Life On A B-I7

Flag City

I’m in Flag City U.S.A. Here flags are quite prevalent in the back of pickup trucks. I suspect it is the same in your town. I pulled into the local farm store and next to me was a pickup truck with a 3’ x 5’ flag in the bed of the truck that said:

Trump 2024 No More Bullshit

The first thing that struck me was the sign did not appear to me to be making a statement about the economy, the border crisis, college unrest over genocide in Gaza, or even the public funding of sports stadiums that only wealthy team owners profit from (that last one would be hard to fit on a flag). It’s about perception and perhaps even education.

If you are flying that flag, I believe it says as much about you as it does about your politics. It seems to me you have given up trying to figure out what is going on in society, what your role is, and what you can do to help make society better for all of us. You’ve decided that putting your faith in a self-centered misogynistic, financial fraudster is the best answer you can come up with. Why? Because that’s what he told you to do, and it’s easier to accept that explanation than it is to consider all the alternatives in front of you and make up your mind independently using facts gleaned from multiple sources.

Education is playing a key role in this “flag” crisis. Our education system is failing to instill in people a willingness to ask probing questions and work through the logic of issues, arriving independently at answers. But wait, there’s more.

Authoritarianism and misogyny are being preached on a worldwide scale today by power-hungry leaders and conservative media. This is sinking into the psyche of male voters, but women are not exempt from these arguments. This is a scam being preached by conservative media on all of us to rest power from the many and place it into the hands of the wealthy few. Our founders would be the first to explain this is a strategy employed with the intent to kill democracy. Persons fixated on the acquisition of wealth and power don’t like living in a democracy.