Stoneykins
It’s exactly as good as your opinion, which is to say both completely unimportant and extremely important at the same time.
Its all opinions, IDK what you want me to say. We could argue about it forever or stop talking right now and it would never be a settled fact either way.
But really, what does that even mean? I can only have opinions about things I regularly observe specifically when not on a screen? I hope you would hold yourself to that same standard about things you don’t see in your day to day life.
You obviously have your own bias if you encounter it multiple times daily. That isn’t average.
I don’t know what you mean by “the media” but I’d like to see a clearer description. I’m not talking about what I see in the news or on tv shows and movies, I’m talking about what I see in real life and occasionally places like facebook or something.
And it isn’t just the proud boys tarnishing it. I saw it used by a lot of antivaxxers during the height of the pandemic side by side with their science denial and misinformation, as another example.
the “true meaning” of things like symbols is always opinion. you seem to be arguing, for the sake of the gadsden flag, that symbols only ever mean what they were originally intended to mean, and that just isn’t the case.
In my opinion, the gadsden flag belongs in the past. Hateful modern use of the flag has tainted and ruined any positive association it could have brought. Now it means antisemitism, homophobia and transphobia, sexism, political extremism, anti-intellectualism, and more, a symbol of the values of the people who use it most often.
Progress has always been bought with blood, violence is the only motivator that is actually universally respected, and these Nazis don’t have the same distaste for violence you do. If they reach certain numbers they begin using violence to try and control politics. That has to be actively discouraged to minimize violence, which means people with certain tendencies have to motivated to not be Nazis. The only universally respected motivator is violence, the threat of force is how all governments in the world maintain order. Less violence is needed to prevent the spread of Nazi beliefs than would be created by Nazi beliefs unchecked.
This modern idea that there is no such thing as moral violence is a lie and a tactic. Ignore it and forget it. Violence is a tool. Misusing it is evil. Using it properly, it kills evils.