gripes, from an historical standpoint, with War Thunder is the fact that none of the German flags or planes have swastikas on them like they should. The Russian flag still has the hammer and sickle on it through, as if Stalin's government didn't commit atrocities nearly as bad
As for the flag in the real world though, I think it's important to remember that this is an issue with a bit of nuance to it. I think that *most* people who cling to that flag are well-meaning, but ignorant. They've got ties back tot he civil war (some of my ancestors very likely fought in the Battle of Vicksburg), and they want to kind of keep those ties. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. Even if the cause they fought for was amazingly, horrendously wrong, the average confederate soldier wasn't a slave-holder. They weren't even necessarily 'fighting for slavery' so much as they were reacting to Union forces (entirely rightfully) invading their home states and bringing the usual death and devastation of war with them. Since I brought it up earlier, it's similar to World War II in that way. The vast, vast majority of soldiers in the wehrmacht (the WWII German army) weren't necessarily members of the nazi party, and most of them were unaware of concentration camps. Most of them were just soldiers, doing what soldiers do, follow the orders of and go to war for their government. Hell, even a decent chunk of the german officer corps weren't actually members of the nazi party, and thought Hitler was a madman, and incompetent when it came to military matters. So yes, it is possible to respect soldiers who fought for a terrible cause. Most of them were just regular people caught up in bigger events they had no control over.
The issue is when people try to defend the Confederate States of America (which that flag has come to represent even if it wasn't the actual flag of state). The fact is you can't defend the Confederacy itself. It was a short-lived nation, run by the biggest group of traitors in American history who hated America so much that they shot first and started a war that caused a massive, unprecedented amount of death and destruction. And the single biggest reason they did this was to keep a way of life alive that depended on the imprisonment, rape, torture and murder of a group of people that had been declared by law and religion (they bible was used extensively in the South to justify slavery) to be naturally inferior and suited to servitude. The wealthy pseudo-aristocracy that actually ran the South needed slavery to continue. That was their business and their livelihood. A flag representing that nation should *not* be flying over US state houses and it should *not* be included in US state flags. That is the symbol of a nation of rebels, slave-owners and traitors who tried to break America apart, and lost.
There's a reason the KKK has always flown the confederate flag. There's a reason a lot of neo-nazi groups also proudly display it. There's a reason people like Strom Thurman and other racist southern politicans brought it back in the 1940's and 1950's. There's a reason schools in the South started to fly it after they were forced to become integrated and there's a reason why it was several southern states just up and decided to add it to their state flags in the late 1950's and 1960's when the full boot of the US government was coming down on their throats to end Jim Crow. And there's a reason why Neo Confederates and people like Dylan Roof wrap themselves and their culture up in it. They don't give a shit about honoring Confederate soldiers. They want to honor *the Confederacy*. They love the ideals it was built on and wish it was back. It isn't a coincidence that all these groups of terrible terrible people have been choosing the exact same symbol since the 1940's (and way before that if you count the KKK).
