Truth be told, I am a patriotic sap. I love this country and that may be why I have been so outraged by Jack Abramoff, Newt Gingrich, George W. Bush and their vast Right Wing Conspiracy of incompetence, sleaze, graft and shame. It may be why most of my Diaries on Daily Kos since 2004 have been tracking this or that aspect of the Republican Culture of Corruption.
I view these weasels as the worst kind of traitors to America. They are grifters who would sell you—or anybody else—out for another dollar or another moment of power.
I feel as if I have been at war with them years and years. At times it has been hard to separate them and their capture of the government of the United States of America from the Country I love. And yet, I have never let them take that love of America away from me. I kept hope alive.
Now that hope has been renewed—we have a new President and the shame that has befouled our Nation’s honor will soon be removed. I woke up today and decided that for the first time in almost seven years I could once again fly Our Flag.
To the jump...
I love to fly the Flag. I like the way it looks against a blue sky. I like what it means and what—it the best sense of the phrase—what it stands for.
The trouble for me is that over the last seven years Our Flag—like most symbols of Our Nation—has been captured and perverted by a gang of incompetent thugs. Instead of honor they tried to make it stand for shame. Instead of courage they tried to make it stand for cowardice. Instead of bravery they tried to make it stand for torture. They used the symbols of patriotism to disguise and protect their capture of our Nation and their intentional attack on our honor, values and ideals. This perversion of what is best about America has led me to view these Republican Neo-Conservative bunko artists with deep contempt. When we need to appeal to the better angels of our nature they only offer us our fears and demons.
From the moment Bush took power in a Supreme Court assisted coup I felt our Nation was in some jeopardy. Things looked bleak, but there was some hope. In response to Bush’s frontal attack on the environment, Jim Jeffords became an Independent and caucused with the Democrats. That gave us the Senate. Then Bush blocked all research into stem cells and put all of his foreign policy focus on building a missile defense shield. It was idiotic and folks seemed to be catching on to his game. By the beginning of September 2001, it looked like we would have them playing defense in the 2002 midterms. Then came 9-11.
At the time, I lived on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. My front porch looked out on the Chesapeake Bay. I was a habitual Flag flyer. If I was home, I was flying my flag. Like many I flew it on 9-11 and then I decided to keep flying it until the recovery effort at Ground Zero was completed. Months went by. The Flag was worn and frayed by the elements. One war was started and quickly forgotten in the mad rush to another. The sacred ground on lower Manhattan was quickly forgotten by Bush and the Republicans as a place and a community in need of healing and rebuilding. By 2002 9-11 was only a prop, a phrase and yet another symbol of America that these bastards would manipulate for graft and power.
At some point between 9-11 and the start of the Iraq War the American Flag on my porch had become as frayed and tattered as our Constitution and Nation under the misrule of George W. Bush and his Party of Corruptionists. With sadness and quite a bit of anger I properly retired that old Flag. I haven’t been able to fly another one—that is until today.
This morning I woke up and it was a lovely fall day in Baltimore. It was also the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Ninety years ago on this day WWI came to an end and today this event was remembered around the globe.
Here in America, 11-11 has morphed into a Holiday to honor all of our Veterans and not just the end of WWI. It joins Memorial Day as a second American Holiday to honor those who have fought to protect our rights, our values and yes, our freedoms. 11-11 is also the Feast Day of St. Martin of Tours a Saint who does double duty as the patron Saint of both soldiers and pacifists. It is not surprising that a day to remember the end of a War and our Veterans would fall on his Feast Day.
During the last seven years these Holidays have been used by Bush and his supporters as just more props and backdrops to continue their cynical attack on the principles and values of America in their mad pursuit of power and profit.
It was great to wake up on this 11-11 and realize that these bastards are on their way out.
I decided that today, after seven years, I would go out and buy a new American Flag that I could once again fly with hope and pride. So, that is what I did:
Later in the day, I was driving to pick my daughter up from school when I caught a few moments of a certain "Big Fat Idiot" on the AM radio. He was whining to his followers that Elections Have Consequences. It was sweet. I liked this part:
So here, folks, is the reality. Legislatively, whatever Obama and Reid and Pelosi unite on and want to do, we can't stop. Not legislatively. We can't stop it. [snip]
We gave up the chance to stop it when we lost the election, when the Republican Party refused to have an identity, when the presidential candidate refused to even campaign on behalf of other Republicans. You could say we deserve what we got and it might be true, but it's still frustrating as hell. So how do we stop this stuff? The Obama team is going to have three million people whose job is going to be to hassle Democrats who don't toe the line in Congress and in the House.
Now along with this there was a lot of his usual ill-informed ranting and raving, but it was nice to hear the mouthpiece of incompetence and graft finally admit that his game is in deep, deep trouble. And the last I looked, we had over ten million people who will actively be engaged in helping President Obama take this Country back from Rush’s Corruptionist Party. His long nightmare is beginning as mine is ending.
It felt great to be able to fly the Flag again and it looked great.
Elections have consequences. I am still celebrating this one. I know that it is just a battle won in an ongoing war and that we have many hard fights ahead if we hope to really take this country back for the long run. Still, every time I think about President Obama I smile.
Cheers