Dear Washington State delegation to Congress,

As your constituent, I urge you to oppose any amendment that would write discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Americans into the Constitution.

To use the Constitution to discriminate against any group of people is shameful - and in this case, it's plainly hypocritical. It is not compassionate, and it is conservative only in that self-proclaimed conservatives would do it, despite its clear reactionism, which is the antithesis of conservatism, if only self-proclaimed conservatives had enough sense to realize this. The amendment adopts a radical position that would insert discrimination into the document that has, albeit somewhat hypocritically, again, guaranteed and claimed to expand liberty and equality for over 200 years.

You have all the usual arguments - the Constitution should not be amended to limit the rights of a group of people; regulation of marriage is a states'-rights issue (although, given US history, I am not one to advocate letting the states have too much power over civil rights or liberties); the amendment could forever invalidate civil unions or other legal protections for same-sex couples; the law should aid, not hinder, family cohesion; and so forth.

Then, of course, there is the sheer ludicrousness of claiming to support marriage on the specious grounds that it somehow is sacrosanct. Uh, excuse me? It has generally (a small minority of individual cases aside) been an oppressive institution that has provided camouflage to all manner of outrage; it is as often a failure as a success; it is too easy a refuge for bigotry and other ignorance.

In addition, an institution that proffers privileges only to adherents of a set of bogus claims and self-deceptions is, in and of itself, oppressive. In fact, would it be asking too much to request that you not only stand up and argue against the amendment, but also raise your voice in ridicule of its hopelessly middle-brow, middle-America prejudices - denounce it for the embrace of bigotry and conservation of ill-gotten privilege that it is?

And, that you fight for all people's right to participate in this privileged institution, as appalling as it has been to this point in history?

Sincerely

To: John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia

John:

The ABC reports you saying that using funding to coerce schools to fly the Australian flag is: "perfectly compatible with the attitude of Australians; the display of the national flag by Australians now is far more regular, far more visible, far more a part of life than what it was when I was 30 years younger."

So this is what you discuss with Dubya? He really has all kinds of tips for you, apparently. Here, his cronies are upholding the retention of the clearly unconstitutional inclusion of religious obeisance within the pledge of allegiance that is used to indoctrinate children (by enforced, daily recitation at schools - recognize that tactic?) and are also backing a flag-desecration amendment (to champion the land of free expression by making it a jailable offense). So, your new edict really is more in line with American practice than Australian. That, by your own admission that flag waving is a relatively recent syndrome in Australia. Perhaps you can conceive that the flag's increased visibility is not "regular," at all, but instead is part of a creeping syndrome. After all, which countries require pledges and obsequiousness towards flags and other facile, jingoist formulas have been standardized. And isn't it an irony that those countries tend to be ones where, whether due to left- or right-wing totalitarian rule, the peasantry (whether rural or consumerist) is schooled in unthinking nationalism - places like Cambodia, China, North Korea (rural), and the United States (consumerist).

Won't it be a sorry day when Australian skepticism is replaced by blind adherence to jingoist formulae. But the thought police of the future will thank you for it, even as the country weakens as a result of it.

Sincerely.

June 17, 2004



Thank you for contacting me to express your opposition to a constitutional amendment that prohibits desecration of the American flag. It was good to hear from you.
In this Congress, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) introduced Senate Joint Resolution 4. This resolution would amend the U.S. Constitution to allow Congress to prohibit physical desecration of the U.S. flag. In the 106th Congress, Senator Hatch introduced legislation identical to S.J. Res 4, but it was defeated in the Senate. I voted against the flag desecration amendment.
While I understand the objections of those opposed to flag desecration, I do not believe that amending the Constitution is the appropriate way to address their concerns Amending the Constitution has been reserved only for situations where the system has broken down or needs fundamental changes. As offended as I am by individual acts of flag desecration, I do not believe a few incidents each year warrant amending our nation's Constitution.
Furthermore, in our 200 plus years, we have never altered the First Amendment. Rest assured, I will certainly keep your views in mind should or similar legislation be considered during the 108th Congress.
Once again, thank you for contacting me. Please stay in touch.
Sincerely,
Patty Murray
United States Senator

Dear Senator Murray,
While I understand that you may feel an electoral compulsion to say that you are offended by flag "desecration," I would respectfully suggest that a more enlightened position, and one that I would love to hear you enunciate to the electorate, is that the hoo-haa over flag burning and desecration is just that: hoo-haa. No mature country needs to bother itself with such pettiness. The only reason anyone would burn a flag is because their country has a weird, adolescent attachment to it, as many kinds of blind devotees have to fetish objects. Would you consider standing up and telling people: "Hey, people, take a chill pill"?
I wish you would. And tell that Orren Hatch joker to pull his duplicitous head in, too!
Thanks again.

Dear Sky Mall,

While flying somewhere or other, a few days ago, I sought distraction from the aggravations of modern air travel (the ridiculously scrunched seating, the dry, tasteless ham buns for which they charge you, now, an appalling $8...) by turning to your SkyMall catalog. There, my eyes happened to fall on the headline: "Your toothbrush could make you sick" – and, intrigued, I read on. The reading was certainly compelling. I shuddered to learn that, as you say, "a recent study found 100 million colony-forming germs on a single, ordinary toothbrush." I almost grabbed the telephone off the back of the seat in front of me, there and then, to call you to order my Germ Terminator tootbrush sterilizer.
But, then, while browsing ahead, I suddenly became far less convinced that I should make the purchase. Why? Well, Dear SkyMall, I hesitated because I read the sentence, in your advertisement: "in another test, 42% of used toothbrushes tested positive for bacteria from feces."
Oh, please! You really must think us gullible. There is no way, in this day and age, that 42% of people would, while using their toothbrush, or at least before throwing an old, tired one away, stick it up their bottoms.

Sincerely.

Senators Murray and Cantwell,

As your constituent, I urge you to oppose HJ Res. 4/SJ Res. 4, a constitutional amendment to ban desecration of the flag. This legislation would undermine the very principles for which the American flag stands.

All the obvious reasons aside, this is a blatant attack on the American way of life. I mean, how will people hypocritically put the flag to commercial or sentimental use if desecrating it is banned, and punishable y imprisonment (where, for that matter, will we find room in prisons that already hold over 2 million Americans - will we build prisons for flag desecrators? Maybe make them sew Old Glories as penance?). Would it not, for example, be a terrible pity to ban the desecrating display of those ultra-huge flags over used car lots? And wouldn't it be a pity if the first thing America did to its most freshly minted citizens was to have stormtroopers rush into naturalization parties, and arrest them for desecrating the flag by eating slab cakes iced with it? That would be only the start. Before long, if the letter of the law was upheld, we'd have to appoint arbiters to determine which of all the acts involving flags were desecrating. Wrapping oneself sanctimoniously in it? Approving amendments using it to squelch civil liberties? Using it to avoid any reasoned, nuanced issues in world politics?

Please do not only vote against any such bill, but also consider standing up and denouncing it for what it is. Anything but contempt and ridicule for this amendment would be appeasement of the new thought police in America.

By the way, I am not, strictly speaking, a constituent, as I'm a foreign sucker - not one who is likely ever to swear allegiance to a flag desecrated by an amendment such as HJ Res. 4/SJ Res. 4.

Sincerely,

The Supreme Court's ruling today that the ludicrous, deceitful, and divisive words "under god" should remain in the "pledge of allegiance" reminded me of the linguistic concept of the speech act - speaking words that, by being spoken, do what they say: by saying "I pledge," one is in fact pledging.

The ruling is, of course, ridiculous, and can only, eventually, be either removed as a matter of law, or retained as an enforcement of political power in direct opposition to the clear word of Constitutional law.

But wait, the Court does have another option: to declare the whole pledge a sham, and make the saying of it punishable as a misdemeanor, perhaps as some minor form of fraud.

The pledge began in 1892 as a sanctimonious gesture of self-righteousness by a Boston youth magazine, "The Youth's Companion." Then 22 words long, it was designed as a recitation for school children to use during activities the next month marking the 400th anniversary of Columbus's "discovery" of America.

Immediately, one sees the problems cropping up. First, there's the obvious shortcoming: that it was designed to commemorate something that never happened.

Its history generated other failings. In a paroxysm of patriotism, the fatuous words quickly were used to infect most of American grade-school education, and then during World War II, when adult Americans wallowed in their childhood indoctrination with the words (rather than face up to their complete indifference to what the Nazis had long been doing in Europe), Congress made the pledge an official government "United States Flag Code." Eisenhower added the "under god" business in 1954, to shore it up against its most obvious shortcoming: Again, that it is based on lies.

These are so obvious as to be completely ignorable by all those who have been required or left little alternative but to chant them over and over to the point of forgetting to ask what it is that is being chanting. The deafness to their substance and duplicity is apparently aided by the same juvenile wishfulness that made them seem heroic words when the indoctrination began. (Of course, the earlier the better, as in any indoctrination with palpably false ideals.)

When Eisenhower justified the long-contentious words, "under god," by saying they reaffirmed "the transcendence of religious faith in America's heritage and future" and permitted Americans to "constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country's most powerful resource in peace and war," he was being no less rhetorical and puffed-up than the self-satisfyingly righteous scribes at the Boston boys' magazine. The notion that there was "Liberty and Justice for all" in the USA in 1954, any more than in 1892, is so absurd that only indoctrinating repetition could render it convincing – and then, in any case, only to the people who enjoy (if only, slaveringly, by proxy) the benefits of the wholesale and pervasive injustice and inequality.

The Supreme Court ducked the issue today, in a cowardly act that in reality only forestalls the political opportunism and cynicism that the majority will certainly exhibit at the next opportunity. But, am I missing something, or shouldn't the issue be: How has this pack of lying words, that has allowed millions upon millions of Americans to perform umpteen thousand acts of blatant hypocrisy, each, so categorically withstood and even avoided howls of derision from skeptical Americans, who do not need the cynical words "under god" (blasphemous, if there were a god to blaspheme) to provoke them?

An old friend writes:

I don't usually enter the political fray on this list, but this morning my patience has run out. I cannot read the paper, listen to the radio or link to my internet provider without being barraged with information about THE funeral.

My own theory about Ronbo Ray-Gun was that he actually died long ago.

In his bid to become Dictator of the World, Attorney General Alexander Haig arranged for the President to be assassinated through the services of a patsy, John Hinckley, in 1981. However, by attempting to declare Martial Law before the body was even cold he overstepped his mark and riled the VP, Twat Senior, who realized he would necessarily be next on the hit list. Assisted by the fact that the death had not yet been announced, and helped by his ex-cronies at the CIA (some of whom had seen Kurosawa's film KAGEMUSHA), Twat Senior pulled together a plot to neutralize Haig by putting out the news that the President had survived the attack.

Ray-Gun's body was very expertly taxidermized. An assemblage was made of lines from his old films and put into a recording box in his throat that could be activated by pulling a string. (When I was a kid, I had a doll, Chatty Cathy, who could be made to "talk" in this way. She would say inane baby things like "Please Mommy, brush my hair" and I got up to many dark sadistic acts upon her, but that's another story). So at press conferences, they would wheel out the Head of State on a cleverly disguised system of strings and pulleys, and a handler would stand behind him and action the string in his neck to make him talk. You notice that, like Chatty Cathy, he very often repeated himself and that his answers generally had no relation to the questions posed by the journalists. But sometimes, there would be a kind of surreal, oracular consistency to them, just as sentences randomly generated by a computer can be deeply poetic and apposite. Based on this phenomenon, Ronbo achieved the reputation of a great speaker, despite being a corpse.

In the aftermath of his Presidency, the Alzheimers was a convenient cover story for his continuing vegetative state. But then the Repugnicans found themselves in increasingly deep doodoo owing to their lying over Iraq, monstrosities at Abu Grahib, spiralling prices of oil and so forth. So they decided it was time to focus media attention on something bright and festive and count on the very short memeory of the American public to forget all their failings by November.

They timed the "termination" to coincide with the 60th D-Day commemorations in France to capitalize on photo opportunities of Twat Junior being tolerated by Jacques Chirac. And they will milk it to the last drop, putting every propaganda resource into the mix to manipulate us into imagining that this reactionary, jingoistic, wildly spending spongehead was a great President and that his passing is a national tragedy.

Alas, nostalgia is a powerful force. Twenty years ago is always a Golden Age.

EFR
Ile de France