The Cult of the Flag

pa·tri·ot·ism

   [pey-tree-uh-tiz-uhm] noun

devoted love, support, and defense of one's country; national loyalty.

Beware, Americans, of becoming a member of the Cult of the Flag.

The US government has brainwashed the ignorant of America to justify all manner of atrocities by veiling those sins in a cloak of "patriotism".  People have not only stood by while we have committed grievous acts, they have cheered resoundingly as citizens of other countries are devastated and killed by us.  Leaders have manipulated the masses through patriot propaganda to support a corrupt government, validate unfair foreign policy and agree to the mistreatment of countless citizens of our own country.

• 1947: After the attack on Pearl Harbor, over 110,00 innocent Americans of Japanese descent were rounded up and placed in internment camps.  62% of those people were American citizens, but the vile act was justified in Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt because "the successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national  defense material, national defense premises, and national defense utilities."  Few Americans protested, because they had been convinced that it was necessary to keep the country safe from traitors and espionage.
• 1950:  Senator Joseph McCarthy, an anti-Communist zealot, spent his 10 year career as a senator accusing innocent Americans of Communist ties.  Despite the fact that the cases were unproven, careers were destroyed, people were blacklist and families were shattered.  One vocal opponent, Senator Millard Tydings, was said to have committed "the most brazen whitewash of treasonable conspiracy in our history."
• 2001:  After the 9/11 attacks, the war drums began to pound furiously.  According to President George Bush, "You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror."  It didn't matter that this war would kill, to date, nearly 1.5 million men, women and children.  All good patriots had to support the war, support our troops and support our blood-thirsty quest for control over the Middle East's oil supply  vengeance.  Flags waved furiously across the United States, with every flat surface belonging to good Americans plastered with a red-white-and-blue decal.
• Vietnam, Korea, Grenada, Lebanon, Somalia, the former Yugoslavia, Cuba, South America:  pick a destination on the globe and we've been told that it is our civic duty as Americans to blow it up.
• The Present: Over the past 10 years many laws have been passed that negate freedom in the name of Americanism.  The unPatriot Act, the establishment of the TSA, the NDAA, the American Expatriation Act, the anti-protest Trespass Bill - all of these have combined to make a mockery of the Constitutional principles that our country was founded on.  They've been presented in a way that an unquestioning general populace can feel snug and secure against domestic and foreign threats, when in fact the real threat to America is within the buildings of Washington DC.

Loving one's country doesn't mean blindly accepting the actions of the leaders.  When the leaders of the country abandon the Constitution, human conscience and morality, the act of a true Patriot is to question that and question it loudly.

The US government knows that the Cult of the Flag is the most powerful tool in the brainwashing arsenal.  By propagandizing through the special-interest-owned media, they intend to convince every American that it is his or her patriotic duty to support the President, right or wrong.  They intend to distribute the red-white-and-blue Kool-aid to persuade us to ignore our values and morals and blindly wave the flag.

Our patriotic duty is not to the government.  The act of a patriot is to question the acts of the government and to not be diverted from that call for accountability by a war-mongering, go-team rhetoric.  Our duty is to think critically and dissent when necessary.  You can love your country without loving your government.  We must be willing to defend our country from within, and that means risking discomfort, persecution and potentially, our lives.

BE A REAL PATRIOT.

LEARN.

QUESTION.

SPEAK UP.

CAMPAIGN.

MAKE A SCENE.

RESIST.

"You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality.  Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it."

~  Malcolm X

(Credits: NinaO)