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We Must Deify America's Mass-Produced Piece of Cloth!!!! [1]

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Date: 2023-08-03

“Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.” -George Washington

I don’t know about you, but I am getting sick of tee shirts, bumper stickers and window decals that proclaim fierce dedication to the flag, and only the flag. People who oppose all the freedoms that define the USA are seen as “patriots” because they make such a fuss over a symbolic mass-produced piece of cloth.

Pseudo-patriotic flag fanatics deify the flag and also deify a song about the flag. In the name of “patriotism”, everyone is supposed to stand up when the sacred “flag song” is played before a sports event. And flag fanatics lost their tiny minds when one sports figure chose to exercise his Constitutional right to peacefully protest against injustice by kneeling instead of standing. The folks who are enraged about the kneeling are not the least bit concerned about the issue he was trying to raise: numerous instances of racist police officers murdering unarmed black citizens. Is the song about a mass-produced piece of cloth more important than human lives? (Implicit answer from the right: “Yes; of course it is!”)

Some would say that American veterans fought and died for the right to peacefully protest. Others, however, sincerely believe that American veterans fought and died for the flag, and by extension, the flag song; and absolutely nothing else!

By the way, those who are outraged at an individual who knelt to stand during the flag song ought to be even more outraged at the abridgement of the flag song. The complete song as penned by Francis Scott Key has a total of four stanzas; yet the only part that gets played at sports events is the first stanza! So one could say that three-quarters of the sacred flag song has been (gasp!) cancelled! And this has actually been going on for almost a century.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/3/2185006/-We-Must-Deify-America-s-Mass-Produced-Piece-of-Cloth

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