Yesterday, I responded to a posting on a scuba email list. My response—innocuous enough in content—merely asked for some information concerning a reported fatality, but I was using a somewhat provocative signature line:
Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that all stupid people are conservative.
–John Stuart Mill
One of the reactionaries on the list took umbrage, asking, "Is this a scuba diving e-mail group or a political discussion e-mail group?" She went on to complain that insults were inappropriate in a posting about someone's death.
In my rather terse reply, I quipped, "Lighten up, Cynthia. It's just a signature line. Do you stop people on the road to complain about bumper stickers you find politically disagreeable?"
Princess V commended my response, but it left me feeling vaguely uncomfortable. I don't know about Cynthia, but frequently I want to stop people on the freeway and respond to their bumper stickers. Sometimes, after the fact, I can't help wondering who has inhabited this body and why he becomes so incensed at the sight of pro-life, pro-Bush, pro-Rush Limbaugh, and pro-gun bumper stickers.
Contact me at pot@kettle.black.com, eh?
Signs and stickers and flags, but to me they all look like red capes taunting me to break the assault laws.
Especially the flags.
Such a curious turn of events in this country—my country. I was a Boy Scout. I was a Chief Petty Officer in the Navy. I've been all around the world, and I still love this country. I have driven hours out of my way to let friends experience the expansive grandeur of the Grand Canyon and the limitless world of light from the hills above Los Angeles. I have reveled in the freedoms garnered for us, and in many ways, small and large, struggled to endorse and maintain those freedoms. Though not directly connected to them in any way by blood or marriage, I have always basked in an obscene pride of association with such grand American heroes as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John and Bobby Kennedy.
Why, then, do I find the sight of an American flag so damned irritating?
For a while, it was just the moronic association of the American flag with George W. Bush that I found exasperating. The little weasel stole the election and then showed his true colors when the planes hit on 9/11 by scurrying down a hole and hiding out for 24 hours. Only an idiot would make that obscene connection: America=GWBush. Naturally, then, when I saw a Honda Civic with an American flag flying from the antenna and a George W. Bush sticker on the bumper, I had an overwhelming urge to run the offending Honda into a ditch and pound the snot out of the driver—for his own good, of course. Nothing like a near-fatal beating to bring about a true epiphany.
Next, it was the obscene proliferation of flags on some vehicles: monster stickers blocking out the windows; dual, left-and-right, flag bumper stickers so that no one passing or being passed could miss one or the other; cutesy quasi-patriotic phrases pasted over flag motifs ("These colors won't run" invariably done in an ink that asserts a contrary opinion by fading in the sun); flags up on Wal-Mart plastic window poles leaving me wondering why four-star general should be riding around in a Plymouth Voyager; antenna-warping monster flags torn to black-edged tatters by 65mph diesel-laden winds. Do the occupants of these vehicles think we don't know what country we're in? Are they afraid that their pride will so swell their breasts as to burst them like overripe tomatoes if the don't find release? Has nationalism become another ill-defined competitive sport—a disc golf for the new milenium?
Then, of course, there was that obnoxious excuse for a war: the American conquest of Iraq. Suddenly, American flags appeared with "Support Our Troops" and slogans of that ilk. It didn't take long to realize that "Support Our Troops" was shorthand for "If you oppose the war in Iraq or our Commander-in-Chief, I will accuse you of being a vile traitor."
Hey, I supported our troops in the biggest way possible: I demanded they be returned home to safety.
On one prominently displayed flag in an Austin front lawn, the owner has stenciled a black peace sign. I found this to be the saddest note of all. This poor bastard had to clearly mark his flag to differentiate it from the symbols so blithely coopted by the fascists.
Fascists. That's the problem, really. The flag—Old Glory—the symbol of my home land, the country I love—has been coopted by fascists. Does this sound like extreme rhetoric? an emotional appeal? a red flag?
Compare the short list of recent developments to fascist regimes of the past:
- the stress on issues of security
- the implication that all dissent is treasonous
- suggestions that criticism of our "leaders" equates to hatred of our country
- new laws reducing civil rights
- a judiciary more interested in maintaining control than protecting individual rights
- flags and uniforms and more flags
The United States of America: God, how I miss her.
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