Monday, April 09, 2012

Pledge First, Breathe Later

I don't know which to consider worse: a government and society that tell you what you cannot say after you have said it, or a government and society that tell you what you must say after you haven't. Of course, a government and society that both proscribes speech offensive to some while it prescribes speech offensive to others has become a ludicrous and lunatic Orwellian dystopia.

I can remember back in elementary school in the 1950s when the Eisenhower/McCarthy Republicans first drove religious monotheistic prayer into the public schools, attempting to force us captive children into mouthing an animistic prepositional phrase -- "under gawd" -- that only further degraded the already noxious little loyalty oath we had to recite every day in class. Constitutional issues arose immediately involving the separation of Church and State, which the courts cravenly sidestepped by allowing the forced recitations of government dictated religious dogma so long as the captive students "voluntarily" took part in the proceedings. "You don't have to say anything you don't want to say", our teachers told us. "You can just take a breath during the religious part of The Pledge, if you find that objectionable, and continue reciting the rest of it later."

Sure you can. Just see what happens to adult Congressional representatives who "take a breath" when Big Monotheistic Religious Brother says they cannot. For just one example of a screeching, finger-pointing, body-snatcher headline: Incumbent Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) Omits "Under God" In Pledge--Claims She "Took A Breath", see here. For another example: McDermott leads pledge in House, omits 'under God', see here.

Big Monotheistic Religious Brother now even tells you when you can breathe and when you can't.

(Those wishing a refresher course on the whole nationalist/monotheist browbeating thing, i.e., the reincorporation of Emperor Constantine's "fatal gift" in formerly secular-constitutional America can get it here)

Naturally, I've covered this topic in verse as well. See: The Boobie Pledge of Subservience.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but:

The concept of the Single Gawd
Leaves little more to mock.
Yet charlatans consider it
Their tawdry trade and stock.
No worse idea ever crawled
From underneath a rock.


Whatever you do, America, just don't breathe until you've publicly pledged your subservience to Big Monotheistic Religious Brother.

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