Hopefully Not Stupid
Friday, June 24, 2005
My response to a Johnny Isakson form letter about the flag-burning amendment
Johnny Isakson, one of my state's two senators, has a form on hisa website that, if filled out, eventually results in a response to someone at "senator@isakson.senate.gov", although that address doesn't work for replies. It's probably written by staffers, and may even be a form letter (although I've gotten two responses now with moderately different content), but that doesn't stop me from wanting to respond to the message.
I really hate getting automated, or employee-sourced, message in response to my concerns, especially when the person I'm writing to is a co-sponsor of something so wrong-headed as the flag burning amendment.
Since my response to his message bounced, because I spent so long writing it and don't want it to vanish into the ether, and to serve as a record of the reasoning being used in favor of that damnable amendment, I'm going to post my response here. I doubt he'll ever see it, but maybe it won't go to waste this way.
> The American flag is a national treasure, and is one of our
> greatest symbols of nationhood and national unity.
I have no idea if a straight response this way will actually get read
by anyone, but it seems a lot less annoying (for myself and whoever
reads these things) to try to do a straight reply instead of
continuing to direct my responses through the web form and breaking up
the conversation, while also losing track of my own messages.
It is my considered opinion that ultimately, while flags have
important symbolic value, they are, in the end, symbols, and that
those who are popularly described as "dying for the flag" are more
accurately dying for the nation for which it stands. But the nation
is not the flag; the logical error committed there, frequently
committed these days, is taking the representation of a thing as the
thing itself.
> I believe desecrating
> the flag dishonors the sacrifices of those who served this Nation and
> continue to defend us all.
The word "descrating" is a loaded term, and has meant different things
throughout history. Did you know that there's already laws on the
books meant to protect the flag? They forbid using it as, for
example, part of an article of clothing. It dates back to a time when
people were concerned about commercial exploitaton of the flag -- a
cause I could get behind, considering how much false patriotism
centers around prominent flag display.
But I consider passing spurious amendments to "protect" a symbol to
be, at best, misguided. You cannot harm a symbol by doing anything to
one representation of it -- there will always be more flags. You can
harm that symbol, however, by harming the thing it represents -- and
one of the most powerful things we have in the U.S. is freedom of
speech. While I would never burn a flag myself, as the cliche goes, I
would do everything in my power to protect someone else's right to do
so.
The whole flag burning amendment issue strikes me as nothing more as a
political fad, seriously harmful to freedom of speech, brought to the
service of empty patroitism.
> While the Supreme Court says protestors have the
> right to burn the flag, the Constitution says we have the right to amend it,
> and we must now do so to protect the flag.
The Consitution says you have, not the right (as congressmen you don't
have the right to do any damn thing, your post is in service to your
constituency and grants you *no* rights), but the duty to amend it
when the need arises. But there is hardly such a need at this moment
-- the figure being bandied about is that a grand total of ONE flag
burning incident occured in the United States last year. To sponsor a
Constitutional amendment to fix a problem that doesn't exist in order
to bring the power of the U.S. Government to bear against a
questionable issue -- honestly, the situation seems, how should I put
this... Schaivo-esque?
I do appreciate the personalized responses, even if they are, at best,
written by staffers. (But then again, you do have a job to do.) I get
the feeling that neither of us is going to convince the other here, so
I'll merely thank you for your time, and get down to the business of
spreading the word about your co-sponsorship of this lamentable
amendment.
Johnny Isakson, one of my state's two senators, has a form on hisa website that, if filled out, eventually results in a response to someone at "senator@isakson.senate.gov", although that address doesn't work for replies. It's probably written by staffers, and may even be a form letter (although I've gotten two responses now with moderately different content), but that doesn't stop me from wanting to respond to the message.
I really hate getting automated, or employee-sourced, message in response to my concerns, especially when the person I'm writing to is a co-sponsor of something so wrong-headed as the flag burning amendment.
Since my response to his message bounced, because I spent so long writing it and don't want it to vanish into the ether, and to serve as a record of the reasoning being used in favor of that damnable amendment, I'm going to post my response here. I doubt he'll ever see it, but maybe it won't go to waste this way.
> The American flag is a national treasure, and is one of our
> greatest symbols of nationhood and national unity.
I have no idea if a straight response this way will actually get read
by anyone, but it seems a lot less annoying (for myself and whoever
reads these things) to try to do a straight reply instead of
continuing to direct my responses through the web form and breaking up
the conversation, while also losing track of my own messages.
It is my considered opinion that ultimately, while flags have
important symbolic value, they are, in the end, symbols, and that
those who are popularly described as "dying for the flag" are more
accurately dying for the nation for which it stands. But the nation
is not the flag; the logical error committed there, frequently
committed these days, is taking the representation of a thing as the
thing itself.
> I believe desecrating
> the flag dishonors the sacrifices of those who served this Nation and
> continue to defend us all.
The word "descrating" is a loaded term, and has meant different things
throughout history. Did you know that there's already laws on the
books meant to protect the flag? They forbid using it as, for
example, part of an article of clothing. It dates back to a time when
people were concerned about commercial exploitaton of the flag -- a
cause I could get behind, considering how much false patriotism
centers around prominent flag display.
But I consider passing spurious amendments to "protect" a symbol to
be, at best, misguided. You cannot harm a symbol by doing anything to
one representation of it -- there will always be more flags. You can
harm that symbol, however, by harming the thing it represents -- and
one of the most powerful things we have in the U.S. is freedom of
speech. While I would never burn a flag myself, as the cliche goes, I
would do everything in my power to protect someone else's right to do
so.
The whole flag burning amendment issue strikes me as nothing more as a
political fad, seriously harmful to freedom of speech, brought to the
service of empty patroitism.
> While the Supreme Court says protestors have the
> right to burn the flag, the Constitution says we have the right to amend it,
> and we must now do so to protect the flag.
The Consitution says you have, not the right (as congressmen you don't
have the right to do any damn thing, your post is in service to your
constituency and grants you *no* rights), but the duty to amend it
when the need arises. But there is hardly such a need at this moment
-- the figure being bandied about is that a grand total of ONE flag
burning incident occured in the United States last year. To sponsor a
Constitutional amendment to fix a problem that doesn't exist in order
to bring the power of the U.S. Government to bear against a
questionable issue -- honestly, the situation seems, how should I put
this... Schaivo-esque?
I do appreciate the personalized responses, even if they are, at best,
written by staffers. (But then again, you do have a job to do.) I get
the feeling that neither of us is going to convince the other here, so
I'll merely thank you for your time, and get down to the business of
spreading the word about your co-sponsorship of this lamentable
amendment.
Thursday, June 16, 2005
Random Ideas, 6/16
1. Take the music to the song "Hotel California." Put it into a blank video file. Then splice into that file appropriate scenes from the movie Manos: The Hands of Fate, so as to make a music video for the song. Post it somewhere on the web. Watch the fun.
2. Also a video idea. Intercut between highlights (more likely, lowlights) from the
current session of Congress and President Bush press conferences (Schrivo, estate tax repeal, the Flag Burning amendment current winding its way through Congress), and scenes from a really over-the-top hillbilly gathering, complete with cousins kissing, pickup trucks tearing up dirt roads, unlovely people in deteriorating overalls with vehicles devoted to dead people & peeing Calvin decals, et cetera. Overlay the whole thing with "Arkansas Traveller" and "Turkey in the Straw."
3. Go to www.yakov.com and see aging, one-joke funnyman Yakov Smirnov try to ply his two-decade-old wares in Branson, Missouri, making his apparently prodigious living these days confirming the misbegotten beliefs of superiority held by the more rural, more regrettable portions of our nation. Try to make fun of it but quit halfway through when overcome by feeling of profound ennui, mixed with longstanding, now confirmed suspecion that one is merely raging against the ever-deepening tide of stupidity infesting the United States, then collapse weeping, spending night curled up inside bottle of cheap liquor. Later, try to get a description of the whole process published on McSweeney's.
1. Take the music to the song "Hotel California." Put it into a blank video file. Then splice into that file appropriate scenes from the movie Manos: The Hands of Fate, so as to make a music video for the song. Post it somewhere on the web. Watch the fun.
2. Also a video idea. Intercut between highlights (more likely, lowlights) from the
current session of Congress and President Bush press conferences (Schrivo, estate tax repeal, the Flag Burning amendment current winding its way through Congress), and scenes from a really over-the-top hillbilly gathering, complete with cousins kissing, pickup trucks tearing up dirt roads, unlovely people in deteriorating overalls with vehicles devoted to dead people & peeing Calvin decals, et cetera. Overlay the whole thing with "Arkansas Traveller" and "Turkey in the Straw."
3. Go to www.yakov.com and see aging, one-joke funnyman Yakov Smirnov try to ply his two-decade-old wares in Branson, Missouri, making his apparently prodigious living these days confirming the misbegotten beliefs of superiority held by the more rural, more regrettable portions of our nation. Try to make fun of it but quit halfway through when overcome by feeling of profound ennui, mixed with longstanding, now confirmed suspecion that one is merely raging against the ever-deepening tide of stupidity infesting the United States, then collapse weeping, spending night curled up inside bottle of cheap liquor. Later, try to get a description of the whole process published on McSweeney's.
