Pretty strange.
He only served 6 years. I spent almost that amount of time on a team alone. It took me 7 years just to qualify to be considered for selection. I guess he was one of those Green Beret babies that never had to go through earning SGT stripes before qualifying. I noticed one of his pictures that he was wearing a 3rd Group Flash on his beret.
Course....most guys on the teams would probably pack his shit and dump it outside of the teamroom and change the locks, essentially kicking him off the team for siding with Kaepernick.
He is one that will not trash you just because you both do not agree on an issue.
Thank you for your service.
But you reaction about another Green Beret says lot's about you.
The "issue" in question is whether someone is so disloyal to America that they can't just sit quietly during the anthem, but have to do the opposite of what is done to show loyalty.
Right now, as I call these kneelers anti-American pieces of shit, I am exercising my First Amendment right.
Do you want to "NOT JUDGE ME" for standing up for what I believe in?
Actually the issue is that your mind is so narrow that you can't see any interpretation outside your own simplistic dichotomy. To wit, you seem to believe parroting a jingoism exercise means "loyalty to America" and that's that --- unable to comprehend that a fetish worship has nothing to do with patriotism at all, and in fact is simply a tool to subjugate the masses to the State using a directed mob mentality.
No one wants to judge you for standing up if that's your preference. They just want the same consideration for theirs. No one is trying to coerce you to sit down, kneel or whatever. The only coercion is from your end. And that alone should tell you something.
Pogo, thank you for expanding on the normal answers, that your side has been giving in this argument.
Your answer is a lot deeper and more nuanced than normal, and is such a lot more revealing than most.
YOu are very harsh on the use of a symbol for a Patriotic Unity ritual, going so far as to call it a "fetish".
I will not play stupid, like so many here do, and pretend you are using it in the primary definition, ie a sexual one. That is an asshole move, and one I will not do to you.
This is the secondary definition.
fetish - Google Search
"
2.
an inanimate object worshiped for its supposed magical powers or because it is considered to be inhabited by a spirit.
"
Standing to show respect and loyalty to the flag, AND THE NATION IT STANDS FOR, in no way is worshiping the flag, nor believing it has magical powers or in inhabited by a spirit.
That was unfair of you to say so.
There is a deep and dividing difference between conservatives and liberals. A number of them.
This is a matter that should be discussed.
It matters.
The primary meaning of "fetish" is not a "sexual" one. The sexual connotation is a
subset of the broader meaning of investing an inanimate object with imaginary sacred power. That power may be sexual, or it may be political, or it may be religious, all of which are
subsets. Another term meaning the same thing would be
idol; the biblical rendering would be "
graven image". All of them involve an irrational invocation of some spirit power into some material object which
exalts the object, thereby rendering the exalter
subservient to it.
So when we herd our children into a mob murmuring "I pledge allegiance to the flag", we are directing them to say
a prayer to a fetish ---- to worship a material object. When we then punish those who refuse to participate in it, we are
commanding fetish-worship under the authority of the State. And when we do that we have in effect
State-mandated religion. And when we pass laws and/or social coercions to "respect" the idol and prescribe all manner of obsessive-compulsive laundry lists of how it can be folded, how it must be treated, etc, we are anthropomorphizing that fetish (idol), under pain of (again) State-sponsored blasphemy laws.
In order to establish blasphemy, you must first establish that the object in question is
sacred. So if you pass laws (or social remedies) against blaspheming an object, you are by that act establishing that the object itself is
sacred. And that's idolatry, or fetishism. Call it either one you like; it's the same thing but there's no way around the fact that that's what you're doing. Our particular law language tends to call it "desecration", perhaps to draw attention away from the more religious connotation of "blasphemy" so as to mask the presence of a State Religion, but again, "blasphemy" and "desecration" mean the same thing and both require a
sacred object.
(And again if the flag is not considered "sacred" by the State --- then it cannot be 'desecrated' or 'blasphemed'. You can't "desecrate" for instance a lawn mower, as that object is not considered sacred. But scratch that 1957 mint-condition Corvette that your neighbor fawns over every day with his microfiber cloth, and you're getting into fetish-land again.)
That's exactly why the Supreme Court ruled in
West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943) that the State
cannot command such a prayer -- after Jehovah's Witnesses objected to it as the State forcing them to disobey the second commandment, rendered variously as prohibiting the worship of graven images or as "thou shalt have no other gods before Me", which mean the same thing.
That decision was announced on Flag Day, June 14: Justice Robert Jackson wrote. “To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous instead of a compulsory routine is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds... If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that
no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”
What happens when the State
does "prescribe what shall be orthodox"?
The Jehovah's Witnesses had been fighting this battle for several years. When it was first brought to national attention:
>> Some vigilantes interpreted the Supreme Court’s decision as a signal that Jehovah’s Witnesses were traitors who might be linked to a network of Nazi spies and saboteurs. In Imperial, a town outside Pittsburgh, a mob descended on a small group of Witnesses and pummeled them mercilessly. One Witness was beaten unconscious, and those who fled were cornered by ax- and knife-wielding men riding the town’s fire truck as someone yelled, “Get the ropes! Bring the flag!” In Kennebunk, Maine, the Witnesses’ gathering place, Kingdom Hall, was ransacked and torched, and days of rioting ensued. In Litchfield, Ill., an angry crowd spread an American flag on the hood of a car and watched while a man repeatedly smashed the head of a Witness upon it. In Rockville, Md., Witnesses were assaulted across the street from the police station, while officers stood and watched. By the end of the year, the American Civil Liberties Union estimated that 1,500 Witnesses had been assaulted in 335 separate attacks. << --
History.net
At the same time in Germany Witnesses were also refusing the mandatory stiff-arm salute, and in response were banned and persecuted by Hitler. And I've related many times here the example of
Earnest V. Starr who was beset by a mob who demanded he kiss the American flag --- again, the mandatory idol worship ---- and when Starr refused, HE,
not the mob, was arrested, convicted and sentenced to hard labor. Again.... State-commanded idol worship, under threat of hard labor.
As a District Judge in the Starr case
lucidly noted: "when, as here, [patriotism] descends to fanaticism, it is of the reprehensible quality of the religion that incited the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the tortures of the
Inquisition, the fires of Smithfield, the scaffolds of Salem, and is equally cruel and murderous. In its name, as in that of Liberty, what crimes have been committed! In every age it, too, furnishes its
heresyhunters and its
witch burners, and it, too, is a favorite mask for hypocrisy, assuming a virtue which it haveth not. So the mobs mentioned were generally the chosen and last resort of the slacker, military and civil, the profiteer, and the enemy sympathizer, masquerading as superpatriots to divert attention from their real character".
THAT is where such mob mentality leads ---
terrorism.
Personally I'm not on board with planting seeds of terrorism and mob mentality. But by all means go ahead and make the case that whipping a mob into irrational emotional belligerence that bashes people's heads in or sends them to hard labor or death camps or a burning at the stake or a lynching, is somehow a "positive" thing.
