Not Welcome

I’m awake and thinking. That’s always a good way to start the day. And I started my ‘thinking’ with this quote I found on Time Goes By;

Quote of the Week:

“How to get people to vote against their interests and to really think against their interests is very clever. It’s the cleverest ruling class that I have ever come across in history. It’s been 200 years at it. It’s superb.”

- Gore Vidal

I’m not sure what specifics prompted Mr. Vidal to utter those words and you really can’t tell from the quote itself…so it makes you think.

It made me think of Patriotism. That indefinable something that every politician loves to cloak himself in every day before heading off to the office. And it’s at the office where he will defend everything he does as being ‘patriotic’. Every piece of legislature that is introduced and every bill supported is a patriotic one. And every one who argues against that legislation is therefore unpatriotic. It’s all quite simple. And the simple love it. They love it so much that they emulate it in their own lives as well. Weaving it into every fiber that makes up the fabric of our society; the cloak of patriotism is made to fit us all, like it or not.

It made me think of the Flag Salute and Pledge of Allegiance. OK, take the patriotism away for a moment and look at the ceremony for what it is. Children and some adults reciting words, hand over heart, day after day. Week after week. Repetition. Repetition. Repetition. After a few months of this, do any of them think beyond the order of the words themselves? Of course not, but it does make them aware of patriotism and the need to be part of the society that worships it. Thinkers; those who question… are not welcome.