That's what I say when I put my hand over my heart to face the stars and stripes of our national non-sectarian religious icon.

To say otherwise would perpetuate a myth.

America's depredations weigh heavily on this old man's heart this chilly holiday season. Presidents Trump and Obama have facilitated the mass murder of at least 85,000 children in Yemen.

President Bush the Lesser and his puppeteer Cheney the Cruel lied us into Iraq War2. (According to former U.S. House of Representatives Majority Leader Richard Armey, R-Tejas, among many others.)

Bush the Elder gave Saddam Hussein permission to invade Kuwait then ginned up a war to protect the Bush family's expiring oil leases in the Persian Gulf.

With a little help from Lawrence of Arabia, Winston Churchill created phony countries to maintain British power over the middle east and its oil riches, spawning the Saudi royal family in the process.

And the hero of D-Day, Dwight Eisenhower, now ranks as our worst president. That's saying a lot when you review his peers in the bottom of the historical barrel. Franklin Pierce, Bush the Lesser's ancestor, was drunk most of the time he held the White House. Warren Harding would have been impeached and removed from office had he not conveniently died. Ulysses S. Grant's administration was as corrupt as Harding's but nobody touches war heroes, Eisenhower included.

George Washington remains Numero Uno. Without him, we would not have a country. For his trouble in answering the call of duty to form a nation when he did not have to, Congress changed the name of Washington National Airport to Reagan National. Blackguards.

Ronald Reagan institutionalized white backlash, an infestation we increasingly suffer today. Andrew Johnson reimposed slavery with a century of Jim Crow.

"Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it," as George Santayana famously warned.

Some 500,000 U.S. veterans, many with post-traumatic stress disorder, go without care because they have less-than-honorable discharges stigmatizing their records. (National Public Radio 26 Nov. 2018) PTSD can cause physically and mentally crippled soldiers to do crazy things.

Our madcap president condones murder most foul, both wholesale (Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Philippines) and retail (Jamal Khashoggi). He also steals babies from their parents.

And so I recognize liberty and justice for some, not so much if you're black or brown.

"The origins of the pledge trace to the late 19th century, the product of an expansionist American project. In 1891, the family magazine Youth’s Companion asked 35-year-old Francis Bellamy, a former pastor of Boston’s Bethany Baptist Church, to fashion a patriotic program for schools around the country to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ 'arrival in America' by 'raising the U.S. Flag over every public school from the Atlantic to the Pacific.' "

So wrote American University history professor Christopher Petrella in a Washington Post column last year. (I hope he has no plans to travel to Saudi Arabia or Turkey.)

"In just 23 lean words, Bellamy attempted to capture the 'underlying spirit' of the American Republic...While the language contained in the pledge is not overtly nativist or xenophobic, the spirit that animated its creation was steeped in this sort of bigotry," Petrella stated.

"Through the pledge, Bellamy sought to define 'true Americanism' against the rising tide of southern and eastern European immigrants 'pouring over our country' in the early 20th century from 'races which we cannot assimilate without a lowering of our racial standard.' Although Bellamy conceded that 'the United States has always been a nation of immigrants,' he argued that 'incoming waves of immigrants … are coming from countries whose institutions are entirely at variance with our own,' " Petrella noted.

Sound familiar? My father and grandparents were among them.

"Bellamy, like countless others, feared that the 'poor stock' of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe would result in a loss of white native-born Protestant American culture," Petrella wrote.

I resemble that remark.

Dwight Eisenhower added "under God" to the pledge in 1954. I recited it every day in grade school.

That didn't make him the worst. He ranks as rank for placing the ghoulish Dulles brothers in charge of U.S. foreign policy. John Foster at State and Allen at CIA reintroduced the deadly sport of overthrowing democratically elected governments we didn't like, often at the behest of corporations — 19th Century Gunboat Diplomacy on steroids.

And so we became a monstrous two-headed empire, both bright beacon and brutal bludgeon.

We can do better if we bring forth the better angels of our nature, many of them women, many of whom got elected this month.

In the meantime, I will pray for my grandson who just enlisted in the U.S. Navy. I wish I'd had a chance to talk to him.

I hope you and yours experienced a warm and enjoyable Thanksgibleting..

Happy High Holly Days.

Be well. Raise hell. Esté bien. Haga infierno.

_______

AFTERWORD: The above presidential rogues gallery almost makes Nixon look good by comparison, n'est ce pas? Nicht wahr?
_______
Andrew Barbano is a 50-year Nevadan, executive producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration, first vice-president and political action chair of the Reno-Sparks NAACP, labor/consumer/civil rights advocate, member of Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO and editor of NevadaLabor.com and BallotBoxing.US and SenJoeNeal.org and DoctorLawyerWatch.com/ As always, his opinions are strictly his own. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988 and received its ninth Nevada Press Association award and 6th first-place at the 29 Sept. 2018 NPA annual convention in Las Vegas. (That trophy and about six bucks will get you a Latte Mocha Cotsafracas Chingade at just about any Starbux worldwide, guaranteed.)

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