Sunday, September 10, 2006

Random Acts

On September 11, 2006, it will be the 5th anniversary of the bombings of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the Pennsylvania countryside. With that in mind, I plan to burn an American flag.

"What?!", you may well ask.

Indeed, I plan to burn a flag. Not just any flag, rather one that truly has come to symbolize the state of the nation: tattered, torn, divided.

It won't be hard to find one -- just look at the ones stuck on cars and trucks in the wake of the 2001 tragedy, and then forgotten. The once proud symbols of citizens' patriotism are now ignored rags in need of disposal. So, I say, let's burn them.

Now, before you start having visions of La Professora starting a flag barbeque, keep in mind that 'cremating' flags is a time-honored tradition for disposing of old, worn out flags. I have no plans to roast marshmellows over the flaming flags, but rather to show the respect the ragged remains didn't get from their "proud" owners.

But a hamburger afterwards won't go amiss.
Photo Credit: www.pbase.com/ markryan/2002_spring_sf

3 comments:

Becca said...

I have quickly learned to give wide berth to large SUVs on the freeway, baring their American flag decals. Apparently, the drivers are so concentrated on celebrating their patriotism they have forgotten how to use turn signals at high speeds.

Anonymous said...

From one of my favourite blogs, well worth a look, on the topic of 'citizenship' and why it's not being taught in schools anymore:

When we refuse to go to the trouble of voting or speaking out or writing a letter about the injustices or demanding that we have a fair and investigative media not owned by only six mega-conglomerates that use, without charge, the PUBLIC airwaves and depend upon that very government they are lapdogs to, to change laws and let their corporate interests super-flourish like never before, what do we expect? When we can't be bothered because of the time and effort it takes to show up, the inconvenience of it all, the difficulty of access to polling places ("Your polling place is on Mars, behind a donut shop in the basement of a school, good luck" -Kathleen Madigan) and given all we need to do to have a decent life, who can blame anyone for saying, "I just can't do it now, I'm too busy, someone else will do it"? You are someone else. To borrow the slogan from Nike, "Just Do It" No one of us can do this alone without help, that's what citizenship is; a community of people coming together to better the lives of all its members.

Zephyr Teachout, founder of The Sunlight Foundation, says it very succinctly, "If we don't have a culture of citizenship, we don't have a Democracy, it's that fundamental."


http://deepconfusion.blogspot.com/2006/09/citizenship-and-critical-thought.html#links

La Professora said...

It is not clear if the above comment is a rant against what I wrote or an "attagirl", but I'm for free speech thus it was left unmoderated.