The Pledge to the Flag is bullcrap. Line by line analysis.

[AZLD4Candidate]

I hate the pledge. Haven't said it since I was in 8th grade. Didn't force my students to say it. Didn't even stand for it. Didn't tell my students in the US to stand for it. WV v. Barnette and Tinker V. Des Moines says students don't need to and can silently protest.

Let's look at the brainwashing crap of The Pledge, followed by a Pledge I believe is more acceptable but still shouldn't be said.

Swear word warning. . .this will sound like a George Carlin-type rant.

I Pledge Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America
First of all, I have to ask what the hell does this mean? I'm pledging myself to a flag? A fucking flag? It's a red white and blue piece of cloth. Guess what. . .so are my pants. And my underwear. Well, I wear boxers, but I have no problems having people say "I pledge allegiance to my boxer shorts." Especially if they are pretty women. Pledge all you want.

And don't give me that weak shit "well, it means that you pledge to the ideals the flag represents. Oh, that's nice. Why not say that instead? I pledge allegiance for the ideals that the flag of the United States represents. It doesn't say that. Stop implying shit to confirm nationalism ego bias.

And what ideals do we mean? Of course, the good ones. Racism, slavery, sexism, genocide of native American, discrimination, homophobia, xenophobia, islamophobia. . .as Rage Against the Machine stated, all of which are American Dreams. You want to know about the great ideals of the US. . .ask a Native American, if you can find one. We make them a bit scarce. Want current data? Ask a random black family if they feel the "ideals" of the United States.

And do the Republic for which it stands.

So, the country is an afterthought. The flag is what you pledge to and the country is second. It's like that duty, honor, country pledge in the armed forces. The country is THIRD! IT SHOULD BE FIRST! I pledge allegiance to the United States and the flag that represents it sound so much better. At least I'm not pledging to a fucking piece of cloth.

One Nation

With all due respect, the Civil War proved that is horse shit. And Texas still wants to secede. And Republicans want to bring back nullification which was part of the path to the Civil War. We aren't one nation. They only time we're one nation is when someone attacks us or there is a national tragedy. Remember a time when it didn't take a catastrophe to bring us all together as a nation? Guess what? Neither can I.

Under God

This wasn't even in the original pledge. It was added in 1954 to show the Sky Daddy loved "freedom loving" US and not Godless Communism. Even though we didn't give a rat's ass about freedom. Look at the people we supported during the Cold War:
Papa Doc
Rhee Syngmun
Suharto
Sukarno
Ferdinand Marcos
PW Boltha
Ngo Dinh Diem
Shah of Iran
Batista
Francisco Franco
Baby Doc
Saddam Hussein (until we didn't)
Chiang Kai Shek (who brutalized native Formosa)
Pinochet
Noriega
Guatemalan Death Squads
Daniel Ortega


We didn't give a shit about freedom. All we cared about is that you weren't a Communist. IF you slaughtered people, that's the price of doing business.

With liberty and justice for all.. . .that aren't minorities or can afford it. This last line is infuriating.
If you want know about this, go to wikipedia, go to the search bar, type in Japanese American 1942 and you'll learn all about liberty and justice for all. Just when they needed their rights, the government took them away. The only right they had: RIGHT THIS WAY, into the concentration camp.

Native Americans weren't full American citizens until 1978.
Black people weren't people until 1865.
Women couldn't vote until 1920.
And you were old enough to kill but not vote until 1972.
Interracial marriage was outlawed until 1967.
Our Apartheid lasted until 1954.
The Chinese were denied immigration rights from 1881 to 1943
Jesse Washington's killers still haven't been brought to justice
The Tulsa Race Riot is still ignored
Sand Creek is still called a battle
Little Big Horn is still called a massacre


Now, let's try it again.

I pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of American and the country it created, conceived in liberty, dedicated to establishing equality for all within its borders.

I still have issues with it, but at least I'm not pledging to a fucking piece of cloth.

[msongs]

1. conceived to meet the needs of white male property owners nt

[AZLD4Candidate]

2. Can't be that honest. The US Constitution was actually a victory for the conservaturds at the time.

Most liberalism that was attempted to put into it was destroyed because rich, white, Christian property and slave owners, businessmen, and the gentry class saw it as an opportunity to enshrine themselves.

[lastlib]

3. On those rare occasions that I recite it, I say "one nation under LAW."

I ain't under no sky daddy, but I sure as heck accept an order of law, because without it, we have MAGA-World.

And like you, I'm just not into hugging up on a piece of cloth flag. Little Donnie Four-I's did that at a CPAC, and the poor flag had to join the #MeToo movement.

And the way I read that last bit, they're conveniently leaving out a few words. To be truthful, it should say "...with liberty and justice for all who already got it, and to fuck with the rest of y'all (that'd be the wimmin, the blackies, the brownies, the queeries, the injuns, and anybody that don't love our Ja-ayyyee-zus.)"

[AZLD4Candidate]

5. Don't forget the Chin-knee and everyone that look like them.

[LiberalFighter]

32. I replace god with dog.

[czarjak]

4. Order.

[madamesilverspurs]

6. It's called inculcation.

Way back in the early '50s we had to learn it in first grade. We had not one clue what the words meant. Ask any six-year-old today what the word 'pledge' means. Then 'allegiance'. Ask that child to explain 'united' and 'states' and 'nation' and 'republic'. How about 'indivisible'? Ask them to comment on the concepts of 'liberty and justice'. The only difference between then and now is the addition of 'under God' which caused many of us back then to giggle as we tripped over the newly inserted words. It was for us a collection of sounds accompanied by a gesture, no weightier than the rhymes we chanted while jumping rope.

In subsequent grades we were taught about the horrors of life in communist countries. In photos and film strips we saw pictures of school children who were required to recite words of loyalty while saluting in some fashion a flag or emblem or portrait. The message was clear: When we do it, it's good, when they do it, it's bad. Because we say so. Mindless repetition is just that -- mindless, especially when compelled.

Don't get me started on the faux patriotism of starting every public gathering with the national anthem.


.

[AZLD4Candidate]

9. You put those ideas in children because children don't have the ability to muster a defense

against a sophisticated argument and, up to a certain again, children are going to believe everything an adult says.

The Nazis said it best and to paraphrase the quote: "Give me a child until he's seven and he's mine forever."

[lastlib]

30. What a child hears:

Last edited Thu Aug 17, 2023, 06:21 PM - Edit history (1)

"I led the pigeons... to the flag...of the United States of America...and to the rupp-ublique...for Richard Stands...one nation......invisible...with lipper-T and just us for oil"

so who IS this "Richard Stands"??

[bif]

47. Good one!

[DFW]

56. What my child really DID hear

She spent her junior year of high school abroad (encouraged in our part of the world) in the far-away USA. I prepared her as best I could, but didn't remember everything.

After the first few days, she said she was adjusting OK, but was mystified by the ritual chanting the class did every morning. Ritual chanting? In an American public school? They aren't even allowed to do that. I asked, "like Buddhists?" We had seen the documentaries on TV. I asked what they chanted. She said they mostly mumbled it, like they were in a trance, or else very bored. But it started out with "I spread the peaches."

Her English was pretty good, but she was unfamiliar with the words "pledge" and "allegiance," as neither tends to come up in ordinary conversation. She heard the closest thing to words that she did know, but couldn't figure out why they would say that, and was too timid to ask. Exaggerated displays of patriotism are, for obvious reasons, frowned upon where we live, so she didn't have the slightest idea what they were doing, or why.

When I finally figured out what she was talking about, I explained the Pledge. Her reaction was, "why would they need to do that?"

Why, indeed?

[lastlib]

57. That's hilarious!

It's always interesting how we "fill in the blanks" with what we "know".

I read a story once about a pastor of a small-town church who called a local newspaper to thank them for their misprint. When the editor asked why he was thanking him, the pastor replied that the actual title of last Sunday's sermon was "What Jesus Saw In A Publican"*-- but the paper had printed the title of his Sunday paper as "What Jesus Saw In A Republican." The pastor then said that the church had had the best attendance in fifteen years that Sunday!

(*In biblical times, a publican was a tax collector for the emperor.)

[DFW]

59. Small town America

Where Republicans think that their bible has a passage somewhere in which Jesus encounters Mike Pence.

To be found in Morons 20:24

[lastlib]

60. LOL!

"Morons 20:24" - - -

[TexasDem69]

7. I'm perfectly ok with it

As are most Americans I’d imagine. Each to his or her own.

[Zeitghost]

36. Yep

I say it proudly.

[Uncle Joe]

8. The ludicrous irony, is watching members of the political party sworn to uphold, but most attuned

to destroying the Constitution also sporting glorious flag pins on their lapels.

That's been the case since 9/11.

In my eyes, watching the Constitution trashing hypocrites sporting an ambiguous symbol as camouflage is akin to nothing but a national gang color.

As the soldiers in the Vietnam movie Hamburger Hill kept, "It don't mean nothing."

Thanks for the thread AZLD4Candidate

[AZLD4Candidate]

12. I love when people tell me that flag and country are equal in the pledge.

My response is always why is the 1st amendment first and the 2nd amendment second? Because speech, press, redress, religion, and petition were more important than your bang-bang dick extender according to the Constitution's writers.

What is the 1st commandment? I am the lord thy God. . .why is murder 5th and obedience first?

So flag is more important than country. That's called LOGIC!!!!

[Silent3]

10. Putting the flag first (or in there at all, but especially first) has bugged me for a long time

And fuck "Under God"!

Leading children in mass recitation of a pledge they aren't old enough to really comprehend is creepy too.

[William769]

11. We get it, you don't like it.

To each his own.

[hunter]

13. Never said it as a kid.

Growing up Jehovah's Witness was... interesting.

Didn't want to disappoint God by reciting the pledge or acknowledging it in any way

In fourth grade I remember being extremely embarrassed when my teacher pointed me out as an example of religious freedom in the U.S.A.. I was already considered a weird kid and this only added to my aura of weirdness.

Later my mom got kicked out of the Witnesses because she couldn't stay out of politics. Then we were Quakers. They weren't keen on the pledge either.

When I was teaching the local patriotic evangelical Christians were upset that most teachers weren't saying the pledge in their homerooms so they convinced the principal to have kids say the pledge over the school's public address system. The loudspeaker in my classroom was broken, rats or squirrels had chewed through the wires years before and it wasn't likely to be repaired anytime soon, so I simply didn't worry about it.

[Permanut]

14. Hey, goes right along with the national anthem..

"...the land of the free, and the home of the brave."

What a crock.

[Warpy]

15. That's one of the best posts on the subject that I've ever read.

In addition, it seems beyond creepy to require a daily loyalty oath from little kids, something that always bugged the hell out of me when I was one. I amused myself with coming up with alternative words. Kids who giggled at them got whacked with a ruler. I looked innocent so I didn't.

[ShazzieB]

16. I did not realize "under God" was added that recently.

I knew it was an addition, but I didn't learn the pledge until I started 1st grade in 1956, so that bit was already in there and I had no idea at the time that it was relatively new. Many years later, I learned it was a late addition, but I don't recall ever knowing when it was added until now. It's weird to realize it was that new when I was first introduced to the pledge.

I never minded the pledge as a kid in school. The things about it that are problematic are things I wasn't aware of at the time. But as an adult, I came to realize just how much is wrong with it, especially the awkward insertion of those 2 extra words back in 1954.

Kids like me who grew up during the time when that part was added (i.e., the Cold War) were taught to be terrified of communism and to view it as Godless (as you noted) and even downright evil. As the embodiment of communism, the USSR was especially feared, along with so-called "Red China." We were taught that the communists had every intention of taking over the world, and the U.S. had to do everything in its power to keep that from happening. That included opposing communism in any country where it made an appearance and supporting those governments that opposed it, along with their leaders, no matter how authoritarian and undemocratic they might be in their own right. It was a very black and white point of view; communists were the "bad guys," and all others were seen as the "good guys," despite the fact that some of them were very bad indeed.

I deplore a lot of things the U.S. did during those years and since in the name of "keeping the world safe or democracy," but I understand that many unfortunate, even disastrous, decisions were driven by a very real fear along with a sincere belief that we were in grave danger. Not a good basis for wise, objective decision making, by any means!

The last time I can remember this country being anywhere near as polarized as it is now was during the Vietnam War. We somehow survived those years, and I devoutly hope we can survive the Era of the Orange Menace. I feel like we've reached a turning point with the indictments, and I believe we can make it the rest of the way.

[AZLD4Candidate]

17. No, it was trumped up paranoia. Most people believe what communism says. It's those with

power that don't. Those with power, money, and influence learned after WW2. If the boogie man is a person (Hitler), people die and there is no boogieman. But if you make the boogieman a nebulous idea that can evolve and change with the times, you can have people believe anything especially when you put phobia-level fear into them.

Communism was a red herring and will always be a red herring. The war machine loved the profits of WW2 and needed that to continue but without the bloodshed. Communism became the things to fear and since it's an idea and not a person, it can last forever.

It was all propaganda by those who had the ability to push it. Hell, by 1960, Hitler's murdering buddy Francisco Franco was politically rehabilitated because he was anti-Communist.

We were taught that the communists had every intention of taking over the world, and the U.S. had to do everything in its power to keep that from happening. That included opposing communism in any country where it made an appearance and supporting those governments that opposed it, along with their leaders, no matter how authoritarian and undemocratic they might be in their own right. It was a very black and white point of view; communists were the "bad guys," and all others were seen as the "good guys," despite the fact that some of them were very bad indeed.

Two quotes about that:

Voltaire: Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
Jean-Luc Picard: The road from legitimate suspicion to rampant paranoia is very much shorter than we think.

It wasn't until the Pentagon Papers where people really stopped believing everything the government said. Vietnam and all the lies with that starting with the Gulf of Tonkin made people realize the Cold War was built on fabrications.

Why do you think there has been a concerted effort since 1983 with the publication of that awful A Nation At Risk to destroy the arts and humanities? Arts make you feel empathy. Humanities make you see the world as it is, not as you want it to be.

Destroy critical thought, make jobs all about education, and you create good little worker bees that are just smart enough to do the jobs and work the machines and just dumb enough to accept the lousy pay, longer hours, horrible working condition, the end of overtime, the weakening of worker's comp law, the destruction of labor union, the vanishing pension that disappear when you go to collect, and the move to privatize Social Security and Medicare.

As my quote from Carlin says: It's a big club and you ain't in it. Well, that's what the Cold War was.

Fuck the pledge.

[ShazzieB]

45. Paranoia is right.

I was just a kid af the time, and I haven't delved into Cold War history deeply enough to have a good understanding of everything that went on. But I remember the fear and, yes, paranoia that led to the domino theory and in turn to Vietnam.

I definitely agree that the Vietnam War was a major turning point. A lot of guys my age resented being told that they had to drop everything to go fight a senseless war at an age when they weren't even allowed to vote yet, and rightly so. As a girl, I wasn't subject to the draft, but I could see they had a point. And instead of listening to their concerns, The Powers That Be continued to escalate the war and draft more and more young men to fight in it. And somehow they were shocked (shocked, I tell you!) when they were met with marches and protests, and more marches and protests.

The whole time, there were people driving around with stickers on their cars that said, "America, Love It or Leave It" and "My Country, Right or Wrong," mad as hell that those "dirty hippies" had the nerve to question anything our government decided to do. It was a very confusing time for kids like me who had been raised to do as we were told but also encouraged to think for ourselves...up to a point!

We now know how that ended and the role that would be played by the Pentagon Papers. But it was a wild time to live through as a young person in this country,

[BlackSkimmer]

61. People were distrustful of governments long before the Pentagon Papers.

History is full of examples of this.

[DemocraticPatriot]

18. The "pledge of allegiance" ? What is that??

Does anyone actually do that anymore ?


Those that do, it would seem open to question what flag they are pledging allegiance to ??


Perhaps they should add the words,
"and by FLAG, I mean the flag of the United States,
and NOT the stars and bars of the flag of the traitorous Confederate states..."

[AZLD4Candidate]

19. Arizona Republicans tried to make it a law requiring all people in schools to stay and say it.

Including classified staff, contractors on campus, and parents that were in the school, punishable by a fine of up to $5000 and 30 days in jail for refusal.

It's faux-patriotism. See, we love the flag, but we hate what it stands for unless it's what we want.

[DemocraticPatriot]

20. I resided in Arizona a couple of times,

staying with or near my best friend...

One of my unique memories was watching a rainless lightning storm....



Anyway, the 'ordinary people' that I met in the state, never seemed to explain to me
the extremist elements which controlled the legislature of the state...


However, that seems to be changing some, when you consider the statewide electoral successes of Democrats...
and since urban areas are more Democratic, and the greater Phoenix area contains half of the voters of the entire state,
if seems that Arizona is a state that will become more reliably Democratic as time goes on...


Of course, I wouldn't want to go back there and spend much time anymore,
unless it is during the winter..... Arizona is frying.

[Dorian Gray]

26. curious how close the voting for that law was

as AZ has a very libertarian edge to it. Admittedly, I don't live in AZ so don't know details like this, but I'm really surprised if a bill like that got a ton of traction in any state, but AZ, in particular, as far as Red states go.

[AZLD4Candidate]

27. It died in committee. But it was brought up.

[Dorian Gray]

28. :thumbsup:

[ShazzieB]

42. Well....

The opening words are, "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America..." so that should cover it. But you wouldn't know that from the way some people behave!

[Raine]

21. It's OK, I have no problem with it but whatever ... nt

[BlackSkimmer]

22. The Pledge has no impact on my life whatsoever.

Haven't given it a moment's thought. Haven't said it since elementary school.

Obviously, you have strong feelings about it.

[GoodRaisin]

23. I don't have a problem with the pledge. It's the

hypocrisy of the whole thing that frustrates me.

I’d like to have “liberty and justice for all”.

[betsuni]

24. Words grown-ups don't have to say if they don't want to.

Japanese-Americans weren't detained in "concentration camps." Internment camps, no killing.

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

52. Well, if you want to venture down the pedantry road

Not all concentration camps were (or have been) death camps. They've come in a wide variety of types throughout history, and one of those types are also known as :::drumroll, please::: internment camps. That's why most scholars classify the Japanese internment camps as concentration camps.

Concentration camps are, by definition

"an isolated, circumscribed site with fixed structures designed to incarcerate civilians. The Holocaust has confused our understanding of concentration camps in that a concentration camp is not normally a death camp. They are the consequences of large numbers of opponents, far too many for the discipline, order, and expense of prisons."

--Dan Stone, What Is a Concentration Camp

https://doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780198723387.003.0001

Emphasis mine.

That, by the way, is a scholarly definition, and not from a generic dictionary.
I'd add to Mr Stone's definition that concentration camps are where governments confine people of certain political, religious or ethnic groups without benefit of a trial, and usually in substandard conditions. The government will usually claim that the removal is for state security reasons, but sometimes they do it simply to exploit said group.

Both definitions apply to Japanese-Americans during World War II.

The Nazis weren't even the first to implement concentration camps. Hitler learned much abot how to set up his concentration camps from studying Native American reservations, although reservations tend to let their occupants leave if they wish. Still, the idea behind a reservation is similar to that of the concentration camp--take a specific ethnicity and herd them into a small area with few or no rights, and in substandard conditions, to "remove" them from the general population for state "security."

The British probably had the first "classic" type of concentration camp, when they confined Transvaal and Cape Colony citizen non-combatants during the South African War at the turn of the century. The conditions they lived under were, well, grim.

https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/from-the-archive-blog/2011/may/19/guardian190-south-africa-concentration-camps

[Dorian Gray]

25. The good thing about the pledge

is that no matter where I went to school, it was never required. My daughter's Montessori School doesn't do the pledge at all.

I suspect in China, you're not expected to say it either. I wasn't when I lived there, even when I taught in an American school.

[AZLD4Candidate]

29. Winnie the Flu requires all students to attend mandatory flag raising and reciting of the

National Anthem every Monday morning. They do it without question like the good little sheep they are.

I called it the "National why foreigners suck and we're great thirty minutes of bullshit."

Just like I call the national broadcast of the CCTV news at 7 pm "the Xi Jinping Comedy Hour."

We have developed a drinking game with it.

Drink when they mention Winnie the Flu's name
Drink when you see his face
Drink when you hear the national anthem and don't stop until it stops.
Drink when you see a bored looking Chinese man in a suit
Drink when they shit on another country.

[obamanut2012]

38. Who is Winnie the Flu? I am kinda sick of these nicknames

That everyone is just expected to know.

[MarineCombatEngineer]

31. To each their own.

I have no problem with it, but that's just me, if someone doesn't want to recite it, that's their choice.

During my time in the Marines, we would salute the flag as it was being raised and lowered, never had a problem with that either.

[AZLD4Candidate]

33. Civilian life is different.

[MarineCombatEngineer]

34. I agree.

If a civilian doesn't want to recite it, that's fine with me.

Now that I'm a civilian, I don't even give it any thought at all, I don't even remember reciting it since I retired.

[BlackSkimmer]

35. I was in the AF, not the Marines, but did y'all have that hilarious daily

run for cover on base as evening fell and the flag was coming down?

No one wanted to be stuck outside having to salute for however long it lasted.

[MarineCombatEngineer]

43. True dat.

I did some running myself on occasion.

[BlackSkimmer]

46. I noticed the officers ran first and fastest lol.

I seemed to be a slow learner, and I was frequently cackled at from windows by my co-workers!

[LAS14]

37. The Pledge of Allegiance is like "I'm sorry for your loss."

It's poetry. It's what you say when words are inadequate.

Sure people argue about the right thing to say to a bereaved person. But that's beside the point and hurtful as well.

[BlackSkimmer]

58. Well said. nt

[BigDemVoter]

39. I agree.

I remember having to recite it in elementary school in the early 1970s. I don't think I recognized why I hated it at the time, but I think I must have unconsciously linked it with nationalistic jingoism, although I wouldn't have used those words.

[milestogo]

40. And to the Republic of Richard Stands.

That's how you say it. No idea who he was.

[AZLD4Candidate]

41. Dick Stands is a very famous person. Just like Dick Head, Dick Wad, Dick Smack

And Dick Cheese.

[MarineCombatEngineer]

44. And don't forget Dick Weed.

[bif]

48. And Dick Tater!

[lastlib]

49. See post #30

[SYFROYH]

50. Yeah, its a little wonky, but no one has to say it so its a push.

[edisdead]

51. Fantastic!

I also hate that stupid pledge.

I am so against pledges I don’t even dust.

[Tarc]

53. I like Jello Biafra's version better

I pledge defiance to the flag of the United Snakes of Captivity

And to the Republic for which it stands, I dip it in kerosene, and stick it up the ass of you know who and light it

One nation, under God--or else

One nation, under psychopath Pentagon gangsters, whose idea of democracy is concentration camps for the people who go and use the drugs that the government supplies themselves

One nation, under Wall Street:

If the cops and the President are all criminals, I might as well be one too, ha ha!

One Nation of tabloid robots who actually believe what they see on tv, but when ask about it say “I don’t care.”

One nation, drowning in its own garbage

Indivisible from the from the fall of Rome

With liberty and justice for all who can afford it

[AZLD4Candidate]

54. Gotta love the Dead Presidents

[JCMach1]

55. Your right to do so... But not the ideological hill I am going to die on

... personally speaking