Warning: It starts off nice and easy, but ends with a giant sized rant.
It was Memorial Day yesterday and lots of patriotic Americans were waving the flag at parades or displaying them on their homes. The woman who lives in the unit across from me had a bracket installed on her pillar so she could put up a flag pole every relevant holiday weekend. It goes up first thing in the morning and down at twilight every day of the flag-worthy weekend. It immediately comes down if it rains. She is also very careful that the flag never, ever touches the ground even though it's quite large.
She follows the rules for the flag (pdf).
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Public Law 94-344, better known as the Federal Flag Code was highly updated in 1976 when the bicentennial stimulated nationalistic passions that focused attention on displaying maximum patriotism. That law now contains not only the rules for handling and displaying the American Flag, but expanded upon the behavior required by members of the military and the public. One of the changes in those rules was the addition of placing your right hand over your heart not just during the Pledge of Allegiance but also during the signing of the National Anthem (previously, you were required to simply stand while it was played).
There are no penalties for violating the rules, but many states have their own set of rules and those rules come with penalties.
In response to a Supreme Court decision in 1989 that said that one such state law prohibiting flag burning was Unconstitutional, Congress went into light speed mode and passed the Federal Flag Protection Act that same year. That law mandated a fine and up to a year in prison for flag burning. The Supreme Court struck that law down as Unconstitutional the following year since it violated free speech protections.
Still, there are still a whole lot of rules and many who get quite upset and nasty when the rules aren't followed.
But What About the Country?
When I see folks displaying the flag, wearing a flag pin, pushing for more legal requirements for flag worshiping, or making sure they look ultra patriotic at public events, I privately wonder how they feel about the country that the flag represents. Are they just as happy to pay their taxes, vote, improve their communities, or perform public service? Do they support our veterans with the typical "thanks for your service" or do they push for better funding of the VA and a more robust GI Bill like the one World War II veterans had?
The answer is normally "no". The typical Republican flag pin wearer has been draining funding from the VAs nationwide and even (in the 1980s) changing its mission from serving the medical needs of all veterans to serving only service-connected medical problems and making access to even that care difficult and time consuming. They've also squashed the old GI bill which gave WWII vets low interest home loans and free college educations. "No money" is the usual excuse.
It wasn't just unions that created the expanded the middle class in the 50s and 60s; it was the GI Bill, too.
And those Republican flag worshippers also started sending our troops off to war ill-prepared. There were plenty of reports of soldiers being sent body armor by their friends and families when the military didn't supply it to those sent to Iraq and Afghanistan. And how many people were killed when non-armored vehicles were sent to war with soldiers themselves hurriedly trying to weld scrap metal onto vehicles to make them just a bit safer.
Donald Rumsfelds horrible comment that you "go to war with the army you have and not the army you want" rang hollow to anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together. Anyone who thought for a micro-second would have realized that we could have waited to send troops until body armor and safe vehicles were available. After all, these were wars of "our" choice.
And then, as our wounded returned for care they found a crumbling and roach infested military hospital waiting for them where they were likelier to fall through the cracks of the system than receive actual care. Then again, politicians don't stage photo-ops with wounded troops. Those pose with healthy soldiers used as a patriotic back drop to give self serving speeches and avoid any criticism because it would "hurt" those soldiers.
So Walter Reed, Bethesda, and the VA system can just decay and corrode because they're not politically useful to those who control the purse strings. Those flag pin wearing flag idolizers need symbols for the display of their public patriotic fervor. They don't need a bunch of people who lost their limbs, their health and vitality, their cognitive abilities, or their minds due to the tragedy that is war.
So they come home injured and traumatized possibly to their home having been illegally foreclosed on by one greedy bank or another, to a family suffering from poverty because military service doesn't pay well, no job prospects, and not much of a GI Bill to get them back on their feet. And those who sent them marching off to wars? They've moved on without a bit of consideration or thought to those whose lives have been ruined.
After all, they got the wars they wanted and all the perks that go with war. One guy got to be a War-Time President with all the high approval ratings and increased political power that comes with it. Another saw his shares in Halliburton, a small company before the wars, haul in hundreds of millions of tax payer dollars. Others got huge face-time on the TV machine, fans, book and broadcasting deals. Another got a lifetime federal judicial appointment. Each one of them cashed in big time. Yeah, war is a racket.
Not one of them was charged, indicted or put on trial.
Those who served got used up and stepped over in the rush to salute the flag and demonize anyone who doesn't follow the rules (written and unwritten) to the letter.
Remember to follow the flag rules because there's a lot more concern about that symbol than there ever is about the country it represents or those who have put their lives on the line for it. Be especially patriotic when you see it or hear the National Anthem.
The flag worshippers will be watching and they could care less if this country is a smoldering ruin as long as there is an American Flag planted on top of it and displayed in accordance to the rules.
I wonder if they even know the difference between Memorial Day and Veterans day, outside of the date...
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