Old Glory
Patriotism & Citizenship – Religion & Politics — Headlined on OpEdNews.com 9/5/16
While there is little more patriotic than storming the beaches of Normandy, it is just as courageous to suffer civilian neglect after tours of duty. There’s more to Patriotism than the Patriot Act, Citizens United or day trip south of the boarder, down Mexico way.
American citizenship deserves more than misquoting historical documents or confusing a pledge of allegiance with a declaration of independence or mistaking Guns, God and Freedom Caucus for, America the Beautiful.
There’s more to Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself than espousing religious freedom while menacing freedom’s greatest privilege with voter ID Laws, political gerrymandering and transforming Faith, Hope and Charity begins at home, by diminutive education at degrading school infrastructure.
There’s more to justice than blocking the restoration of voting rights to those former felons who did the crime but served the time, for beware, a society of revolving doors from Congress to K Street and schools to prisons, risks being crushed under its own corrupted correctional collateral.
And what of the humanity of providing affordable healthcare, rather than being awash in the thrill of sticking the masses with addicting chill pills – hedged by dealers dealing in insurance and pharmaceuticals?
There can be more to our American life than diminishing returns, but ultimately is already here, and those too distracted to deny the powerful denial of truth standing before us, allow the powerful to reap what the rest sow.
Though born out of war, Freedom to peacefully assemble has always been an American ideal, less so, misogyny and bigotry – and there is more to being a patriot than blocking supreme court nominees, while costuming sexual harassment in a black robe of silence, hiding in plain sight.
There’s more to standing up for our country than standing during the rockets’ red glare, and, more to honoring our veterans than a government shutdown. It’s not enough to display Old Glory for all to see, until weather rending it filthy and tattered, like a warrior forgotten.
There is more to American patriotism than saluting a flag while denigrating the unity and civility for which it stands. A pledge of our allegiance to each other without prejudice, is more patriotic than Flag Waving or struggling to remember the lyrics of a challenging melody before sports events.
Patriotism is not being media numbed into glossing over a mother being gunned down while strolling with her children. Being an All American citizen begins with being a decent human being to all Americans.
Citizenship flourishes when liberally nourished with civil participation in the civics of our nation. Patriotism is not how loud we shout, for if we but journey together from disunity to community, The Ugly American roar is silenced.
The very nemesis of patriotism is the injustice in the words of an extreme hard Right Virginia Amendment, spousal abuse, rape, trafficking, the falsely convicted serving decades, in prison, while one caught in the act of sexual assault receives a six-month sentence.
True patriotism accepts accountability and celebrates contribution, especially from those who have been denied full citizenship. Our Herstory is resplendent with Americans like, Sojourner Truth & Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Tubman & Elizabeth Cady, Alice Jones Rhinelander & Susan B. Anthony, Marion Anderson & Eleanor Roosevelt, Mary McLeod Bethune & Ruth Williams Khama, Fannie Lou Hamer & Jeannette Rankin, Shirley Chisholm & Alice Paul, Dorothy Height & Betty Ford, Aretha Franklin & Barbra Streisand, Oprah Winfrey and, if she can be saved from police Bi-coastal trafficking, possibly Celeste Guap.
Real patriots preserve, protect and defend not only America’s symbols, but the rights and privileges for which they stand. We are a nation of nations on a planet we share with all life upon it.
Worshiping the symbols of Exceptionalism is not exceptional, but letting world peace begin with America, would be.
ISIS – Iran/Netanyahu GOP – Fundamentalists – End Times: Headlined by OpEdNews.com 3/15/15
Supreme blood in elections, minority blood in the streets, shooting blood in schools, and religious intolerance bleeding out God’s Holy Temple – America is in danger of festering hate for real and imagined police state.
So fearful of brown people invading from the south, we allow real Homeland Security threats:
- Not caring for him who shall have borne the battle, and for hiswidow, and his orphan
- Not providing dependable protection for POTUS
- Media frenzy purchased by Corporatism distracting & ignoring We the People.
- Electing writers of ill-advised letters to foreigners, talking to email or not to email and on & off again Benghazi
- New industry of stolen tax refunds.
And it’s all a board game for the boards behind the towered smoke and mirrors outsourcing Cottonmouth Tom aligning his 47 with Romney’s 47%, gaming their failed system with a preemptive one way ticket to Mars.
Having gambled away the lives of our grandchildren, playing aces and eights against time, each tick tock harvests melting icebergs, ferocious hurricanes and ultimately, salt-water waves in city streets.
If too late to avoid Soylent Green option, returning to nature to decrease tempo, may provide manna from Rain Forest.
We can continue to shoot each other or we can become keepers of the flame, purging man’s inhumanity.
We can continue sexual assault on college campuses and in military, or we can choose to give our daughters, wives, mothers, sisters and aunts equal pay and ERA constitutional ratification.
Growing porcupine quills to resist climate change information, global warming knowledge, Open Carry dangers and The Hunting Grounds education, swipes our thinking with the disconnect of being overly connected.
We can chant racial slurs or accept that America will not overcome without Immokalee farm workers picking food for our survival.
An infant sleeping on a symbol of freedom doesn’t desecrate freedom. We can worship Old Glory or practice the true democracy and equality it symbolizes.
Justice for All is desecrated by Wall Street, K Street and Madison Ave poop shoveled on us in the name of Stars and Stripes.
That’s the excrement that taints our national soul!
To self-possess obesity, feeding at the troth of bigotry, cutting taxes for the wealthy and equating Open Carry with manliness is what self-fulfills The End Times.
We can welcome all into the land of opportunity with malice toward none regardless of income, street address or uniform and propel ourselves into the United States of Peace that passes all understanding.
We can multiply an educated self-preservation of earth and all that lives upon it with renewables or ignore that our weather has changed for whatever reason – and clone Ferguson throughout The Land of the Free and The Home of the Brave, as New American Dream.
What we do between 2015 and 2040 determines the future of the world and the fate of all children born in the 21st century.
We don’t need death on a horse to destroy the earth with famine, for we have already dangerously depleted earth’s resources.
We don’t need a devil to destroy us with plague, as we ignore Ebola across the same rising oceans that we thought would protect us from 9/11.
We needn’t fear being eaten alive by wild beasts of prey, for we contribute to their extinction every day.
It’s our choice to elect or not, those who arm domestic prejudice in uniforms, as CIA funded foreign hate of Al Qaeda for perpetual corporate oil wars.
I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hell followed close behind him.
Fear is not the only enemy: Ignorance and Denial are enemies — especially when we choose to be fooled by their promoters and lose to their electorate.
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