Banzai patriotism

By Capt. Fogg

There are all kinds of patriotism, some real, some pretended. With some countries it's mostly about supporting wars. It's been that way in most of my lifetime, with a few exceptions. With some people it's all about flags and pins and ceremonies. I'm straining to think of a time when it was seen as a reason to support a government you didn't vote for and I have to look back over 65 years ago to find a time when patriotism extended to making economic sacrifices in times of crisis, for the good of the country; for the good of the people. To me, Patriotism may once have meant something more than overgrown and somewhat pugnacious pride and militaristic ritual and it may once not have smelled so much of covert self-interest, but there are outside examples.

If it had been an American nuclear power plant destroyed by a natural event or anything of that magnitude, like a war, or flood or ecological disaster for example, I'd not expect to hear the party of big business or the mega-corporations that pay virtually no taxes anyway offer to suspend another round of corporate tax cuts. Yet that's what seems to be happening in Japan. The Japan Business Federation is a powerful corporate lobby -- sort of like the GOP. Its chairman, Hiromasa Yonekura says he will not stand in the government's way if it backs away from a proposed corporate tax cut.

"I don't mind if the government skips cutting the corporate tax rate," said Yonekura, who is also chairman of Sumitomo Chemical . "Instead I want the government to move swiftly in its recovery efforts."

I don't think I have to waste much space comparing Japan to the country that stood behind tax cuts and against paying off the enormous costs of war by taxing those who made the most money from it -- and challenged the patriotism of anyone who suggested it wasn't a good idea because tax cuts never have and never will pay for themselves -- so I won't.

The last refuge

My inbox is like a lobster trap. At night while I sleep, it's out there collecting crawly ugly things from the creepy critters that live under rocks, eat nasty stuff, pretend to be outraged at Barak Obama's obvious lack of patriotism and insist that we immediately send some infected bit of racist outrage to "everyone you know."

Today's prize winner is titled:

Obama The Patriot -
Removes American Flag From His Plane

Of course that's not quite the truth.The truth is that the airline he was using featured a flag on the tail and when his campaign leased the plane and painted his name and slogan on it, the flag was moved to the fuselage, as you can see. According to the author, this indicates gross lack of patriotism and disrespect to the flag. While it would be easy to eviscerate such an idiotic argument, perhaps I can save a thousand words with a few pictures. Look at McCain's plane. Not only no flag, it's a French airplane. That's right French! OhmyGod - ohmyGod tell everyone you know!


But wait, there's more! look at McStraightalk's tour bus. NO FLAG! Is he ashamed? Is he not a patriot? Is he a:




Commieliberaltreehuggingelitistamericahating
democratsurrendermonkeyfrancophileterroristappeaser?



Send this to everyone you know before it's too late!

In a way, I should be gratified that racist right wing America can't come up with anything but this shell game, but I doubt it will backfire on them and if Obama is elected, I'm positive that his administration will face more vicious opposition from enemies domestic than any president in our history and the better he does, the worse it will get.

Capture the flag

Paul Slansky makes a modest proposal today in the Huffington Post. He suggests that we fight them on their own lapels so that we don't have to fight them here. Quoting the popular political philosopher, Doctor Suess, Slansky suggests that we all begin to wear lapel pins, thus castrating one of their favorite shibboleths.

"We're exactly like you! You can't tell us apart.

We're all just the same, now, you snooty old smarties!

And now we can go to your frankfurter parties."

Coincidentally, that's just what I did last night at my annual yacht club barbecue; a tawdry, rhinestone studded lapel pin at that. And it worked. No one had and doubts that I would snicker right along with the Michelle slurs, the hand on heart nonsense, the Wesley Clark gambit or any of the other wilful suspensions of honesty that characterize the political commentary of the reflexive Right. I wore red, white and blue clothing and I would have run "old glory" up the mast save for the violent thunderstorm. Some were quite surprised by my replies.

It's time we took back what was once a proud symbol of secular democracy, justice and the inalienability of certain human rights - amongst other things. The flag that flies today on the Moon somehow, during the same period, became the symbol of support for our war in Viet Nam and the Nixonian contempt for law and loyal dissent. It has been a Republican symbol of militarism and right wing politics ever since.

As Slansky says, the lapel may be the only remaining venue in which they have that home field advantage, but it would be easy and cheap to take it away from them. Wear the pin.

"The right is reeling, they can't find a single thing to point to that's better than it was before Bush, so while they're busy dealing with issues of basic survival, let's just slip in there and take back the damn flag. Take it back from the war criminals and their apologists and enablers that have wrapped themselves in it even as they've been methodically destroying the republic for which it stands."

Let's run it up the flagpole. It's an idea I can salute.

Screw the pledge and the flag it rode in on.

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.

US Supreme Court - West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943)

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Americans don't really care much for freedom and the evidence for that is strong. They don't like people who exercise that freedom or resist having it taken away from them. That's why the ACLU is the bogeyman of the authoritarians, secular and religious, and why people with various objections to being forced to say things they disagree with, or forced to swear oaths in support of symbols, or forced to assume postures indicating worship and adoration of secular idols have to resort to such organizations to avoid the nasty consequences of conscience. I hear far more anger directed at the ACLU than at the KKK and most often it's because the former is hard at work making sure you can still say what you like and not be forced to say things or to perform quasi religious rituals you do not like. The US is the sort of country where a candidate who doesn't assume the position of worship when singing the sacred song or pledging himself to worship a piece of cloth and the God/State it represents generates more furor than one who breaks the basic foundational laws that are the State.

Few things irk this authoritarian country more than such disobedience and the courts and laws that support its legitimacy. Obama is still paying a price for having a less than a passionate personal epiphany while singing the Anthem while even Liberal Air America host Ed Schultz decries the failure of most NBA players to look reverent, hands on heart in a Roman salute when the song is played.

We have no lack of impassioned orators swooning their way through speeches extolling those who died for the flag, as though the flag had anything to do with the liberties we, on occasion, call freedom, but in my opinion we have no free country when people are required to recite worshipful formulae, make sacred gestures and wear tokens of reverence.

That's why the furor continues in the case of the Minnesota school that has a policy of punishment for failure to stand up when illegally required to make a religious oath to a piece of cloth. Perhaps it's coincidental, but I've noticed a lot more of those Taiwanese car flags today and an unusual number of UNDER GOD bumper stickers. They weren't, at any rate, put there in support of three students who were suspended from a public school for sitting down while flag rituals were being conducted. If anything it's a protest against the audacity of the ACLU to write a letter to a Minnesota school board to remind some small minded pedants what freedom ( and the law) is all about.

Strangely enough even such strange bedfellows as Stop the ACLU.com recognize the policy as an infringement, if only as an infringement on freedom of religion. Many religions balk at the swearing of oaths. The question of whether they would recognize the rights of the non-religious to such protection hasn't been answered.

People on both sides of the flag idolatry issue have some strange opinions as to the antiquity of it all. Those who insist the pledge was written by a Socialist seem to forget that it was Eisenhower who in 1954 made it into a religious pledge and caused me to stop reciting it. Everyone seems to have forgotten that the hand on heart salute was adopted only in the 1940's and before that the Nazi salute was recommended. Our current anthem was signed into law as such in 1931 and putting religious messages on the money stems from the religious frenzy surrounding (and justifying) the Civil War. In fact religious frenzy and war go hand in hand and much of the current emotion stems from the confusion between the invasion of Iraq, obedience to the president and worship of the flag. It's not a coincidence. It's not fundamental to our Country's ideals. It's made up as we go along. It's all designed to foster unquestioning obedience and suppress objection. It's time we woke up to the truth.

Patriotism

no federal agency has the authority to issue 'official' rulings legally binding on civilians or civilian groups. Consequently, different interpretations of various provisions of the Code may continue to be made.

UNITED STATES CODE TITLE 36 CHAPTER 10


Barak Obama must be seen as the man to beat these days, or at least the man to slime. I've been getting an increasing number of e-mail screeds excoriating him for singing the National Anthem without his hand on his heart. Sometimes the story has him pledging allegiance. Often it includes his appearing without the plastic patriotism pin or pledging to give the country away to "the ragheads."

The latest issue includes references to the flag Code which show Obama to be in violation for not making the required salute, although of course that code clearly states that these rules do not apply to and cannot be made to apply to civilians and any behavior is acceptible as long as respect is shown. Just a little bit of information makes the lie go down, to paraphrase the song.

Much is being made of Michelle Obama's “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country.” It's really impressive to watch the faux outrage build up to an hysterical psychodrama. I'm having trouble remembering the last time I was really proud of this country and of course her adult lifetime rivals the age of my favorite shoes. Sure, I'm proud of the part we played in the two World Wars, I'm proud that we landed on the moon, but I'm not proud of Slavery, segregation, Jim Crow laws, the Trail of Tears, Wounded knee, the battle of Little Big Horn, Joe McCarthy, the internment of Japanese American citizens, the Gulf of Tonkin hoax, the training of the Central American death squads to rape nuns and murder peasants, the sale of weapons to Iran while they were holding US prisoners, and yes, the invasion of Iraq and its attendant hoaxes. Being unable to feel shame is the mark of the sociopath, not the patriot.

So I guess Michelle and I along with her husband aren't Patriotic; at least as long as patriotic is defined by being overwhelmingly proud and elated at every foul, stupid and misguided thing our government has done.

I've yet to receive any of these sneering, cynical and indignant assaults on John McCain, not that there aren't any outraged opponents of the man who waffled about torture and has steadfastly promoted a war while steadfastly opposing anything designed to improve health care benefits for those returning from it. John McCain voted against veteran's benefits in 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007 and continues to vote against anything designed to benefit the VA hospitals even when (and perhaps because) the bill would be payed by closing tax loopholes.

But John McCain is a patriot - he wears a pin to prove it. He supports the troops as long as it doesn't require putting Halliburton's money where his mouth is.

The VA hospital system is said to be the best health care system, public or private, in the country but the privatization pirates, wearing their patriot pins and waving flags, have been trying to board it and sink it for years. John would rather have veterans go to private health care providers, the same ones who regularly bilk Medicare and deny claims that eat into profits. Why? Ask the lobbyists for the health care industry, the lobbyists for the Cerner Corporation, for instance, who have replaced a high functioning, open source electronic information system with a private, closed source package at the expense of veterans. Why? Could it be because the VA is admired world wide for efficiency and thus contradicts the Great Buffoonicator's proclamation that Government can't do anything?

Who cares? The web of Republican reasoning isn't worth unraveling and there's only a spider at the middle of it anyway. Needless to say, those who scream about flags and pins and national pride the most have their agendas, and one man's patriotism is another man's treason. Oh, and yes, While McCain sold out the vets again, Obama voted for improved benefits. Tell me again about how patriotism is about pins and flags.

Fifty gallons of crap in a ten gallon hat

Dick Cheney. Is he wearing that idiotic hat to cover up his horns or is he just reminding us that Nixon may be dead, but the cowboys are still in control?

Using a captive audience of Coast Guard Academy graduates to promote the idea that occupying Iraq is a "war on terror," Cheney persists in insinuating that because it is a war, it can be won and that because it is a war, to desist would be surrender, betrayal and dishonor. Because it is a war, anything we do is justifiable except to to pay for it.

The relentless cramming of the occupation of Iraq into this battered, stretched and sorely abused metaphor of war, the relentless evocation of cheap comparisons to every conflict since Rameses II rode into Kadesh, still stirs the souls of war lovers, a couple dozen of whom, calling themselves "a gathering of eagles," showed up "to support the troops" in some fashion far, far beyond my ability to comprehend.

"We're proud of our government," said one of the eagles.

I won't put words in anyone's mouth, but I would love to have asked him what it would take to turn that pride into shame, or indeed if anything could. I would love to ask whether he would feel pride if we sent troops to club baby seals and dishonor if they were forced to leave any alive. I would love to ask how defending a dishonorable act could be honorable; but of course I don't speak their language or follow their thought processes and I'm sure the answer would be less meaningful than the screeching of birds.

Just call it war

Hell is murky.—Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier, and
afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our
pow'r to accompt?—Yet who would have thought the old man to
have had so much blood in him?

Macbeth Act 5, scene 1



Frankly, I'm not as disturbed by the images of torture and mayhem perpetrated by American "warriors" as by some of the public response you can see at Wired.com where Abu Ghraib photos have been published. It's the ones that argue "this is a war and in a war. . ." and the ones that say "but these are Muslims and they would be happy to eat your children, yada, yada" that make me most ashamed to have any association with this self righteous and evil nation. They've made me evil too; Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld and their puppet George Bush. I'm part of it because all I do is complain. I don't risk losing my life to end it, nor even my freedom. All I do is blog and go about my life of comfort and safety.

I got a video in my e-mail yesterday. I don't know whether it was staged or real, but it showed some US military personnel walking through an airport while people stood up and applauded. No one could have been thinking of the archive of pictures on view at UnderMars.com They aren't returning from a parade ground, but from hell and a hell the United States of America created with eagerness and enthusiasm and lies.

Men with plastic bags on their heads being beaten, smiling "warriors" posing with corpses, a man's severed penis in a mousetrap, blood and pain and shit; these are things many Americans think "you do in a war" even though you started the war and of course anyone caught up in the grinder is promoted to the ranks of the "terrorists" who bombed New York even though they didn't.

So clap when you see our soldiers; I'm sure nearly all of them are good people, but don't call them warriors. Warriors take scalps, soldiers are responsible for their actions. Warriors represent themselves, soldiers represent us and when there's blood on their hands, it's on our hands too and remember, when John McCain tries to tell you this is noble, this is about protecting your sainted mother, your back yard barbecue and your civil rights - it isn't. It's about water up the nose, the cattle prod up the ass, bloody teeth spilling out like corn from a popper; it's about rape, about shit and piss and blood on the floor being wiped up with the flag we're supposed to worship like some tawdry pagan idol.

It's about millions of homeless innocents, about a lost generation of uneducated children brought up in terror and squalor and hate. It's about people whose crime was fighting for their homes being tortured like John McCain who once was tortured by those whose homes and children he was destroying. It's about evil. It's about me and about you justifying it all by just calling it war.