Open Thread - Friday, June 14, 2019

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Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
- Oscar Wilde -

Heh.

Meh.

Bleh.

Happy funkin' flag day. Have a great weekend! The thread is OPEN.

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Raggedy Ann's picture

Oscar Wilde was a smart cookie!

Have a great, unpatriotic weekend, folks! Pleasantry

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

can be interpreted as either a mistake or an act of rebellion. The photos of politicians spewing half truth's with a backdrop of flags has gotten old. And raising the flag only partially (half mast) seems more prevalent than otherwise, starting in the junior bush years. Shame.

I just put the flag stamps upside down on the mail. Radical man!

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skod's picture

@QMS it seems that the flags have not been flown at full staff in years- what with all the mass shootings, the cop shootings, the shootings of cops, the other shootings, and the shootings of shooters in our endless wars. Whole lotta dyin' goin' on.

At this point, if I were to put up a flag pole (which I am not!), I would simply make it half-height and save the money.

And I would fly the flag upside down, not as an act of rebellion, but as a clear indicator of dire distress (which is the other "approved" reason for misdisplay)...

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@QMS

assistance?

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We are a nation whose Pledge of Allegiance, said daily by children in public schools, mentions the flag before it mentions "the republic for which it stands." (Oh, well, at least the Pledge got the "republic" part right, instead of usig "democracy" meaninglessly).

Not only that, but our national anthem, also part of the daily brainwashing of school children for twelve or thirteen impressionable years, is about a flag's surviving a battle, rather than about the human Americans who either survived or died in that same battle and their loved ones. The flag could easily be replaced, though not as readily as it could be today. The humans, not.

We're still singing "patriotically" about a battle fought nearly 205 years ago. Before the Civil War. Before both World Wars. Before all the awful military actions in which we involved ourselves unconstitutionally after World War II.

Something written by lawyer and "amateur poet" Francis Scott Key, mind you, fretting about a flag that managed to survive a single battle of the War of 1812. A battle that even students in West Point and Annapolis might never hear of, had Key's inane and overly wordy worship of one of many counterparts of the US flag not become the national anthem. stilted, pretentious rhymes, masquerading as poetry.

An un-singlable tune, too. A British tune, no less. Our national anthem borrowed a tune from the "oppressors" from which the relatively new nation had declared its independence less than forty years before Key's pretentious tome poem!

And folks, that was not even anywhere near the worst thing inflicted upon us by TWow and HCH:

The poem was set to the tune of a popular British song written by John Stafford Smith for the Anacreontic Society, a men's social club in London. "To Anacreon in Heaven" (or "The Anacreontic Song"), with various lyrics, was already popular in the United States. Set to Key's poem and renamed "The Star-Spangled Banner", it soon became a well-known U.S. patriotic song. With a range of 19 semitones, it is known for being very difficult to sing. Although the poem has four stanzas, only the first is commonly sung today.

"The Star-Spangled Banner" was recognized for official use by the United States Navy in 1889, and by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson in 1916, and was made the national anthem by a congressional resolution on March 3, 1931 (46 Stat. 1508, codified at 36 U.S.C. § 301), which was signed by President Herbert Hoover.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star-Spangled_Banner

See? The Great Depression should have occasioned another revolution. Instead, it gave us mindless jingoism as a national anthem.

Happy Flag Day (anyway)!

Which reminds me: What does it mean to you to love your country? I think my country is comprised of real estate that has some really gorgeous bits. I can admire them, as I admire any beauty. Additionally, various people, from politicians to poets, have attributed some wonderful ideals and principles to "my" country that are often AWOL in practice. I do love those, but am grieved that they are too often AWOL in practice. But, what really matters to me about my country is the people who live in it. Do I love them more than I love people who live between other lines on a map? I need to think hard about that.

Despite my cynical ramblings, have a good weekend everyone!

(Thank heaven she had to sing the French National Anthem and not ours:)
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM-E2H1ChJM]

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enhydra lutris's picture

@HenryAWallace
who allegedly sings it with the accent of the people of Marseilles. (https://youtu.be/SIxOl1EraXA) It wasn't originally written about or for the revolution, but that's what it came to symbolize & how it got its current name.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

@enhydra lutris

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enhydra lutris's picture

that became the brand name and logo for an insecticide, probably a horrible one. My enthusiasm for US "patriotic" holidays has been flagging since my teens and is now long extinct. No flags here, nor do I concur with the idea spouted by some or our "liberal" brethren that "we need to take the flag back." Let "them" keep it, a symbol of oppression, elitism, exclusion and terrorism throughout it's entire history with only a couple of brief interludes when we were forced by forces we created to do the right thing for a short while. It should be replaced by Goya's black period painting of Saturn eating his children.

OK rant off I guess, thanks for the OT and the music. I've especially loved that version of Politician at least since that boxed set first came out, I think that was the first time I heard it by them.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

TheOtherMaven's picture

is that it was a protest song - against recent laws forbidding the age-old practice of innkeepers also maintaining whores on the premises.

"He who will an alehouse keep must have three things in store:
A chamber and a feather bed, a chimney and a ---
Hey nonny nonny, hey nonny nonny, hey nonny nonny no!" (Collected by Thomas Ravenscroft in Melismata, 1611)

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

@TheOtherMaven @TheOtherMaven

Meanwhile, how could I have omitted that "folding the flag is taking care of the nayshin!"

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w2gyWE0M0k&list=RD_w2gyWE0M0k&start_rad...

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enhydra lutris's picture

@TheOtherMaven
available. Just love it.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

enhydra lutris's picture

@TheOtherMaven
some friends and I found several clips of "he would an alehouse keep", but with a different melody and sung as rounds, and none with the ssb melody. Just FWIW.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

TheOtherMaven's picture

@enhydra lutris

It illustrates the former status quo that the Anacreontists wanted to restore.

That was the point, not the tune. Diablo

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.