Double Flee A

Now, from the old emailbag, it's time for Dear Dale:

Don't you think the pledge of allegiance is pretty creepy? Sure, I'm as patriotic as the next guy, but I find any kind of monotone chant dedicated to the steadfast support of anything sort of culty. What do you say, Dale?

Regards,
Cornelius Cosgrove


Cornelius, when you have to take a shit real bad, do you proclaim that you have to do so? No. You clench and hustle. It's not important to talk about it, just get this need met so you can move on. Same thing with loving America, right? For some reason, no. I don't understand it. If you get a yellow ribbon magnetic sticker on your car that says "Support our troops", it's not a sticker that says "I support our troops", it's an order, and not even an order to Do anything, just to Feel a certain way. Just like the war on terror, in which we are constantly terrorized by our own government. Feel simultaneously, vigorously afraid and brave, America, because it's not patriotic if you don't? Fuck that. The only thing scarier than somebody trying to get people to feel a certain way is when the morons actually do it. Anyone who doesn't see parallels, plenty that have emerged during this administration, between the dystopia in Orwell's 1984 and our own, here and now, ought to exercise their shiny new library card. It's free. There's really no excuse. If things that are public really make you puke, then go buy it and you can not only read it but pride yourself on your iron will to avoid all things civic.

Let's put this "pledging" into persepctive. If you love the lord so much that you can't think of anything to say, there are words for that purpose. Hallelujah is one, and another is Amen. You can hear these for yourself at baptist churches. It's worrisome that someone could allow themselves to be brought to the point of emotional hysteria over some words, but that's how orators of all stripes take advantage of susceptible people. Susceptible people are the ones, who, at one time, said, for a lack of other words powerful enough to describe the way they felt, "Sig Heil". Powerful nationalistic feelings can sometimes be a bad thing. I'd say that powerful feelings are a bad thing in general. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person in America who asks himself in times of struggle: How did you get so worked up and how can that be avoided?

Some people just don't get it and don't want to, that it is their duty to use the matter between their ears to think critically about EVERYthing, and base their decisions on the outcome of their careful considerations. Unfortunately, careful considerations have largely been supplanted by media outlets with painfully obvious political agendas. When I was eighteen I swallowed whatever came along, but it eventually gave me indigestion and I had to think about some things: Why is it that Jesus's people are always trying to motivate me with shame and guilt?... Why isn't anybody overthrowing this unelected president?... Who does Donald Rumsfeld think he's fooling, and wait a minute, is it working?...Who's making money off of this war?...How long has this been going on? It wasn't pleasant to actually think about this. Many of my mornings were a scene of despair. Nicotine helped.

A wiser man than me once said the republicans love the country the way a four-year old loves her mommy, and the goal should be to love it the way one loves one's spouse. You're better off actually thinking about things instead of freaking out; those aren't screams of agony after the lights go out, at least not always. It's very simple: asking questions before acting would have saved us from a stupid, meaningless war, and it didn't happen, because America and god have come to mean very close to the same thing. America has been branded the way that the democratic party has, by the same people, the result being it's an emotional response they elicit, not one that inspires vigorous debate. The mention of a belief in god normally signals the end of rigorous analysis and the beginning of a happy brain fog. "Love" has been shown to disconnect neural networks associated with critical thought. Does that surprise any-fucking-body?

Then there's the god addition, which I was obviously going to pounce on, Cornelius. To quote a post I made last December, Dwight Eisenhower approved adding the words "under god" to the pledge of allegiance in 1954. As he did this he said: "In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America's heritage and future; in this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country's most powerful resource in peace and war." In other words, blah blah blah it just sounds more powerful and nitty-gritty, it's more emotionally evocative with god thrown in there even though to say there is a god is to imply there is such a thing as a state-approved religion, which goes against the whole concept of freedom of religion. Hem and haw all day, you can't come up with ONE original or persuasive argument to suggest there is a big, lovin', Werther's original distributin' grandaddy up in outer space that knows if you've been bad or good. Get the fuck over it and get the word god out of the pledge and I'll consider saying it again. Or don't, and delude yourself into thinking that there is some mighty prophecy and there's going to be hell to pay when you-know-who flies down on a broomstick or whatever superstition you prefer. You can make yourself feel really awed and scared by the stories of god's power, but it's still you making you feel that way, not actually god.

The America I love is shrinking, being replaced by something calling itself America that looks out only for profitability. America is dying and no amount of pledges of allegiance, no matter how loudly they're shouted, are going to affect any positive change. It was too much praise and hubris that got us where we are to begin with, and let me tell you where we are. For the first time we're getting less foreign investment than China, with dismal job growth and economic forecasts straight out of Dickens, in the middle of a war with no justification (outside a bunch of riled up people who wanted somebody to pay for hurting mommy, nevermind who) nor foreseeable end, and which we cannot afford to sustain. Do I love America less than the people who send our young men and women over to Iraq to die for no reason outside the president's arrogance? No.

Let's go with a republican public relations issue: individual responsibility.The ones who fucked it up should take care of it. You want the war, YOU pay for it.

I don't care for the pledge of allegiance either. It is creepy and there's a lot of psychology involved that someone understands very well, that most people don't. You'll be able to figure it out, Corn.

posted by dale @ 2:09 AM