Photo Credit — Staff Sgt. Ned T. Johnston / “The Thunderbirds Delta” / AFRC
Last summer we were invited to a socially distanced birthday picnic along the Hudson River. When we left, we were relieved to find a nearby bus stop (turns out it is a long walk from 70th and Broadway to 64th and Riverside). But the name of the stop made me cringe: West 70th Street and Freedom Place.
Freedom Place? Really? WHY?
I stood on the promenade in Brooklyn Heights on a certain sunny September afternoon in 2001 and knew we were screwed. Big-time. Badly. Horribly. In ways we couldn’t even imagine then (take a look around you right now). And like clockwork out came the American flags and the renaming of anything that could conceivably carry the tag “freedom” began. Remember Freedom Fries when those yellow-bellied Frenchies refused to help the United States illegally invade Iraq? One night shortly after that sad epiphany in Brooklyn Heights, I peered through the annoying American flag decal on the bus window at a flatbed truck carrying a tank down Broadway. There’s your freedom, my fellow Americans.
The freedom to blow up anyone we don’t like.
I actually had a boss ask why I wasn’t wearing an American flag lapel pin in the weeks after the 9/11 attacks. She was the woman who hired me to answer phones and set up BDSM play sessions in a commercial dungeon down off the Westside Highway. And she was a real patriot.
And here’s a little something for anyone with whatever it takes to visit NYC: we don’t call that giant silver dick at the end of Manhattan The Freedom Tower. It’s One World Trade, k?
Language is immediately repurposed to give cover to the criminals in power when they decide it’s time to whip their potential armies and sycophants into the necessary frenzy to wage their next wars. George Orwell skewered this strategy so exquisitely in his novel, “1984”, that his name is now a verb. So when decades of obscene foreign interventions, assassinations, underhanded participation in coups, and other criminal behavior blew up in our faces on 9/11 the appropriate response was to drag out Freedom for all the Patriots to gather round while madly waving their flags.
And if you don’t think you’d better be ready to wave that flag with the appropriate fervor, try not standing for the National Anthem at any sporting event. Or don’t. I wouldn’t want you to get a beer dumped on your head.
How did a nice older lady who grew up in the Midwest get to be such a grouchy-pants about her “homeland”?
Actually, my first stirrings of dread and doubt about The Land of the Free (see?) and The Home of the Brave began with Duck and Cover drills in elementary school. Even at the age of eight, I questioned how effective my desk would be to protect me from a thermonuclear attack although I dutifully recited The Pledge of Allegiance every morning with no idea what I was saying.
For all the frothing-at-the-mouth insistence on Freedom in this country, if you stop and look at what we’ve got here it’s not exactly freedom. We are increasingly trapped by a rigged economy that demands that those of us who don’t help the wealthy get wealthier work two and three jobs. Health care insurance? That’s not for everyone, sweetheart, so don’t get sick or hurt yourself. And don’t get any ideas about things being better for your kids especially if you’re not white. But, really, being white is no guarantee of the hallowed social mobility that this country advertises like laundry detergent.
So, no, I’m not a good patriot.
I don’t love my country right or wrong. I don’t believe the crap I was fed throughout my school years. I am not Free and neither are you. As long as young men (but interestingly not women) have to register with Selective Service — talk about a manipulation of language — when they turn 18 and young women have no choice but to bear children they can’t afford to feed or care for, we are not Free. Freedom is for the criminals in power who are determined to maintain that power.
I’ve long thought that the entire concept of Free Speech was a masterstroke on the part of those white slave-owners who got sick of paying taxes to King George. If we are free to criticize the criminals in charge our words have no power. A scroll through any social media feed will show endless tirades — similar to this one it has to be admitted — and shaking of fists and gnashing of teeth. But no change.
Looks like our words or even our actions won’t affect positive change in this part of the world.
However, the Freedom and Power of the ruling class had 18+ months of being systematically shredded by an invisible virus and all their manipulation of language and hysterical blaming didn’t slow that down. Ironically, what will slow the virus down is the exact opposite of many of my Fellow American’s sacred idea of freedom. Of course, if the “Freedom-loving” leaders of this country ever did manage to mandate the kind of draconian lockdown that will certainly contain our pandemic, they would then get their dearest wish: to have things go back to — I’m going to say it — normal.
Are we all ready to unfurl our flags and pledge allegiance to the economy again? That’s what the true patriot would do. Right?
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