I have never been to teacher school, so I really have no idea what all they learn in there. I had long assumed, however, that one of the very first lessons, it would be that, once in the classroom, the teacher, s/he could not force, the public-school tots and tykes, to recite the pledge of allegiance. Because the United States Supreme Court, it had said so. And unequivocally. And way back in 1943. In West Virginia v. Barnette. And with some pretty ringing language, too.

To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous instead of a compulsory routine is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds. We can have intellectual individualism and the rich cultural diversities that we owe to exceptional minds only at the price of occasional eccentricity and abnormal attitudes. When they are so harmless to others or to the State as those we deal with here, the price is not too great. But freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.

We think the action of the local authorities in compelling the flag salute and pledge transcends constitutional limitations on their power and invades the sphere of intellect and spirit which it is the purpose of the First Amendment to our Constitution to reserve from all official control.

But I guess that just isn't in the lesson plan, West Virginia v. Barnette, there in the teaching schools. Or, if it is, the teachers, when they come out of the schools, they decide they Just Don't Care. Because, just about every day now, there comes some tube, with some news in it, about some teacher, somewhere, yanking a tot out of a chair, or heaving a tyke right out of the school, because the child, as is his or her perfect right, declines to stand and chant gibberish to a piece of cloth.

In California, a young Indian woman, she doesn't stand for the pledge, because it is all about the white people who stole her land.

[Leilani] Thomas, who is Native American, said she has been sitting out the pledge since she was a second grader.

"It's the reason, because of the history that happened here on my land, my people's land," Thomas said. "I go by that and I don't agree with it. So I'm not going to stand for the people who did this to my people."

Earlier this month, when Thomas received her first report card, she noted she had been docked two points for failing to mumble malarkey to the textile. The teacher informed Thomas: "If you really, really have an argument and feel so strongly about, then I need to see it written out. Like: why? Why? Because here's the thing—those people, they're not alive anymore, your ancestors."

Oh. Okay.

In Illinois, Shemar Turner, he doesn't want to verbally revere the cloth, either.

An outspoken sophomore who lives in Merrionette Park, Shemar sat through the Pledge of Allegiance during his entire freshman year at Eisenhower without issue, simply because he didn't feel like standing up, he said.

This school year, however, the act took on a new significance for him after he began watching videos of police violence against blacks that popped up on his social media feed.

"I was like, 'No, I'm not going to stand up,' so I didn't," said Shemar.

When Shemar's teacher asked why he wasn't standing, he replied, "America sucks."

The young man's teacher tried to yank him out of his seat, forcing him to stand, and then informed the entire class that anyone who would not fellate the fabric would be written up for Discipline.

The teacher said the non-pledger was "disrespecting the military." This teacher, she apparently has a brain-hole, where the Barnette decision is supposed to be. Because that opinion, it was announced in 1943. When millions of the Americans, they were in the military, fighting two rather large wars, and all over the world. Yet, the members of the nation's high court, they did not sob and moan and roll in agony on the floor, ululating that all those soldiers and sailors, they would somehow suddenly die in their footsteps, if some child back home, eschewed prattling the pledge.

In New Orleans, two students have filed complaints with the ACLU, asserting "they were told they would be punished for sitting during the Pledge of Allegiance." Florida schools, they are forcing students to stand, during the pledge. And. So it goes. On and on and on and on . . . .

There in the law, there are what are called "settled" questions. This means that all the arguments have been made, and heard, and considered, and a decision has been reached, one way or the other, a decision that is final, and without any real wriggle-room.

For instance, The Hairball, and no matter how much he would really like to, he cannot own The Kenyan, as a slave. That, is a "settled question." Slavery. Or, as Joe Arpaio is discovering, you cannot, even if you are a state official, and when you receive an order from a federal judge, just say "fuck you," and act in direct contradiction, of said order.

This Barnette business, with the pledge: that, too, is supposed to be, one of those "settled," questions.

But, obviously, in Real Life, it is anything but.

And so. Now. I am, really, wondering. If any legal question, among the Americans, is, actually, truly, "settled," at all. It may very well be, that when The Hairball, he becomes the president, we will soon see him, there on the television, smiling, and smirking, as he leads The Kenyan around, with a choke-chain, 'round The Kenyan's neck: The Kenyan, now The Hairball's, actual, property. In The Hairball's. Brave. New. World.

The story of Barnette, while we are still free to tell it, it is kinda interesting.

It begins with the Germans, behaving badly. In the 1930s, the Germans, they started arresting, and heaving into the concentration camps, Jehovah's Witnesses, who declined to salute the ol' swastika.

The Witnesses, they eschew flag-saluting, because, in their particular divination of the words in the Yahweh book, they interpret Exodus 20:4-5—"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them."—to mean they are not permitted, and by Yahweh hisself, to salute any national flag.

The American Jehovah's, they'd previously been kinda lax, in heeding this, of Yahweh's commands. But, as their German sisters and brothers, they were marched first into the pokey, and then disappeared into the camps, they decided to Get Firm. About not saluting the flag. Though it be. An American one.

Too many among the Americans, they then proceeded, to lose their shit. Jehovah's children, who did not flog the ol' flob for the flag, they were expelled from the schools, theatened with internment in the Reformatories. Their parents, they were prosecuted, for deliberately cultivating Delinquents. Then, in 1940, the case of Minersville School District v. Gobitis, it reached the United States Supreme Court. There, the high court, it ruled that Jehovah's children, they could be made to pledge to the flag, even though, to these children, and their parents, this, it, was Against, God.

But three of the justices who had voted in the majority for Gobitis—Frank Murphy, William O. Douglas, and Hugo Black—they started getting squirmy, there in their seats. They started thinking, that, maybe, they may have voted, Wrong. All three men—appointed as "liberals"—they had, at the time of the Gobitis case, been quite new to the court, and, in the Gobitis decision, had pretty much unthinkingly followed the lead of Felix Frankfurter, the author of the Gobitis opinion, and who was universally regarded, by everybody, at the time, as the "liberal lion," of the Supreme Court.

But, as we all know, and as we all see, all and every day, and into all of every night, what is "liberal" and what is not, this is ever-shifting. And, clearly, by the time of Gobitis, "liberal," it had left, Felix Frankfurter, behind.

When Barnette reached the high court, three years after Gobitis, Wiley Rutledge, he was now sitting up there on the high bench—Rutledge a complete and total wild man, whom Douglas, some years on, when Douglas was rolling through four separate impeachment attempts, all on the grounds that Douglas was, basically, an unrepentant and utterly uncontrolled anarchist and libertine; well, Rutledge, Douglas admiringly averred, made him, Douglas, look like Edmund Burke—and also Robert Jackson, a man with an astute and far-seeing appreciation for the perils of all authoritarianisms, all orthodoxies: Jackson would, soon after Barnette, leave the high court for a time, to serve as chief prosecutor, at the Nuremberg trials.

So. Barnette reversed Gobitis. Jackson wrote the majority opinion. Joined by Rutledge. And Murphy, Douglas, and Black, who switched their Gobitis votes. And Harlan Stone, who had been the lone dissenter, in Gobitis.

Frankfurter, he entered frenzy. He never forgave Murphy, Douglas, and Black—for their "betrayal"—and, increasingly, he became, but, a crank. By the time Frankfurter finally retired, in 1962, this former "liberal lion," he was regarded as just about as fradulent, and old and in the way, as Piltdown Man. He had become like a prune-faced buggy whip. In the age. Of the little red. Corvette.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hr7KprOVySo]

Because. And as they truly say. Time. Waits. For no one.

Except, maybe, Keith Richards.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlaVmEZx9_I]

Right. And. Where. Now. Exactly. In all this fucked-up word morass. Am I?

Right. Got it. Flags. Pledges.

They are all stupid and boring, and they all need, to go away.

Every country, it has a flag; all of the countries, they have national anthems; all of them, have some sort of pledge: all, then, are completely meaningless.

Just some rote bullshit, to erase through repetition your brain, and convince you, when time comes, to spill your life out, onto the ground, for some dirt patch, you just happened to be born onto.

No nation, ever, Real. Just a section of dirt, made "real," by force, by coercion, by utter nutter human group-agreement.

Madness.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU7_G2grxJE]

Jackson, he knew it all, and always was, all bullshit—all the pledges, all the flags, all the nations, all about enforcing orthodoxy—when, in Barnette, he wrote this:

Symbolism is a primitive but effective way of communicating ideas. The use of an emblem or flag to symbolize some system, idea, institution, or personality, is a short cut from mind to mind. Causes and nations, political parties, lodges and ecclesiastical groups seek to knit the loyalty of their followings to a flag or banner, a color or design. The State announces rank, function, and authority through crowns and maces, uniforms and black robes; the church speaks through the Cross, the Crucifix, the altar and shrine, and clerical reiment. Symbols of State often convey political ideas just as religious symbols come to convey theological ones. Associated with many of these symbols are appropriate gestures of acceptance or respect: a salute, a bowed or bared head, a bended knee. A person gets from a symbol the meaning he puts into it, and what is one man's comfort and inspiration is another's jest and scorn.

It's all, then, theater. And I am here, in direct contravention of the old and in the way Piltdown Man Oliver Wendell Holmes' opinion in Schenck v. United States, to shout "theatre!", in a crowded fire.

My daughter, she tried, not saying the pledge, in the public school.

But the students, and the teachers, they made her, cry.

They will. Never. Be forgiven. The Americans. For that.

And the reason the little tots and tykes in the photo up-top in this piece, they are sieg-heiling, the American flag?

That's because, that's how, the Americans, they used to salute, their flag.

Till they got a little squirmy. That their salute. It was the same. As that, of those, who were, over there in Germany, pledging, all their fealty, to the Schicklgruber.

And so, the Americans, they changed it. Their salute. To the hand. Over. The heart.

We interrupt this program for this special music bulletin.

Yesterday, el, he had an open thread, in praise of pirates.

I couldn't, then, reasonably post the three tunes below. Because although they certainly concern sailing, they are not, technically, of pirates.

But, I like them.

So, I am, now, posting them, here.

If you do not like them: sue me.

And, know that my assets, they are: animals, books, brain-bubbles.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfuiS-v2Lho]

/

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHHjqxaYDd8]

/

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWX-4eDxdDs]

Sunday, I was out on the front porch. I was trying, to empty my mind, of all of the law.

Because I'd worked much of the weekend, crafting a real hand-wringer of a mitigation statement, for a client, we had a good chance, of keeping out, of the prison.

But then, shortly before I went out to the porch, I had been informed, by a screaming and foaming lawyer, that, while awaiting sentencing on the one case—the one I was working on—the client, he had been popped by the cops, on a new case. For building bombs.

Building bombs. This is all the rage, now. The whole world. Over.

So I am sitting out on the porch, and suddenly this huge vulture, it starts zooming, five feet above my side lawn. It is truly, impressively, enormous. It is almost as big as, like, an airplane.

I have no idea. Why they make vultures. This big. Maybe. In case. They need to drag off. Like, a bear.

I can hear, very loudly, the air beating through its wings, as it makes the turns, to continue, to swoop, fly, right over, my yard.

I have never been even remotely this close to a vulture. Except that time I stopped to try to help the one hit by a car. Crestfallen, drooping, pained, panting. But I am not going to talk, or even think, about that.

There is no reason, for this flapping beast, to be doing, this thing, over my yard. Over, and over, and over, again. Because there is nothing dead, in my yard. True, I buried H. G. Wells and George Orwell, out there, when they expired, while at my house, watching a Republican debate. But that was many months ago: they have long since rotted; no vulture, could possibly, smell, the remains, of the traces, after all this time, of the tatters, of their corporeal, containers.

And then I remember, that, the night before, I, myself, was feeling, peculiarly, poorly.

Maybe, I then figured, this is a vulture who somehow went into a time machine, and thus got here a couple days early, a couple days before I actually die, out there, on the lawn. That: would explain it.

I am starting to think, that this bird, it is a really bad Omen. That I am nearing. My last breaths.

Then, my friend drives up. And the vulture, it swoops right over her car. Several times. And I am wondering, now, if vultures, they can be rabid.

I do not want to have to try to contend with a rabid vulture, if it attempts to attack my friend, as she gets out of her car.

Maybe, I fervently hope, she will stay in her car.

But no. She is opening, the car door.

I look around me. There are no weapons. Except, like, a weedeater.

But I do not want. To grapple with a rabid vulture. With a weedeater. Because. Then. I will get. In the newspaper.

My friend, she gets out of the car, and walks, without any vulture severing her neck, or knocking her to the ground, onto the porch.

There, she renders her Judgement.

The vulture, she explains, is some kind of noob, who doesn't know what it is, to be a vulture yet. That is why no other vultures, are circling around: usually, she points out, vultures, they circle in groups, kinda like human musicians. Vultures are, basically, Gary Lewis & The Playboys. Except. They eat dead shit. Rather. Than sing it.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeuYdkxS7DA]

The vulture, my friend said, it is a dork. A dork vulture. And it is, fer sure, No Danger.

She said that, the really essential thing, was to get it off the property, and before Monday, when the lube boys would go to work, down the block. Because the lube boys, they are stupid boys, and, thus, they would pick, on the dork, vulture.

Monday, a lawyer awakened me out of a deep Medicine sleep. In which I was dreaming I was at a circus/carnival—on a first pass I would be too timid to participate in the acts, and, on the second pass, the acts, they were no longer there—and he screamed, at top volume, down my earhole, at 6:00 a.m., before even the dawn-cat awakens, demanding I amend the mitigation statement, to, and still, request probation, for the bomb guy.

I tell him that he is quite definitely suffering a serious relapse: he had already secured a sweet deal for the guy, rolling up, literally, eight cases, into a grant of probation, but then the guy, had gone to the bombs, and, so, there was, simply, now, no hope.

The lawyer, he seizured, that there is always hope, and my job, was to find it.

I tried to explain to him that I was dead, that the vulture, it had come through the time machine, and had been circling all over my lawn, and that, in any minute, I would be lying there, forever breathless, out on the lawn, croaked, vulture food, rotting meat. But the lawyer, he said he didn't care, he needed me to work on the thing, and until the very moment, I became expired.

I went back out on the porch. There was no vulture there. The squirrels and scrub jays and woodpeckers and starlings were about, though. And, across the street, in the oak lot, strolled the crows.

They do not have arrests, and trials, and prisons. In the crows.

Humans. They are so devolved. In so many ways.

I stopped. Thinking. About the humans.

And then, I had an idea. About an argument. For the bomber.

So. I came in here. To this computer. And worked on it.

Because. That's what. You do. If. You are a human. And another human. Is in pain.

Whether s/he is not saluting a flag. Or looking into the prison.

If you are a human. And you are in a place. Where. Maybe. You can help. That human. In pain. Then. That's. What. You. Do.

Because. That's what you do.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOg8pY9G1AI]

how would you feel
if the world was falling apart all around you
pieces of the sky were falling
in your neighbors yard
but not on you

wouldn't you feel
just a little bit funny

think maybe

there's something
you oughta do