The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Patriotism Redefined

Call me a commie and paint Lenin’s goatee on me now that none other than the President himself has called those of us who didn’t applaud his sedated State of the Union speech unpatriotic. He said this week those football players in the NFL who won’t stand up for the national anthem ought to be fired or leave the country. I guess, like those protestors, I’m guilty as charged. I even think it’s okay for them to stay in the country.

It used to be a free country and I, for one, miss it. When I was a school teacher and my high school played the Star Spangled Banner over the loudspeaker, I didn’t put my hand over my heart. I didn’t stand up. My rural schoolkids asked why. I said because it’s a free country. Course, I didn’t teach there long. They were free to hire someone else and they certainly did, probably a teacher who took a pledge.

I’m not really much of a commie. Or even a two bit radical. I just don’t like people telling me what to do or what to believe. Seems sort of un-American to me. I came of age in the ‘60’s, not the Eishenhower 50’s. The President wants to make America great again, code for turning the clock back to white male Protestant ethic. He wants the #MeToo movement off his back. He hates the Black Lives Matter folks. He’s talking lately about God, this from a man who has no church, whose God is his mirror, who lies incessantly, who is a crook and a molester, who got elected President but still sees himself as a star in his own reality TV show.

I guess I don’t know what patriotism is in this strange Lewis Carroll world of Trump. But I know what it isn’t and the President doesn’t know either.

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