Don't Hijack My Flag

It's 9/11. On this day in 2001, I was living in Arizona, on my way to a client's house, and saw it on TV when I got there. I knew someone whose husband died in the Towers on that day. The shock and horror and lack of clarity that surrounded those events and in the months and years that followed seemed like we had tipped the scale, heading in the direction that is so obvious today.

The hate and bigotry, anti-Muslim sentiment, and what I call the hijacking of our flag, with willfully blind loyalty to some high ranking government officials who were rushing to decisions not based on fact, was the beginning of our backtracking. Suddenly everyone had those flag decals, ribbons, and was rushing to judgement. John Ashcroft, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and George W. Bush took our country in a scary direction, on false premises, and got a bunch more people killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And here we are, eighteen years later, with a complete nutcase in the White House who just fired another recycled yahoo from that era, John Bolton. While I never wanted him anywhere near the WHite House again and I'm glad to see him go, there are so many problems in Washington right now that it hardly seems like a speck of dust.

I always resented the people who conflate the flag with Christianity. Keep your Jesus to yourself, don't shove it down my throat. My citizenship doesn't require me to share your religion. You really have to wonder what the hell goes through their heads when they read the first amendment, or any of them!

I remember being "talked to" senior year by my high school physics teacher about not saying the Pledge of Allegiance. I didn't believe in it. I didn't worship the flag and I didn't believe in saying the "under God" part. I chose to not say it. She argued that I was an American and that it was disrespectful. I shrugged my shoulders at her in disagreement. She didn't like that. I liked physics a lot but I didn't care for the teacher. (I got my revenge eventually by stretching one of her slinkys all the way down the length of the school hallway, when she was trying to demonstrate the concept of elasticity.)

Anyway, it is disturbing to see the resurgence in racism and hate and bigotry that came out in 2001, fully return since the age of Trump.

Underlying all of it, is our country's dominion over the rest of the world and our denial of the bad things we have done all over the world to uphold and protect our interests- power, wealth, and control by and for a few. Lots of bad things are being done every day in the name of religion, including Christianity. The sooner people stop hiding behind their crosses and open their eyes, the sooner we can all start being human.