11/8/2017:
KEEP IT AT HALF-STAFF: If you're as old as I am (born in the 1950s!), you can still remember a time when the flag flew at half-staff only on very rare occasions (President Kennedy's assassination; the Space Shuttle Challenger exploding). But now, thanks to overarmed wackos (mostly American citizens) executing mass numbers of civilians every few weeks, the flag seems to be at half-staff most of the time. Have you noticed that? Because I sure as hell have.
Here's my recommendation: Why don't we just keep the flag at half-staff indefinitely? Because some overarmed wacko is going to kill huge numbers of civilians again in a matter of weeks if not days. You know it's going to happen and so do I. Why even pretend to have a nation that functions under some kind of rudimentary rule of civilization? If there was some inkling that we were moving to do something about the nonstop carnage, I would never make such a suggestion. But we aren't. As one pundit had it, America's national conversation about gun control stopped after Sandy Hook. When we decided that children (and apparently fully half of the victims in the Texas church massacre were children) could also be massacred at any time with nothing more than a collective shrug of our shoulders, the conversation was over. The lunatics won.
So I say let's leave the flag that my father, many of my friends, and my ancestors fought and died for at half-staff. Because if we're not in a national state of perpetual mourning, we ought to be.
Posted by Alois on
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