Post #394,019
9/2/14 2:24:40 PM
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This is why conservative old white males need to be
kicked out of government positions:
During a city council meeting in Florida, the mayor and chief of police kicked an atheist out of the room for refusing to stand during prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance.
As the all middle age white male city council of Winter Garden, Florida stood to open a Thursday meeting with an unconstitutional Christian prayer and recite the Pledge of Allegiance featuring the unconstitutional words “under God,” an atheist member of the community refused to do so, and his rights were violated for it.
Mayor John Rees tried to force 51-year-old Joseph Richardson to stand during the meeting, because it’s somehow “just not fair to our troops and people overseas” to exercise a right to free speech and religion that our soldiers fight for Americans to have in the first place.
After Richardson declined, Commissioner Bobby Olszewski delivered an ironic prayer in which he thanked God “for allowing us to be in a country where we’re free to believe and think and pray,” even as the mayor was taking that freedom away from Richardson at that moment. Then Rees further pestered Richardson by trying to force him to stand for the pledge.
“Now, sir, please stand while we do the pledge. You don’t have to say it, but please stand,” Rees said. Richardson refused once again, as is his right.
Richardson refused to stand for Christian prayer because he is an atheist and didn’t want to recite the Pledge because it includes the words “under God.” Of course, this meant the mayor had to throw a hissy fit and abuse his power. He told Richardson to stand or leave and sent his top thug, Police Chief George Brennan, to get in Richardson’s face to intimidate him.
“Chief, ask him to either stand or please escort him out till we get through the pledge,” Rees ordered.
The chief stood in front of Richardson and gave him two choices.
“What do you want to do?” Brennan demanded as the camera rolled. “Do you want to stand or leave?”
At that point, Richardson left. After all, the way police have been acting lately, he didn’t want to be tased, shot, or beat to death for noncompliance.
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/08/30/florida-mayor-forces-atheist-to-leave-public-meeting-for-not-standing-during-prayer-or-pledge-of-allegiance-video/
Satan (impatiently) to Newcomer: The trouble with you Chicago people is, that you think you are the best people down here; whereas you are merely the most numerous.
- - - Mark Twain, 'Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar' 1897
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Post #394,131
9/5/14 1:49:46 PM
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The fucking pledge of fucking allegiance
I am proud to say that by age seven, in 1959, I concluded that this daily recitation was bullshit. I stood; I placed my hand in the approved position (I was physically small; authority was in all particulars large) and lip-synched when I thought myself observed, but I have not uttered the words of the pledge aloud since Eisenhower was president. Just last week at BDS (which is now so far up the ass of Homeland Security that it might as well...never mind) I was required to attend an event that involved an excruciating performance of our dreadful national anthem (mmoffitt and I disagree on many issues, but I suspect we're of one mind regarding the musical superiority of the old USSR anthem over F.S. Key's clumsy adaptation of "To Anacreon In Heaven") followed by the Pledge. I positioned myself discreetly behind a marble column for the duration of these utterances, which are now not merely meaningless but actually counterfactual. "Liberty and justice for all?" Fuck that. As well sing the praises of Somalia, "Land of prosperity, stability, peace and tolerance."
cordially,
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Post #394,160
9/6/14 1:32:49 AM
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Curse you! Mr. Memory ..tryin to roll back towards proto-Murica
and before ... a tyke could possibly fathom the duplicities all waiting to be discovered? That demands the peeling-off of layers of incredulity, each earned by an Aha! thus sticky as epoxy; seems akin to having noticed? that hoary (date! even) ... when one first realized that, adults frequently lie to you! (This is always prior to the subtler realization (also) of lying by omission, maybe the most frequent form.) Working back, then ... I must have been nearer eight, at a school-away-from-home: when that [coerced-oath therefore invalid-on-its-face] was presented me, in concert with cohorts. Recall grokking 'allegiance' (but thought that was a people-thing, not a thing-thing? flag=thing. Confused from the first!) Thus, having 0 experience of "oaths" and their Gotchas, I learned the *drill (after all it was a military school, eh?) so: part of the secret-handsignals, like stiff-hand-to-forehead. Guess you were prescient re metaphors and their premeditated misuse. Don't think nascent curmudgeonhood was noticed to have set-in the DNA until maybe a few years before United States tests first hydrogen bomb. But, as callow yout, had little political ken as to the deeper causes of such madness (though I was quite aware it Was madness.) This event solidified previous intimations of the plight of sorting-out (more) lies in an existence clearly soon to become ... tenuous? (Got That one Right) though I'd expected that humans would Face what must be done to these monstrosities, shortly.. how Wrong can you be? * I too moved mouth dutifully; can state that the recitation never raised an iota of er, satisfiction?
The prevailing word-fog of the whole McCarthy clusterfuck/its palpable effect on speech, duplicity (much more than in tykehood!) was connecting neurons tacitly, as evidence built. But those keen-distractions of chemistry and such delayed any political savvy for a shameful interval. We each have our skeletons.
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Post #394,135
9/5/14 2:20:25 PM
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My elderly aunties
Invite me to share on the Book of Face patriotic graphics bearing the sentiment "I will never apologize for saying God Bless America." I'm thinking, isn't this like them saying "I will never apologize for saying grace at a dinner attended exclusively by our devoutly Catholic family?" I mean, who is it, exactly, that they think is going to demand this apology? Oh, wait: it's some senior citizens who've been saving their saliva for the forty or fifty years since they last apocryphally spit upon Our Brave Boys inbound from Vietnam. And I'm thinking also, the likelihood of my being called upon to apologize for uttering that patriotic bromide is approximately equal to the chances of someone calling me out for desecrating Mt. Everest of the occasion of my taking a whiz from its summit. I've never said "God bless America" in a conversational tone (left off singing it back in the day—see above), and don't imagine I ever will.
unpatriotically,
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Post #394,145
9/5/14 6:47:01 PM
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Re: My elderly aunties
The aunties do have that blind spot but are otherwise paragons of materteral virtue. That is why we refrain from admonishing them on the book of face, right?
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Post #394,161
9/6/14 2:07:52 AM
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That particular anthem may be the most incisive summary ever,
of the American zeitgeist (then, via Kate Smith) and now, via the Murican one (via that lengthy contemporary list.) Clearly Irving Berlin was more conversant with American-psyches than any trainer of Psychologists; his ken magnified by his vast musical talent would, I think dwarf Gōbbels' mere word-salad talents by an order of magnitude. The vignette is complete: it becomes the only-anthem-you-need for going the whole-hog (including the postage) into the fantasy-Murica today inhabited by (that list.) It's bulletproof, completely impervious to any rebuttal, correction, (wry-aside) or full-on frontal attack. It's Shrub-writ-Large: You're WIth US(A) or You're against US(A)
My (other) gramma had a 78 of this: hand-crank Victrola. I preferred her When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain, thankyouverymuch.
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