Now that so many of my friends are bitching about taking down confederate statues can we reinstate Washington National Airport?

Yeah. That whole Reagan thing really bummed me out. That happened so fast, too, like they were slipping one past us. I wonder what the democratic process on that was?

@Espiritus_Corvus I was living in DC at the time, but I was young and not very interested in politics. I remember hearing parts of the debate surrounding it. One representative from the side pushing to change it to Reagan basically said it’s not a big deal because the airport isn’t named after the president it’s named after the city. Idiots. How the fuck they got away with changing it…ugh. People really were asleep at the switch.

Don’t forget Reagan did that whole airport traffic controller deregulation.

^^ I share your disgust. I remember. I had a friend who lost his controller’s job which resulted directly in the death of his fifteen year marriage. Yes, the whole thing sucked. The Republicans are trying to permanently militarize America’s air traffic control as I write this.

^^And that is only part of the union-busting legacy of St. Reagan!

We didn’t like Reagan, but he didn’t commit gross acts of legally recognizable treason against the duly recognized, legitimately elected government of the United States.
The CSA flags and monuments to traitors represent an unsuccessful coup attempt.

I didn’t like the shifty way that National Airport got named, but that’s really a formality. Everyone I know who flies in and out of DC still calls in National Airport.

There are some fights worth fighting. This isn’t one of them.

@Espiritus_Corvus I heard that Trump wanted to privatize – not militarize – air traffic control and that it was defeated.

I think Clinton actually signed off on it when the whole thing went down. I was pretty disappointed.

Truly, for me, it’s not so much it was renamed Reagan, it was that it was changed at all that pissed me off. But, now, to see so many of my republican friends making it sound like a slippery slope and saying in a sarcastic tone now let’s remove and rename statues and parks and monuments of our presidents, I just say back, you (republicans) did just that with our capital airport.

I’ve been using using the “treason” argument that I mentioned above, @JLeslie. It startles them, and they tend not to have an argument against it. ;-)

@canidmajor Everyone is saying that now. I think the startle will diminish fairly quickly.

Plus, startled doesn’t equal they give a shit or agree. They are proud of their Southern heritage and of their soldiers. They see honor in fighting for the cause. Remember, a large amount of them do no believe the war was about slavery, and they are still federalists, still anti central government, and still see the North and the central government as not following the constitution, and run by anti-Christian zealots who get more and more socialist/communist over time in their view.

Not all of them, plenty of Southerns think the statues should come down, but enough think the way I stated above that it’s impossible to ignore them.

I prefer the hypocrisy route, even though practically nobody on either side acknowledges the hypocrisy on both sides.

Edit: I was thinking of the many discussions about the Confederate Flag and the South we have had on fluther. Here is just one you might find interesting. There are many.

Well then never mind.

@janbb I saw that he’d harped on that in his first hundred days, but I also saw Republican senators on C-Span discussing handing the whole thing over to the military if their privatisation plans failed. Maybe nothing has come of it for now, but the intent is there. So, you’re probably right. I don’t watch news out of Washington as closely as I did before the election. It sickens me now, ruins my lunch.

^^I’m with you about not being able to stomach it. My husband is now obsessed with Trump being president, so I wind up watching more than I would. I saw Michael Moore on TV the other day, I felt very aligned with him pre-election, and he was saying all sorts of things are being passed and changed by Trump and/or the republican congress that isn’t being reported on, because the media is obsessed with the more blaring acts that get ratings, and the media talks about the same thing for 3 days solid, overlooking other important things that are going on.

I really feel the left wing media is trying to write the direction of the country. They are trying to be manipulative, and the right sees it, and for some reason the left doesn’t. They aren’t just reporting, they are literally telling politicians what they should be doing, and they are saying things as if it is a quote when it isn’t. They are misleading people just like the right has done for years. It’s disappointing to me.

I don’t trust any TV reporting at this point.

^^Truth is the first casualty of war, my friend.

Trying to put all statues in the same category as Confederate ones is akin to throwing the baby out with the bath water. Overemphasis to the point of being ridiculous.

@kritiper I think maybe you missed my point. If they want to put all statues in the same category, then I think airports should count too.

@JLeslie I think you are overthinking it, the same as the “they” who are trying “to put all statues in the same category…”

@kritiper I agree, it’s overthinking it. They are being ridiculous, so I send them another example of how we can go further down the slippery slope. Though the airport name change has bothered me since they did it. I lived in the suburbs of DC when they did it, so it was local news for me. I bet the majority of the country was and is unaware of when it changed, and that it changed. You can find me talking about it once in a blue moon even on fluther in the last ten years.