Fagotto said:
Therumancer said:
Just because it happens more than once in different contexts doesn't mean the incidents are connected. I never claimed it was the only occurrence ever. It just has nothing to do with those other ones.
It does, immigrants trying to get the US flag banned in the US has been an ongoing war for years now. Your looking at seperate battles, but they are all connected as they all come down to the same basic issues... and the same question as to whether it's appropriate to ban the US flag from being displayed in the US.
You'll also notice that the players are generally the same with the complaints almost universally coming from Mexicans.
As I said in another post, nobody would give a flying crap about Cinco De Mayo if it was just treated as a bit of a cultural festival with perhaps a few extra things being said about Mexican history, how the actual battle it celebrates affected the US, and people might do something like wear a sarape or mini-sombraro occasionally. Similar to say Saint Patrick's day or Oktoberfest (which was the intent when the holiday was officially embrased by the US in 2005... and this is mentioned in the Cinco De Mayo page on wikipedia).
The thing is that the holiday has become increasingly about Mexican superiority, and gotten tied into things like the Mexican-American war and how a lot of Mexicans believe that they should actually own a good portion of the south and southwestern US to begin with. With all the immigrants in the area there is some tendency to want to treat Americans as the invaders, especially when the numbers are large enough. A *LOT* has been said about this beyond this holiday especially when you look at all the gang violence and such in the region, it's just that it comes to a head on Cinco De Mayo despite all intents, and that's why violence is feared because "you will not show your flag on our day" with the people in question rather clearly not identifying with the US. No xenophobia, no racism, just a pure statement of fact. Read about the various gang wars and such down there, heck a lot was said about it on these forums back when they were planning the modern-era "Call Of Juarez" game, given how the warfare down in that area spills over into Texas and so on. It does make the news.
Believe it or not I'm a fairly tolerant person, but when it comes down to students not being able to wear or fly the US flag in US schools, I don't care what the reasons are. I'll also be honest in saying that one of the reasons why the issue recurs is that in the US we don't know how to end an issue. If a group of people want to persist for attention they will eventually succeed because they usually just have to win once for precedent. It's sort of a power play, and pretty much every year for the last couple of years we've been getting cases of pressure/threats of violence leading to an attempted flag ban, and as you can see from the case with the biker escort they usually lose. This year (even if it's a spillover from last year) it succeeded and that's frankly ridiculous.
It's as much a power thing overall, as it is due to any specific incidents... and there IS a sort of civil movement to try and "take back" land for Mexico through social inertia. There was an Absolute Vodka commercial a couple years ago that wound up getting banned a couple of years ago that had a "perfect world" motif where it showed a map with Mexico occupying not just it's own land but like half of what is now the US. That being an advertising attempt should pretty much give some insights as to the attitudes of the people being dealt with, as well as the numbers.
Here is an article about it:
http://bigthink.com/ideas/21316
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trD6ksMWLhs
There are also various videos of the commercial itself.
At any rate, the very fact that this has appeal with Mexicans for it to have been an ad campaign despite hoe it backfired when the US found out about it, is simply a point I'm making to show the mentalities/issues involved in these incidents. It might not be pleasant to think about, but yeah... let's just say getting the US flag banned in the US is not the result of a few individual jerkoffs and a bad reaction, stuff like this has been ongoing, this is one recurring front, and ther are others.