.Letters to Editor: August 5, 2015

More on flag waving, and a guy who likes beer takes a stand

Can Do

Try a local can (“Yes They Can,” July 29). Plow Brewing Company in Santa Rosa has quart cans to go. The bartender will fill it as you order, right in the tap room.

Via Bohemian.com

Flag Waving

I’m not really one for the soapbox, but I feel compelled to reply to Mr. Bracco’s letter (“Love It or Leave It,” July 15) by stating that I believe that those folks who loudly proclaim “Love this country or leave it!” are the ones who most need to get the hell out. This country was built by people who said, “This is pretty messed up right here and we should change it.” I’d like to suggest that Mr. Bracco and those of his ilk pack up their simplistic flag-waving and take it to a country that insists on mindless patriotism—like Iran, f’rinstance.

Santa Rosa

Thanks for your critique (“Love It or Leave It”) of my Open Mic essay (“Flag Waiving,” July 15). I especially appreciate your confession that you endorse genocide. At least I think that’s what you implied. Your characterization of (all?) Indians as brutal seems to be in the context of justifying the Europeans’ treatment of them. Exterminating a group that has done evil things leads to an unending cycle of genocide. The same “reasoning” would justify the genocide of all Americans, then the genocide of whoever killed us, etc., ad infinitum. But I bet that if the Chinese did to us what we did to the Indians, you wouldn’t be keen to wave their flag.

Also, thanks for illuminating the darkness at the heart of the American psyche by responding to my attack on genocide and slavery as if that constitutes an attack on the United States. I couldn’t have put the connection more clearly myself, and you did it without even trying.

Regarding your brief list of the sort of exaggerated virtues that make up the myth of national righteousness (“freedom, liberty and prosperity”): Even if that were all true, it’s irrelevant to my point. The American flag is soaked with even more innocent blood than the Confederate one, and we shouldn’t venerate genocidal slave owners as heroes. Note that some of your arguments are the same arguments people are offering in support of the Confederate flag. If they justify waving the one flag, they must justify waving the other.

You invoke “our ability to surmount our deficiencies and advance toward our ideals.” But you seem oblivious to the fact that that must start with admitting our brutalities.

Cotati

Dept. of Corrections

The quote “I usually find it much cheaper, and usually much more satisfying, to just go to a movie” in David Templeton’s “Over-Oaked Theater” (July 15) should have been attributed to Conrad Bishop, not Harry Duke. We regret the error.

Write to us at [email protected].

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