The End Times

It's Monday. A National holiday. I usually don't post on National holidays figuring most my loyal readers are not at work, sleeping in or day drinking. But this Monday is an exception.

There are three American traditions at hand today. I will be celebrating two of them.

First I will continue to fly my American flag at half mast in honor of President Jimmy Carter's recent passing. Truth be told I don't have a huge pole -- minds out of the gutter, people -- in my front yard. I have one of those leaning flags. But I do still have my Kamala Harris yard signs still up in the hope that our CIA will do its damn job, even if it is at the last second.

My flag and the accompanying Democrat signs sends an unmistakable message to the any neighborhood Trumpsters who have shamefully appropriated it. And fetishized it to ridiculous ends. Has it occurred to them that the same flag code (standing at the playing of the National Anthem, never letting the flag touch the ground, etc, etc) also dictates the flag be flown at half mast for 30 days to honor deceased presidents.

They cherry pick their flag fetishization according to the whims of their new Fuhrer. 

Editorial aside: I met my new neighbors, a younger couple with two small children and a quiet dog. The dad told me one of the important factors in the purchase decision was seeing my long in the tooth yard signs. Which he read as a neighbor with the "courage of his convictions." If not, psychosis.

Oh if he only knew.

I will also honor Martin Luther King Day. Here too the right wing neo-fascists have done some shameful appropriation. Twisting  MLK's words about judging people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. As if we live in a country where that actually occurs. 

We don't. I'm old enough to have lived through the tail end of Jim Crow laws, which didn't end until 1964. Imagine growing up in a country that aspires to the maxim, "Where all men are created equal" and then being redirected to a water fountain built specifically (and shabbily) just for black people. 

What generational message does that send to people of color?

Moreover, look how it has reinforced the disgusting notion of white supremacy and its current manifestations.

For further context, a black man lost his life on the streets of New York for the crime of selling loose cigarettes to passersby. Law and order aficionados will shake their head and claim he should have complied with the police.

Contrast that with the case of Ashli Babbitt, who stormed the capitol on January 6th, failed to comply with many officers and then smashed a window and tried to climb into the inner sanctum of Congress in order to steal a national election. Only to become a martyr of the Right Wing for her willingness NOT to comply. And called a hero by the incoming sad sack of post-digested KFC shit.

Lastly, today begins the rise of the 4th Reich. 

America, gird your loins. 

"You can grab 'em by the loins, when you're a celebrity they let you do that."