Thursday, December 01, 2016

JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: A TRUMP TWEET ABOUT FLAG-BURNING PUNISHMENT HOPEFULLY CAN BE IGNORED - A DUMB AND HOPELESS OLD REPUBLICAN IDEA - AND HOW MANY AMERICANS JUST DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY MUCH OF THE WORLD REGARDS THEIR FLAG ENTIRELY DIFFERENTLY THAN THEY DO


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT


Well, I am sorry he's recalled this tired old Republican idea of the 1980s.

It was one that went on and on in droning tedium, never going anywhere. I always understood it as a sign of a party with no real purpose trying to spark attention.

But Trump is a man who just bubbles over with concepts, good and bad, and most of the bubbles are allowed to harmlessly pop.

Of course, recalling this is also an effective way to float a notion and see how the public reacts, which will not be well for this one, at least with the great majority.

The dumber Republicans tried for years and got nowhere.

This is also a way to keep minority portions of his base happy with little periodic noises they like to hear.

I cannot believe he really means what he hurriedly typed at seven in the morning.
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Response to another reader’s comment:

Many simply do not understand that controversy and troubles around the American flag stem from the fact that it is no longer just an innocent national symbol.

For great numbers of people in the world, the same flag some Americans fly affectionately from a pole on their porch, represents aggression and bloodshed and grave injustice. The parallel with the Union Jack in 1776 is rough, although Britain’s imperial forces never killed and destroyed on the scale of America’s today.

I know that is hard for many naively-faithful American Patriot types to accept - thinking as they do that America is the fount of all that's good and fair on the planet - but it is simply the truth.

There has not been a single American war since WWII that was about self-defense or, indeed, about any matter of principle beyond America's self-assumed right to tell others what to do, and with deadly force. Although there was plenty of empty speechifying with slogans and empty words accompanying each bloody event.

Millions, literally millions, have died at America's hands in Vietnam, Cambodia, Somalia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and in a host of other places.

And they all died, with others wounded and vast amounts of property destroyed, at the hands of American forces waving the flag and mouthing slogans about democracy and rights. It is an appalling record.

All of them died for no good reason except that the American establishment wanted it that way. Now, wasn't that kind of arrogance and indifference to people a major factor in Trump's victory? Many Americans are simply sick of it because the establishment treats them the same way.

And how bitterly ironic it all is because America seems incapable of running its own affairs - from its titanic debts to its shabby third-world inner-cities.