Hi, folks! We’re all just folksy folks together, right? 1-percenters and 99-percenters? Just all of us, folks together in one happy country, right? Hell no we’re not together at all, and the majority are plenty mad, and we’re not going to take it any more. It’s too bad that the mad-hatter Tea Party went screwball, running wrong way on the wrong side.
If money is speech, maybe it bears the flaws, weaknesses and failures of speakers as well as its perfections, strengths and successes. Maybe money can be voiced with such unpleasant sound it turns people off, they clap hands over ears not to hear it. Maybe money can stammer, stutter, turn inarticulate or aphasic. Maybe it can talk nothing but abject nonsense. Maybe it can convey messages so scary or nasty people shudder and turn away, unwilling to have anything further to do with it. Maybe money can talk out of both sides of a speaker’s mouth, too dishonest to be trusted for transactions. Maybe money can scream so loudly it deafens people, even harms their bodies from vibratory impact like an explosion in a mine-shaft. Maybe money sometimes says only noise.
Perhaps a majority of the U. S. Supreme Court had mouths or ears full of money when they decided the so-called “Citizens United” case. Maybe they hadn’t counted all they spit out. Maybe that majority gave us a new definition and understanding of obscenity. Maybe it had listened only to financiers and bankers talking about taking good cents out of the country and subordinating both human intelligence and our communities to “The Intelligence Community!” Maybe in fact that jamority didn’t know what in hell it was doing. Or maybe it didn’t care because it had been listening to bad money instead of wise speech. Democrats must get control of both houses of Congress so as to enact a law that reverses that democracy-wrecking decision, no matter the Court’s convoluted rationalizations supporting their would-be, working-class busting decision
But enough about vacuous legalisms. How about vacuous symbolisms? When I pledge allegiance, it is to the constitutional framework and people of the United States, and the land on which they stand, not to the flag, which I regard as a pretty rag.. My loyalty is to a necessary connection between reality and our national ideals, not to mere symbols. When the necessary connection is weak or unsure, something may be wrong with our symbolic representations. In fact, something seems awfully wrong with our pretty rag.
Much potential trouble and harm flows from the fact that many Americans cannot distinguish parts from wholes, or the flag’s happenstance design from the role played by a national emblem, a banner that waves in the air from a pole or hangs on the wall in a large hall. “Da flag is da flag. Duh!” Maybe, as I suspect, much trouble and harm flows not from our flag, per se, but from its particular, visual design. Remember, much more prettiness or beauty resides in the eye of the beholder than in the actual things themselves. Remember, too, that visual patterns impact unconscious factors deeper than conscious experience of visual affect. Designs, including architectural forms, talk to more inside us than we ordinarily notice in wakeful awareness.
Many people see no beauty but much ugliness in our American flag. How can that be? Beauty is as beauty does. Beauty is as beauty aims and wishes. But beauty can have very ugly results, like the wickedly witchy Queen in Snow White or King Lear before he wakens to reality. Or Othello strangling Desdemona before he learns of Iago’s perfidy.
We should ask what that three-colored scheme says. What do those sharply defined areas for each color say? Why do the stars dwell sequestered in that heavenly blue field, apart from the lowly, rigid stripes? If the stripes can be seen as a ladder, why does part on one side seem to climb to that starry realm while more striped area on the other side forms a ladder that makes one climb farther, finally to nowhere? Disregarding what grammar school teachers taught us, what do the red, white and blue parts really mean?
Or are they in fact totally meaningless?–Only random choices? Or carried over from the flag of Great Britain for no apparent reason? Why shouldn’t the flag convey a more complex equivalency or image of today’s society? Hasn’t the nation changed vastly from the time of the founding fathers, expecially since the Civil War? Yet, like sleepy automatons we keep on saluting and pledging to the same procrusteanly simple design no matter what evils it may be working on our insides. Maybe we need to add black, brown, green, yellow and sky blue–maybe pink and purple. Soften some lines and de-emphasize white. Spread the stars out. Let them be golden. Tear off that officious fringe that we see on flags shown on stage or in rooms and halls of the Capitol.
Well, naturally, the vested interest of flag manufacturers will block any discussion of change. Thousands of flags are already warehoused around the country and overseas, a huge investment of capital that has to be protected at all cost, right? All that cloth. Dye.
I resent it, that Congress arbitrarily put the word “God” into the pledge of allegiance. It directly contravenes the constitutional separation of church and state. Congress literally “made a law respecting religion” and forced it upon every citizen of the United States. God is another comforting symbol for children, like Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. There can be no definition or character ascribed to God that can ever possibly be proven or demonstrated. Sensations of grace, for instance, have no objective record or counterpart apart from EKG and brain-wave read-outs which are notoriously uncertain and hard to interpret. Believe in symbolic fictions all you wish in private, but never force me to show fealty in public or share your delusions. We have enough real issues to deal with, and we’re kicking cans full of them down the road, year after year.
Hey, folks! Folks, I cannot begin to describe to you how disgusted I am with the gross egregiousness of the foolish irrationality of the Republican platform. Most of it sucks its own hot air and fetid swamp-steam.. I watched the delegates deliberate its construction. What a bunch of pretentious mummery, imitating formal behavior by grown-ups. Look at the crazy results. You know many of them graduated from college but came out with little or no human education or learning in science. Yech-h-h!
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