I wonder about people
People don't make a lot of sense. Expecting people to be rational is akin to expecting pigs to fly, expecting caterpillars to recite poetry. Yet still, I find myself expecting it. How can you happily spend $500 a month on marijuana and be upset that your grand-daughter likes it too? It doesn't make sense.
Yesterday I saw another sign declaring "More Freedom, Less Government." It is a nice sound-bite. More of one, means less of another. Simple relationship. Causational. Easy to understand. Straightforward. There are no other factors. Believe me! this sticker shouts. And many people obey. I encounter this attitude frequently. If we have less government, we become more free. Period. Exclamation Point.
At the same time, there is a ubiquitous attitude that the United States in God's design for human nations. ...which are governments... And usually when I encounter the former attitude, I find the latter in abundance as well. How can a person hate their government, and want it down played further and further and further; and yet love their country? Without realizing a government and a country are rather the same thing?
Then I started working in the public school system. Where we teach our children to recite a hollow rite beyond their vocabulary in front of a flag that they do not understand every morning. Despite a complete inability to understand what they are doing, or why, or even which hand is their right so they can place it over their "heart", which is invisibly located somewhere on their left breast.... this habit is instilled with greater rigor that any mathematical operation or grammatical nuance they may be learning.
I don't say the pledge every morning with the kids. I am not particularly patriotic. The idea of a 'nation' is too esoteric for me to pretend to pledge allegiance to. I don't see the point in trying to brainwash myself to it. Reality, as I understand, does not have borders. There are deserts in the mountains, and wetlands in the deserts, and oceans inland. The United States is a very loosely held together congregation of people who won't see eye-to-eye. We fight amongst ourselves, fight amongst our own states, and find as many little details to divide each other as we can. Denver isn't Colorado to the people who live in the mountains.
This is what I hear when the Pledge is recited:
People don't make a lot of sense. Expecting people to be rational is akin to expecting pigs to fly, expecting caterpillars to recite poetry. Yet still, I find myself expecting it. How can you happily spend $500 a month on marijuana and be upset that your grand-daughter likes it too? It doesn't make sense.
Yesterday I saw another sign declaring "More Freedom, Less Government." It is a nice sound-bite. More of one, means less of another. Simple relationship. Causational. Easy to understand. Straightforward. There are no other factors. Believe me! this sticker shouts. And many people obey. I encounter this attitude frequently. If we have less government, we become more free. Period. Exclamation Point.
At the same time, there is a ubiquitous attitude that the United States in God's design for human nations. ...which are governments... And usually when I encounter the former attitude, I find the latter in abundance as well. How can a person hate their government, and want it down played further and further and further; and yet love their country? Without realizing a government and a country are rather the same thing?
Then I started working in the public school system. Where we teach our children to recite a hollow rite beyond their vocabulary in front of a flag that they do not understand every morning. Despite a complete inability to understand what they are doing, or why, or even which hand is their right so they can place it over their "heart", which is invisibly located somewhere on their left breast.... this habit is instilled with greater rigor that any mathematical operation or grammatical nuance they may be learning.
I don't say the pledge every morning with the kids. I am not particularly patriotic. The idea of a 'nation' is too esoteric for me to pretend to pledge allegiance to. I don't see the point in trying to brainwash myself to it. Reality, as I understand, does not have borders. There are deserts in the mountains, and wetlands in the deserts, and oceans inland. The United States is a very loosely held together congregation of people who won't see eye-to-eye. We fight amongst ourselves, fight amongst our own states, and find as many little details to divide each other as we can. Denver isn't Colorado to the people who live in the mountains.
This is what I hear when the Pledge is recited:
I pledge allegiance
to some fabric
which represents America.
Not to the plutocracy
for which it stands
Fifty-some states,
fighting God,
heavily divided,
with liberty and justice
for celebrities. (and rich people)
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