Flag day on Sunday may be too much…

Flag Day, like Independence Day and Constitution Day, has become, for me, anyway, a predicament.

I want very much to enjoy the feelings of pride and mystic oneness with untarnished heroes of yesteryear.  I’d like to sing our anthem with joy.  I’d be delighted if I could feel that nationalism was about righteous unity and a shared experience of liberty and justice for all with my fellow citizens.  I wish I could hoist a flag and feel I’m expressing equality under constitutional rule of law, with truth, transparency, peace and prosperity now and forevermore.

But, dang it…

The flag is a symbol that, to me, and very sadly, has become an emblem of corruption and self-deception.  Our Pledge to obey it (written by an apostate socialist, BTW) was considered idolatry by Christians a hundred years ago.  Adding “under God” to it in 1953 changed what, exactly?

Do we stand in church with our hands on our hearts and solemnly pledge to obey God?  I’ve not seen that happen.

Besides, how CAN we obey a flag?  Are there any rules?  Who decides what the flag is telling us what to do, and how far we’re to go in obedience?

Do we mean what we’re actually saying?

Our Anthem is a similar self-deception.  Do we still believe we’re “the land of the free and the home of the brave” when… aren’t we struggling against liberties lost to fear of everything from impoverished Arabs, to marijuana and viruses?

Our nation is a corporate abstraction not so different from other corporate identities, tribes, corporations, clubs or clans.  We should be acutely aware that the difference between crime rings and nations is often more matter of scale than culture or law.  When Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel beat the Mexican government in a straight-up military engagement, wasn’t there at least a little confusion about who’s really running the country?

Governing is always by force.  But very, very rarely, a government rules by some authority higher than just brute force.  The USA’s national government was created, authorized and very literally delimited by constitutions, state and federal…that, unfortunately today, nobody reads, and most dismiss as outdated.

Yet it’s to constitutions that soldiers, police, politicians and new citizens are to pledge their support and defense against all enemies both foreign…and domestic.

And it’s to those constitutions that we all turn at some point when we want at least the parts we like (maybe a few of the Bill of Rights) when we feel we need defense from…our own government.

Yes, our government.  You know…the people with the flags on their uniforms, “Under God” on their money, and big bald eagles topping flagpoles guarded by soldiers.

You know…the people a lot of us are protesting against today for their injustice, lawlessness, corruption and brutality.

I get that flags are powerful.  Anthems are powerful.  Slogans are powerful.

But carried through generations, they become a religion unto themselves.  Tribal/corporate membership identity is powerful right down to our DNA.  We crave the feeling of belonging to a pack…often most when opposed to some other clique, clan, club or country.  Historically, and today, that tribal fervor becomes violent at the whisper of a rumor.

We actually tend to WANT us versus them, with all the emotions, symbology and triumphant, martyr-making images that go with that scenario.

My dad was a decorated WWII pilot and POW.  He weighed just over 90lbs when freed, and I believe all of his kids were deeply affected by his unspoken trauma.  The triangle of flag presented after his death means a lot to me.  But that particular flag is about my dad and not about our imperiled nation.

A lot of people see the flying flag more like a disgraced celebrity than a proud aspiration.  Others have good reason to see it as a symbol of class struggle and injustice.  Those who see it as a physical embodiment of virtue are history-whitewashing romantics…which must be pleasant – but is ultimately a destructive self-delusion.

But it may also be a dangerous red-herring bait-and-switch.  “When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” *

I have a suggestion.

I believe we should drop the abstract, arbitrary symbols associated with our ungoverned, corrupt and dangerous government, and make this really, really simple.

We should make sure that what we espouse and pledge to support is written in black and white constitutions that we’ve read and actually do support, and not to feelings inferred from symbols no longer related to those words.

We need to be, in my opinion, razor-sharp in focus, and completely serious in our dedication to truth, justice, and …something better than what is now the American Way:

I propose we pledge our allegiance not to a bit of cloth made in China, but to constitutional rule of law under our existing state and federal constitutions as written and amended, full stop.

 

 

*Some say Sinclair Lewis said or wrote this.  But this has been pretty-well debunked.  Others ironically claim that Huey Long said it.  But that’s even less-likely.
But it doesn’t much matter who said it, because it’s turning out to be embarrassingly, damnably correct.

Too stupid to know we’re being stupid?

I’m pretty sure that my wisest, most clear-headed moments have been when I fully, accountably realized that I was being an idiot.

And I think the wisest of those moments resulted from somebody else pointing out to me that I was being an idiot…and I listened.

There is that saying, “A wise man learns more from a fool than a fool learns from a wise man.”

OK, so I hope the preceding was a sufficiently humble preface, since I’m about to call hundreds of millions of people idiots.

You see, having been to innumerable political forums where politicians outnumber regular folk; having participated in scores of public debates; having authored hundreds of articles published in major media and reading the angry retorts; having stood at the center of hundreds of protesters with a megaphone in my hand; having been to hundreds of public meetings where policy is purchased; being fairly well-acquainted with the best political minds in at least Indiana; and having warned everybody I know about our current national predicament when there was still time to fix it; I feel unusually well-qualified to make the following statement:

We The People, that arbitrary, abstract and problematic mob called a “nation,” in the Year of Our Lord 2017, are at least acting like idiots.

I’ll support that statement in four ways:

Number 1. Our society’s deceptive use of language, and level of conversation, has plummeted to embarrassing depths.

Here is a small excerpt from the “Federalist Papers” number 10, written by James Madison and published November 29, 1787:

“A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for preeminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.  

…The inference to which we are brought is, that the CAUSES of faction cannot be removed, and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its EFFECTS.”

Now, who in public life today thinks and talks like that?

Here, by way of comparison, is some of our current President’s writing (unedited and in full):

Written by Donald Trump on May 8 2013: “Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest -and you all know it! Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure,it’s not your fault”

And another, perhaps more famous writing by the same person 31 May, 2017 said, in its entirety and verbatim, “Despite the constant negative press covfefe”

Number 2. We know everything about stupid stuff, and nothing about important stuff.

How much do I need to elaborate here? How many men can quote baseball stats back to ‘ought-five, yet can’t name our Vice President? How many women read thousand-page romance novels hours on end, and say they “don’t have time” to read the US Constitution (it takes about an hour)? Our kids lack basic life skills even after spending a quarter of their lifespan in classrooms.

Number 3. We’d never hire anybody else the way we hire politicians.

Let’s say you need to hire a janitor. But instead of reading applications, calling people in for interviews and checking references, you just sit back and see who puts up the best yard signs, billboards and TV ads. You’re not looking for qualifications in the conventional sense. No; you’re looking for the best odd$; you’re looking for who’$ got $upport.  You sure don’t want to hire somebody who “doesn’t have a chance,” right?  Ideology, principles, and certainly truth don’t matter, it’s the Show that counts.

“Give me the keys to your building and relax,” says one candidate, “I’m the Janitor You Can Trust!” Another candidate has run a great ground game, handing out literature and freebies to your other employees, with the slogan “Make Janitorial Services Great Again!”

There are lots of other candidates, of course; but all your interest goes to only the two Major Janitorial Candidates. The media tell you that you’d be a fool to waste your choice on other candidates, no matter their superior abilities and references, because the Major Janitorial Candidates are…well…they’re Major.

(oh, and they also contribute a large percentage of the media’s ad revenue)

When everything else these days can be “nonbinary,” only your choice of candidates must be from only the two given to you by …who exactly?

Interestingly, you never ask where all the money comes from for the expensive campaign materials and professional managers. If you exercised any curiosity at all, you’d realize that the people spending millions of dollars to get a job that pays a salary pittance have other reasons to get access to your building and all that’s inside.

We don’t think about anything else the way we think about politics.  I only wish I had as much faith in my “religion” as people have in their political idols.  I only wish I could be so lackadaisical in my daily life as we are with the power of money, police, prisons, spies and war.

Number 4. We have collectively and intentionally rejected that functional system of moral civil behaviors called “culture.”

No, what we call “multiculturalism” isn’t a culture – it’s divisiveness in the pretense of enlightenment. A functional culture doesn’t require an official, uniform religion, style of speech, dress, food or customs.  But it does require some basic commonality and uniformity in rules of behavior, consequences, methods of conflict resolution, and,  importantly, letting a stack-up of cars pass on the left instead of plugging your big fat black Cadillac Escalade with Hillary bumper stickers in the left lane matching speed with the blue Prius in the right lane going east on Hwy 46 toward Bloomington at 8mph BELOW THE SPEED LIMIT …for example.

Anyway…

I’ve for decades fought our corrupt political scheme; which is based entirely upon Special Deals for Special People.  But that corruption is just a reflection of our corrupt civilian culture.

Instead of looking for common ground, we’ve obsessively divided ourselves into opposing factions of LGBT versus straight, socialist versus fascist (as if either’s any !@#$ good at all), male versus female, poor versus middle class, and…more than at any time since I was just a kid…black versus white.

Why?

Do we not all want peace, prosperity, freedom and maybe a little love? Do we really LIKE the fearful, violent, hateful posture we’ve instead chosen?

Maybe we do prefer hate. I was recently told that because I’m a white Protestant male (a “WASP;” the West’s most reviled, and even self-loathing, minority), I should not even be allowed to speak.

Seriously.

So, you may think I’m about to propose a solution.

Sadly, no.  There is no solution to idiocy other than humility, and its beloved companion, accountability.  But that is a rare and precious thing.  It hardly ever happens in significant numbers.

America, as a culture, needs to realize that it’s being an idiot, and snap out of it.

But what are the odds of that actually happening?  Maybe not odds, actually, but conditions.  We’ve probably all read that “…all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”  Maybe we’re still too comfortable.  That WILL change…and pretty soon, I suspect.  Probably within the next ten years.  Maybe sooner.

I of course hope We The People will have a collective epiphany, and back away from the self-obsessed, hateful, prideful, self-destructive madness we’ve chosen, and plot a new course that in some way incorporates at least a little peace, prosperity, and (is it too much to ask?) freedom.

My hopes have always exceeded my expectations.

Sigh…

This ain’t about religion, folks

First, I will not deny that Islam has a history of slavery, brutality, deceit and war.

Second…so does every other religion, race, ethnicity or other description of “human” on the planet.

People tend try very hard to rationalize the anger and desire for violence stirring in their heads.  The justifications people come up with sometimes become motivation and fuel for actual violence.  And often that process at the individual level becomes cliquish, tribal mob-think.  So it’s easy to see why non-Muslims react against “The Religion of Peace.”

But us flag-waving, non-Muslim Americans really need to discuss a few things honestly; including our own culture of global, politically-inflamed and monetary-policy-fueled violence.  

I wish more people understood and acted upon the truth that ALL people everywhere in all times think they’re right…and that only the other people are wrong.

But with so much obvious ignorance and disastrously bad policy (have ANY of our government’s promises or justifications for warfare turned out to be true?), we’re past-due for a look at both OUR history, and our allies…including the one that seems off-the-table, taboo, and the Name Never Spoken: Saudi Arabia.

Ibn Taymiyyah, Abd al-Wahhab (1703 – 1792) was a Sunni Muslim cleric who rejected modern culture and technology, and sought to purify and distill Islam to the faith and practices of the Salaf.  In other words, he wanted people to live in the year 700.

This was not a very popular idea among the very many Muslims who liked the advances made in the intervening thousand years…many of the advances coming from Muslims themselves.

Putting it more simply, many Muslims wanted him dead. So the cleric sought out the protection of a well-known desert warrior/ emir, Muhammad ibn Saud.

It turned out that Wahhab’s ideas of religious discipline and zeal fit very well with Saud’s ideas of military conquest and political domination. They legitimized each other, in effect; and so they created a dynasty that endures to today.

But this weaponized religion in the form of Wahhabism and the House of Saud had pretty powerful enemies within the prevailing Ottoman Empire. So the Ottomans eventually (albeit violently) contained Saudi Arabia’s inherent military expansionist zeal.

Through all this, however, Ottomans and Europeans were also fighting each other. It was mostly the British who started a practice of deceit and division to ally with opposing factions to disrupt the empire.

After the horrific Young Turk Revolution and during WWI is when the young archaeologist T.E. Lawrence was pushed into Britain’s assymetric engagement to bring down the Ottoman Empire.

Thomas Edward Lawrence, CB DSO FAS, better known as “Lawrence of Arabia,” was an amazing guy; and not just because the multilingual soldier/ archaeologist/ writer liked motorcycles. Mostly, it’s because he was both a key historical figure, and a Cassandric chronicler of our current problems in the Middle East.

During the revolution/fall of the Ottoman Empire, Lawrence tried to help the Egyptian-led Hashemite forces make a stable, peaceful transition to the modern world. But England was, at first unbeknownst to Lawrence, also subsidizing the opposing faction of Muslims in Riyad…the House of Saud.

“The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far from a disaster.” – “Report on Mesopotamia” The Sunday Times (22 August 1920)  (does this seem familar somehow?)

Lawrence’s axis of Egyptian/Syrian Arabs did most of the real dismantling of the old Empire while the House of Saud/Wahhabis pretty much rebuilt in the background (and certainly avoided the forces helped/led by T.E. Lawrence).

With the increasing importance of oil, and the ready sources of it in his grasp, Abdul-Aziz ibn Abdul-Rahman al Faisal al Saud became more than just a military force.

So the British then did in that conflict what the USA has done ever since…they funded, equipped and aided two sides of a revolution against a third entity, and ended up picking the worst side.

So it was the Wahhabist Saudi faction that gained the real power from the post-revolution/ post-WWI power struggles…because western powers took their side.

To make the long story short, Saudi Arabia became nobody’s friend, but everybody’s ally; especially since FDR signed a deal with the Saudis, and Nixon based the dollar on their oil trade instead of gold after unilaterally ending the Breton Woods Agreement (the connection to gold was essentially broken by FDR long before, but at least we still promised to trade dollars for gold with the BWA).

Richer by far than the dissipating Rothchilds, as heavily armed as they want to be, and to seal their imperviousness to our domestic production, we just gave the Wahhabis our biggest oil refinery in Port Arthur Texas.  

Global imperialism and concomitantly devalued currency wrecked the British Empire, so the USA has now taken on Britain’s role of self-destructing meddler-bully.

We’ve become both puppet and puppeteer, both thug and serf. The middle east is a divided, angry wreck because we made it that way over the past one-hundred years.  And to fight for the value of our dollar on the global market, we have to fight wars for the House of Saud.

What’s next?  What would you do if you were a non-Saudi in the Middle East?

Consider what Lawrence wrote as applicable to all of us:

“Whether they are fit for independence or not remains to be tried. Merit is no qualification for freedom. Bulgars, Afghans, and Tahitans have it. Freedom is enjoyed when you are so well armed, or so turbulent, or inhabit a country so thorny that the expense of your neighbour’s occupying you is greater than the profit.” – “Letter to the Editor” The Times (22 July 1920)