Fits my image of Trump supporters.

This is what happens when you create a cult filled with people so gullible that they believe their own external propaganda.

People going out to defend a piece a flag, while also wearing the flag of the opposing side, completely unaware of how illogical that is. The confederates were rebels and traitors, and that flag didn't even gain popularity until long after the war anyway.

Plus, it's just a flag. It's not like anyone is being hurt if it's burned, a piece of cloth. They're all for free speech, except now they're not because they're treating the flag like it was some precious holy relic. You know the bozos are only there to start a fight and the trolling succeeded.

The fact that we put up statues to their losing generals, including many terrible generals, is an insult to this country. There is no history being erased because history was being erased when those statues were put up the first time, as a deliberate propaganda effort by the Daughters of the Confederacy in an attempt to make the losing side look good, to make the issue of the war seem noble when it was 100% about slavery and maintaining the lifestyle enabled by slavery. They Daughters of the Confederacy managed to get schoolbook guidelines created across the south to promote the view of the Confederacy as a noble institution. And this propaganda worked! Because now you have many southerners who honestly believe the bullshit, they think it's fine for a statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest to be put in a high place of honor, a man of low character, and the man in charge when surrendering union troops were massacred. Probably the worst of the worst when it comes to confederate villains. There is no "heritage" being preserved here.

We can remember the history by writing about it, not by putting up civic statues of scoundrels. Put up some statues of Harriet Tubman, or statues to the southerners who sided with the Union.

Sorry. Had to rant because of all the idiocy going on.

That's the fundamental problem with social media. It puts too much power in the hands of too few people, or even just one.

Human's genetic social behavior simply never evolved to handle situations like this. In tribal days, the most one single person could do is to convince his tribe, a few dozen people at most, to raid the neighboring tribe. As communications progressed and tribes turned into kingdoms, one single person could trigger wars of a few thousand victims at most. Then kingdoms turned into nations, and now one single person couldn't do it alone. He/she needed help, partners, strategic alliances, etc.

But now, with the advent of the Internet, a single person has gained the power to reach the entire world's population in a matter of minutes. But humans still behave and react like the tribal days, and it's not unreasonable to assume that one single particularly crafty and evil person could trigger a world war, or some other kind of world wide bloodbath.

They should organize another Antifa flag-burning party in the middle of Death Valley at the peak of summer, and then a Christmas flag-burning (and generic holiday gift exchange) deep in the Alaskan wilderness :D

A church pastor visiting Gettysburg, wearing a BLM t-shirt and minding his own business, gets harassed by gun-wielding "patriots" and is escorted out of the park by federal LEOs for "his own safety". From TFA:

(sigh)

It's pretty simple, and is seen across political spectrums. There are people who are inherently violent, and want to commit violence, but they also abide by some of the moral/legal boundaries...and even exploit these as ways to justify their violent actions.

Be it on the left, we see people who claim to be in the Animal Liberation Front, Earth Liberation Front (both who have 'blown shit up'), to more recently examples of a very small number of people claiming to be in BLM, and then these gonzos on the far right that we see.

They all have one thing in common: they really, really like the idea of being violent. And will cling to a cause that might allow them to perpetrate it. Even at the expense of all logic and reason.

On some levels I appreciate whoever triggered this, fabricating up a 'left wing action', and putting on display what nutjobs turn up. Reminds me of that pizza shop basement thing. That also made ZERO sense and was quite easy to invalidate, yet look at what happened.. (But if a little effort were put into researching many of these 'issues', there'd really be very little to get upset about. I bet these same dopes opposed to burning flags believe they're proponents of free speech. Doh.)

Operation Fortitude [wikipedia.org]

For deceptions, the Allies had developed a number of methodologies, which were referred to as "special means". They included combinations of physical deception, fake wireless activity, leaks through diplomatic channels and double agents. Fortitude used all of those techniques to various extents. For example, Fortitude North relied heavily on wireless transmission (the Allies thought that Scotland was too far for German reconnaissance to reach), and Fortitude South used the Allies' network of double agents.

1. Physical deception: to mislead the enemy with nonexistent units by fake infrastructure and equipment, such as dummy landing craft, dummy airfields and decoy lighting.
2. Controlled leaks: information would pass through diplomatic channels, which might be passed on via neutral countries to the Germans.
3. Wireless traffic: wireless traffic was created to simulate actual units to mislead the enemy.
4. Using German agents controlled by the Allies through the Double Cross System to send false information to the German intelligence services.
5. Public presence of notable staff associated with phantom groups such as FUSAG, most notably the well-known US General George Patton.