I wrote this today in reply to a "Put a flag in your front yard" post. My sweet, wise daughter said I was being too aggressive in a direct reply to an actual human being who would probably take it personally. Still, it's something I feel a need to say:
I hung flags for July 4 even during the reprehensible Reagan administration because I considered him to be an aberration that did not reflect the basic character of this country.
But since then, almost fifty percent of the people voted for a guy who "grabbed them by the pussy" and said that people from Mexico were "rapists and murderers". He ridiculed and mocked a reporter with a handicap.
Reagan was not an aberration. He was the beginning of a hideous corruption of America. From him to Newt Gingrich to George W. and now to Trump, the American people, the real America I used to revere has become substantially evil.
Our parents went to war to protect our country from being conquered by people like them, Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo. They did not do it for the flag. They did it *under* it and *for* a decent country.
The flag is a piece of cloth that represents a political theory. A symbol that has been hijacked by racists, xenophobes and people who call the free press an enemy of the people. By people who criticize me because I won't join those who wave the flag in support of vile ideology.
When all that stops I will reconsider but I am pretty sure almost fifty percent will vote in November for the guy who put children in cages, sent troops against people in American cities and teargassed a crowd so he could wave a bible in front of church.
Flag of the United States of America, bah. If we are talking about the country that just blew off treaties, abandoned the Kurds and built a wall, no way I want anything to do with it. It is a symbol of evil.
I hope that our forbears would look at the current commander in chief and say, No way I will take orders from that scumbag. I'm not pointing a gun at someone to defend putting children in cages.