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Half-Mast on a rainy morning. [1]

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Date: 2023-04-03  

One of my Aunt Connie's favorite sayings was: "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."

Our flag is supposed to “say something nice” — fly high, preferably flapping in a stiff breeze, telling the world what a wonderful country we have and how proud we are, of it.

But the flags here did not say anything nice today — they were flown low, hanging appropriately lifeless, like dead children, telling the world how ashamed we are of what we have allowed our country to become.

Being a Veteran makes it worse, because we remember hundreds of moments, mornings and evenings, when we would hear the bugle call Reveille or Retreat and stop whatever we were doing and stand and salute, and whisper The Oath, and be filled with patriotic pride.

But now… I hear that bugle call and think "NO! STOP! Don't raise it! Not like this!" Aunt Connie was right: it would be better to cut the pole down, as one would a diseased tree, than submit to such daily humiliation.

If a dog poops in the house, a redneck will rub the dog's nose in it, to "train" him not to do it again. Maybe people can be trained in the same way: if we "rub their nose" in the blood of dead children every morning, then maybe they'll stop doing it?

But then the term "shameless" comes to mind, and the AR-15 Lapel Pins, and the "Not my problem: we home-school," and I'm back to just cut it down.

We tried BLM -- Black Lives Matter -- but it made no difference, because the simple fact is they do not.

Maybe we should try KLM -- Kids' Lives Matter -- hoping that there is a point at which the cognitive dissonance will become so unbearable that we must change or go mad.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/3/2161919/-Half-Mast-on-a-rainy-morning

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