What if you believe that there has been systemic racism in this country and you also believe that standing for the national anthem is a right, a privilege paid for by brave men and women for over 200+ years? What if we did not combine the two? What if the flag and anthem continue to represent what is great about our country and what if we chose to “add” a tradition of kneeling to represent the sins of our past and the solidarity of us as humans of this country? Would that be that hard? A kneel as a group and then stand bravely for our anthem as a group.
Seems too easy of a solution. Maybe if someone came up with a witty hashtag it would work.
I traveled to South Dakota last weekend. It was a trip that had been planned long before the president, but I was dismayed at my acquaintances that were nearly offended that I would consider going to see the president of the United States speak. For the record, we did not see him speak. We applied for tickets through the South Dakota parks lottery system and were not selected.
Being a true capitalist Republican, I probably would have sold them if we had been selected. I don’t want to catch the ‘rona and I like money more than I like crowds.
After seeing the people that were attending, I am pretty glad we did not get tickets. I am not sure if the grunge protestors or the old white Trumpers are more annoying. The pro-Trump crowd looked like your basic SEC football game tailgate crowd and the protestors all look like greasy Europeans. Probably a toss up on which group is more annoying.
I’m not sure if you are aware of this but South Dakota is a beautiful state once you get west of the Missouri River. Even if they tear down Mount Rushmore, there are a whole bunch of mountains with weird names that are probably going to offend people. I am going to guess it would take a lot of time to tear down all those mountains.
A city manager in Newton Falls, Ohio issued a proclamation last week that declared the city a “Statuary Sanctuary City” and offered to take sculptures of famous figures in American history that are being dismantled across our country. I love this town and have never been there. It is also the home to the only US zip code in the contiguous US where all five numbers are the same. Zip code of 44444, so easy, even blonds can remember it.
This statue effort is a good use of public official time and it also takes some, uh, “cajones.” I had to look this up. No way Newton Falls has more than 20% Democrats.
Wrong. 44.5% of the people tend to vote Democrat and 50.7% Republican and the rest are drunk and vote Independent. There is hope in this world. Maybe this small town can be the epicenter of common sense, a little humor, and a new path forward that does not define every single issue as conservative or liberal.
I say, send these people your statues.
(Guy Speckman can be reached at gspeckman@me.net or planning a vacation to Newton Falls, Ohio)
