Why should progressive Democrats surrender our flag to authoritarian criminals who defile our constitution?
Give Us Back our Flag!by Wagenvoord @ Smirking ChimpI never thought it would happen, but it has. I am now in the market for a lapel flag pin like the one W. wears, sort of. For many years, the flag and I have had a strained relationship characterized by an embarrassed silence. We drifted apart when the flag became the property of loudmouth jingoists yelling, “USA, No. 1!” There was never a divorce or a separation; we simply sat across from each other without making much eye contact.
Then W. came along and started pissing on it with his celluloid morality born of too many Saturday afternoons spent as a child in darkened theaters watching the white hats make the world right by beating the shit out of the black hats.
Using 9/11 as a rationale for a delusional policy of a world dominating Pax Americana, he drenched my flag in the blood of the innocent while showing the world that the world’s greatest superpower could not even defeat a rag-tag bunch of sneaker-clad insurgents. So, I do not want his flag. The one he wears is too soaked with blood and urine for my tastes. My flag does not stand for the same thing his flag does.
John Edwards was right when the spoke of the two Americas. The trouble is he was speaking of the wrong two. Instead of rich and poor, our life-threatening split is between the Beltway and the rest of the country. The Beltway bears no resemblance to America. We are a decent country populated by decent people saddled with an indecent administration.
That is what I want to see restored to our flag—decency. The administration acts as if it has a monopoly on decency because it gets spastic over sex the moment it sticks its head out of a stall in the nearest men’s room. Our leaders have a twisted view of decency. To their thinking, it is a moral outrage if a teenage girl sheds blood because she has lost her innocence. However, should a teenage girl shed blood because shrapnel perforated her abdomen, it is collateral damage. (Authoritarian regimes are inherently puritanical. sex frightens them because the line separating sexual passion from political passion is very thin.)
. . . (snip) . . .
Under W., the flag has become vile and defiled an object of scorn through out the world. Liberty has put down the torch that once called the world’s huddled masses to her shores and is busy building a wall to keep them out.
So here I sit, waiting for the house of cards that is our economy to collapse, for the air to turn toxic, and for the bombs to start falling on Iran while I look for my lapel pin. The only trouble is, I cannot find one with the flag at half-mast.
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/11032 ?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=17A4AD9FDB9CF19309EBFDFE8F65174DFAE475C457E19DFF284831B75F48EF45
Who benefits when we allow authoritarian Republicans to lay claim to our national symbols and pose as defenders of our flag & constitution?