The left is doing the best they can to promote it, but there was zero interest in it even here in far left Silicon Valley. Most people were inconvenienced with no mail delivery and the stock market closed.
After the BLM riots, Democrats were looking for a way to cement the minority vote in their favor while also continuously pressing racial division.
The Biden Admin decided to federally recognize “Juneteenth”, a “celebration” of the emancipation of slaves that no one had ever heard of until the Democrats made it official.
Rather than acting as a tool for racial healing, Juneteenth has become yet another attempt to incessantly inject racial conflict as its proponents assert that white Americans today need to pay for the slavery of centuries ago. Never mind that white Americans fought a bloody civil war in part to end the practice. Never mind that it’s an institution that existed for thousands of years before the US was founded, yet progressives seem to think slavery is exclusively American.
No one in the west needs a reminder that slavery is bad.
The artificial popularity of these DEI events has been made evident this June with the erasure of bureaucratic handouts and a sharp pullback in corporate participation. Juneteenth has been a dud in 2025 and the political left is not happy about it.
Confederate flags and military leaders are still popular and celebrated in the southern states that lost the Civil War. They desperately need that reminder. And don’t tell me the war was about anything other than slavery, cause that’s baloney.
Actually, they’re popular in all the states. I have seen many here in California. They have nothing to do with slavery. They are probably about being a rebel, which is quite popular with many young men.
The problem is they had a lot to do with slavery – they tried to keep it past its time. Anyone who wants to worship rebels could worship our founding fathers. At least they won their rebellion.
But you dont get to dictate what something symbolizes to someone else. You decide what you display means to you, I decide what I display means to me. If you are interested in the meaning of what I display, you should ask me what it means to me, not tell me what it means to me.
Whether you get to or don’t get to dictate is a choice. For example, Nazi symbols are banned in many European countries. You don’t need to ask anyone with a swastika tattoo what it means to them – we all know what it means.
Except you dont. You know what it means to you, you dont know what it means to me unless you ask me.
A child may draw swastikas all over their notebook because, frankly, it’s a rather fun shape to draw. Are you really going to exile and shun that child based on what it means to you, when that child is clearly just doodling and thinks it’s a cool looking design?
No, I would teach that child what it means. Children’s brains aren’t fully developed yet. Also drawing one for fun on paper isn’t the same as getting a tattoo. I was talking about adults. And I do know what it means, because, let’s be frank, it doesn’t have many meanings.
You’d teach what it means to you. There is no inherent meaning to teach.
What it means to me is that some a-hole is probably going to start bitching about it so I should probably hide it to prevent them from causing a disruptive scene we’ll all end up regretting. That’s it. To me, the only thing to teach a child is that they shouldnt draw one because some people will get really mad and call them terrible names and declare them guilty of horrible things. I dont like teaching kids to be submissive and afraid, but I dont want them to be subjected to the abuse either.
Not everyone buys into subjective symbolism. I can understand meaning without requiring an illustration to express it, and I can see illustrations without assuming any meaning to them. A drawing is a drawing, and feelings are feelings. They do not need to be mutually exclusive, but one does not beget the other, either.
I would not teach kids to be submissive or afraid. I would teach them to be considerate and compassionate. You shouldn’t hide it because you might get hurt, you should hide it because it might hurt someone else.
I wasn’t talking about kids drawings, I was talking about adult tattoos and celebrated Confederate symbols. These are specific examples that most people learn about in school, not some random symbol nobody knows about. These specific symbols have specific meanings. If you have empathy towards people who suffered from whatever these symbols symbolize, then these symbols beget feelings.
And you are assigning reasons why they’re being celebrated, instead of asking the celebrant what it represents to them.
Symbols do not cause suffering. Rather than reinforcing and validating it, perhaps the most empathetic thing to do is removing the power such symbols hold over people?