I Don't Like The Pledge of Allegiance

... or the National Anthem, for that matter. They're scary. Very scary.

Now I'm not an America hater by any means, but I hate what this country has become. Forget the right-wing nut jobs and Jesus freaks... actually, don't forget them, because they're a major part of the problem. They might even be the problem. Hmmm. You know, when it comes do it, they really are the problem. They've almost got a corner on the world hypocrisy market. They are obsessed, and I mean obsessed, with running everyone's lives (Ha!. I almost typed "ruining" instead of "running." Same thing.) They must be the most sexually repressed people this side of the Puritans. Whether it's abortion, gays, or a flash of a breast on TV, it's downright frightening how quickly they start freaking out. Rick Santorum, ex-Senator from Pennsylvania (hee hee), even went so far as to suggest that sanctioning gay marriage would lead to people having sex with animals. Where the fuck did that come from? What kind of twisted mind makes that connection? And don't you just love how it's all the Jesus freaks that are against just about every social program under the sun? Were they not paying attention in church? Maybe they were too busy daydreaming about having sex with their Black Lab, but I'm pretty sure that Jesus was the kind of guy who advocated helping your neighbor and not being a power-hungry, money-grubbing asshole. Once again, even as an atheist, I'm a better Christian than those schmucks.

This country is almost completely in the shitter. It's morally bankrupt and has lost the respect of just about every other nation on the planet. We put a guy in charge that has the intellectual capacity of an eighth grader, while his second in command makes Dr. Strangelove look like Mother Theresa. Meanwhile, we've got local governments (Rep and Dem) banning the use of trans fats in restaurants and coke machines on school campuses because apparently we're just not capable of deciding for ourselves what to eat and drink. It would almost be humorous if it wasn't true.

The American Dream is doomed. About the best we can hope for is to lay low, mind our own business and hope we're still allowed to enjoy our friends and families.

But I digress. It is not for these reasons that I detest the pledge and the anthem. First, a tiny bit of background as to what raised the ire, or at least brought it to the surface on this day. There is a city councilman in Mesa who refused to stand up and recite the the pledge during a council meeting last week. (He's still a chickenshit in my book because he participated in the prayer, which is even more evil than the pledge). He said it was his way of protesting the Iraq war. Well, you can guess what happens next, right. Let the death threats begin. He's unpatriotic, he should be thrown out of office blah blah blah.

Anyway, this isn't about him and the constitution and hypocrisy. It's about the pledge. Think about when and where you learned the thing. You were likely five or six years old, and you had to stand there with your hand over your heart every morning and recite a bunch of words that, to your little kid pea brain, were essentially meaningless. You didn't know what "allegiance" meant, and you likely didn't have a concept of republican (small "r") democracy. Your concepts of liberty and justice (both of which are being mocked on a daily basis by Darth Cheney and Incurious George) were at best unformed and likely malformed. Liberty was a green statue somewhere in New York, and justice was whatever happened to the guys that Sgt. Friday caught on Dragnet.

So what was the deal? Well, folks, the pure and simple explanation is that you were being brainwashed and indoctrinated so that you, too, would one day grow up and become a passive little sheep that didn't question your leaders or demand that they actually run the government for the benefit of anyone other than themselves. You probably haven't said the pledge for 30 years, but you still remember every word, don't you? It's tattooed into your consciousness, and you'll never get it out. It's straight out of Orwell, baby. Recite in unison. March in lockstep. Toe the line.

Same with the anthem, really. It's not really even about our country, but is simply a celebration of one battle that took place almost 200 years ago. Yes, God Bless America or America the Beautiful would be better, but still scary because (a) well, they both mention god, which is bullshit; and (b) they still smack of indoctrination. What happens at a football or baseball game? You get 60,000 sheep all baa-ing to the same tune in some bizarre ritual that, would it were any other song and any other scene, would for all appearances suggest a cult that worshipped a tri-colored piece of cloth with stripes and some stars sewed on it. And the participants don't even question the absurdity of the exercise or realize what's going on.

And that's the scary part. There's a fine line between love of country and cult-like behavior, and we crossed it long ago. Patriotism frightens the hell out of me. For one thing, "patriotism" is what allows Darth and Incurious to continue fomenting their evil schemes in our names. But more importantly, think again about those kids in the classroom. Picture it in your mind, right now. Now think about those WWII-era newsreels you've seen on TV showing little German kids dressed up in uniforms with their arms outstretched. How dissimilar are those pictures, really? Yet we continue to sanction and even encourage one while we treat the other as a cautionary tale.

Think again about those pledge-reciting kids. Their right hands are placed over their hearts, right? Now imagine them pulling their right elbows up so that the elbow is even with the shoulder (the hand is still on the heart). Got it? Now, imagine them keeping their elbows in place but moving their right hands so their arms are fully extended. And what do you have? A picture of a German classroom, circa 1939.

Wanna play another game? Good. In this one, you imagine the football stadium where everyone is singing the anthem. Just for grins, pretend they are all dressed exactly alike. Now think about Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will, her film of the Nazi party rallies in Nuremberg in 1934. Notice any similarities?

When someone starts talking patriotism to me, I run away. Like religion, it is a concept that has gotten so warped that is employed far more often for nefarious reasons than for good.