i wrote this in 1998. i was 18. yes, i am a youngin’. bite me.

anyway. i thought it was apropos to some other stuff i have written lately about our war…

In today?s society, there is little room, if any at all, for the ?love your country? mentality of the late 1940′s/early 1050′s. Or the ?protest to keep your country? of the 1960′s. Today it is almost a ?every man for himself?, fighting to keep rights our forefathers promised us, and that our current ?fathers? try to take away.

People used to drop everything at the fall of a pin to go help their country in a time of crisis, be it war, political outbreak, or something more local. Women went to work so the men could go to die, and the men went to die out of a sense of duty, of patriotism to a country that was killing them for nothing.

Today people don’t get up and go quite as easily. We have a cry of war, people are outraged. It isn’t sexy anymore, it isn’t romantic, it?s nothing more than ugly, a way to tear families apart, to destroy lives.

Jello Biafra wrote ?The Pledge of Defiance,? a spoof on the Pledge of Allegiance. He clearly shows his views on patriotism, on this country. He related our flag to the Nazi swastika, and in other things he has written, called it the national deity. He grew up in the middle of the Vietnam war, in grade school, where they said the pledge everyday and supported the troops, and at the local college, everyday, kids were protesting the very war he was being forced to support.

The pledge was introduced to this country during world war one, as a way to basically force patriotism onto young children. It was a way to make them love their country, because under it all, everyone knew what was truly going on, and knew how ugly this country can be. We ride to the rescue of every other country in the world, yet we rarely ride to our own rescue. There is something to be said about that, when the parents take better care of the relatives than their own children.

Today we are hassling our president over something that every president for the past 200 years has done. He had an affair, just like most of them probably did. Perhaps I shouldn’t say that. Many of them? It simply was a social faux-pas to say, let alone publish such a thing in previous years. This is the first time that we have come out ahead of budget, not below, and instead of congratulating that, we are condemning for something that most men and women across America see everyday anyway.

This country no longer has any values, other than the value of helping everyone else. Our constitutional rights are being taken away, our freedoms, which men and women have fought so hard to get and keep, are being taken away. Yes, even our sense of pride to have gotten this far, to have created these united states, is diminishing and fading underneath all the red, white and blue blanketing that is being used to cover the scrapes and cracks in the system like a coverslip is used to cover the faded, worn fabric on an old chair. We have come to spend more time covering-up, making excuses, than we do showing our faces, our strength to act as one. We fought for those freedoms, and yes, we are the freest country in the world to date, but we are the most restricted within those freedoms. Our amendments allow us the right to free speech, freedom of religion, freedom to vote, but we really don’t have any of those anymore, if we ever did. If we speak our minds in a public place, all too often we get carted off and silenced. If we choose our religion and someone doesn’t like it, they try to convert us. Why, you might ask yourself, then aren’t they taken off and silenced, if they are preaching religion in the streets, pushing themselves on others to ?save their souls? if perhaps that other person doesn’t want their soul saved or perhaps they don’t want to be a [fill in the religion]. We vote, but our votes mean nothing.They show the popularity of the man, but the senate and house elect the man to office. And why isn’t it a woman? Or a child? Or a black-Italian,
Jewish, homosexual? Or an Indian, Muslim woman? Or any combination therein? They say we are a melting pot, where we all come together and combine, so why isn’t our president?

Yes, they say we are free, they say we are patriots, but we are neither. Most of us are simply content, and while we have nothing to say about this country while we are here, we often say nothing bad while abroad. We are a baby in the eyes of the rest of the world. Rome has been standing for centuries, as well as Greece, Egypt, France, Spain. We are the child of the world, yet we go riding off to battle to save all the others. Does this mean that someday we shall be the world? Like a child taking care of it?s sick parents? Eventually they die and the child takes over. I don’t think that would be for the best, but then, if we are only 200, and most children don’t take over until they are well past their 50′s, here?s hoping it is a long long time before this country get rule. I would hate to see what might happen. Just think, world-wide patriotism. One flag, one prayer, one religion, one ?president?. One mind set. No more freedom. Just being told what to do. Then, there is the good side of that.

No more war.

? 1998 aZxure