I saw this video late last night and then couldn’t fall asleep for two hours. I lay awake in bed wondering what has happened to the America I thought I knew.
Glenn Greenwald adds the commentary here.
Waving an American flag is the furthest thing from my mind now that our formerly inclusive and honorable national symbol has been so thoroughly adopted by so many warmongers, and increasingly by abject bigots. I’ve personally heard several hideous broadbrush slams against Muslims over the past year, several times by people who (I thought) knew better. I’m afraid that it’s getting much worse over the past year and the venom is aimed indiscriminately against all Muslims.
Maybe someday the American flag will again widely symbolize unity and respect for individual rights.
I am ashamed, profoundly disturbed and deeply saddened for the hurt inflicted on these Americans. Every one of those chanting needs to go back home … to Europe. And if those elected officials had a shred of integrity and understood the necessity to protect the rights of all Americans, they would resign for their comments. They should be ashamed for the things they said. Instead, I'll be ashamed for them.
I lived in Korea for seven years from 2000 to 2007 and had absolutely no good answers to the questions about why Bush did what he did and why Americans were the way they were. And things are worse now than I could ever have imagined.
Now I'm not going to be able to sleep. Next time I heed the warning.
This is not the flag to which I once pledged.. This is cultural bullying. Further, If these protestors were non white Americans, this would be a totally different news story.
This is the same flag under which we've killed many people and wasted hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq and in Afghanistan. It's the same flag under which our country has illegally spied on its own citizens and tortured hundreds of people.
Yes, it's also the same flag under which many good things occur, but over the past few years, it seems to me that the forces of aggression and ignorance have confiscated the American flag as primarily their own.
To the extent that I would choose to display an American flag outside of my house, it would primarily suggest that I am in favor of warmongering and the type of homeland security that stomps on precious constitutional rights. No one seeing an American flag would think that the person displaying it supports the ACLU or any other sort of defense of individual rights. That is the sad reality. The flag has come to suggest that the person displaying it is a certain kind of American.