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,

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?

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