There's an American flag on my mantle.
It's been there since I moved into my apartment.
It's safety-pinned to the wall, pointed backwards, with a plastic sign tacked over it reading "Not An Entrance, Not An Exit", and a sticker on the field of stars reading "I Doubt It!".
The flag is stolen.
It was taken from the front lawn of an individual who heads up a "home church" (I won't divulge the name) that, over the years, has engaged in various campaigns of bigotry and ignorance in my home town.
When I was in high school, they used to park a truck across the street, plastered with billboards reading "HOMOSEXUALITY IS A SIN!", pictures of men kissing, and a bunch of out-of-context quotes from the Bible.
The members of the campus Bible study group were some of the most vociferous opponents of this "church", and would argue chapter and verse with the church's leader every day they showed up.
The "church" was banned from their activities after a gay student got beat up outside of their "truth truck" at another high school in my district.
Their next campaign was against Islam. They campaigned against a local bond measure for school funding, on the grounds that the district's textbooks weren't anti-Islam enough, and thus, the school shouldn't recieve funding for repairing their facilities.
They lost.
When I moved from the Sierra Nevada Foothills to Sacramento for college, they followed me. They set up a campus organization at my school called "The Christian Civilization Club". They set up a booth where they spewed vile, ugly hate at everyone who bothered to listen to them, proclaiming loudly how "opressed" Christians are, and how all of the college professors were making a concerted effort to asassinate the character of Jesus, or whatever.
They lost their charter after they put up a banner reading "Muhammed Was A Pedophile" during some kind of anti-Islam week organizaed by some troglodyte dipshit somewhere. They were permanently banned from campus for almost inciting a riot.
After that episode, they managed to take over the student government.
They exploited student apathy and recruited an army of voters from nearby Russian, Romanian, and Slavic churches in the area. Hundreds of people signed up for one class late in the semester, got a student ID, and voted.
Their latest project is trying to get Student Council to pass a resolution that "bans gay marriage" at the college. Like most of the shit these idiots do, it's meaningless in practice. They just want the gratification of having been highly effective douchebags.
So, coming back to the beginning- the flag on my mantle.
Some friends of mine live in the same area as this guy. We found his house, and we stole his American flag. We stole it because people like him, people like Sarah Palin, people like the troglodytes shouting "KILL HIM!" at her rallies, or ranting loudly about how Obama kills babies with his bare hands-- they don't deserve to wave the flag. Period.
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They are anti-American, in the truest sense of the phrase. They are anti-American because they would deny me my religious freedom if they had the chance.
They would welcome an open war against not just terrorism, not just radical, political Islam, but Islam itself.
They are working right now to strip likely millions of gay and lesbian Californians their hard-won right to marry.
They are working right now to put one of their own into office. Someone who doesn't believe in the America that I was brought up to love.
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I said the flag is flying backwards. There wasn't any intended symbolism, but my roommate pointed out that the Navy displays the flag that way to symbolize moving forward.
I like that metaphor.
I said the flag was displayed over my mantle. That was because originally, my friends and I were going to burn it. Instead, we decided to wait.
The deal was that we would fly the flag so long as Obama was still in the running for President. If he got knocked off, we'd burn it.
The flag is still there. But there's a book of matches nearby, just in case.
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I always thought that if we burned it, it would be a righteous act of rebellion, a big old "fuck you" to the usual leftist whipping posts- low info voters, Fox News, Texans, etc. But that's not really fair.
We know our enemy well, and they're running the same goddamn strategy they always do.
Do I want to back to Nevada next weekend? Fuck no. The last time I was there, I got chased down by a bunch of angry dogs. Some shrill woman shouted at my girlfriend until she was in tears about how she's young and stupid and doesn't understand "the danger facing America". Some mouth-breathing idiot proclaimed loudly that she won't vote for a Muslim, and she doesn't think that "we ought to have a Black in the White House".
But I'm going to go. Because if I don't want to save this country as much as these idiots are bent on destroying it, it's going to be me that doesn't deserve to fly the flag.
Don't get complacent. The polls are 100% meaningless. Like all elections, this is purely and simply a ground game. The only thing that matters is GOTV, and the only way we lose is if we don't want it bad enough.
I want that flag to be there on November 5th, and if you love America as much as I do, you'll join me.