So, as the whole country (and apparently all of Twitter) knows by now, NBC left out the “under god” line in the Pledge of Allegiance in the ridiculously self-indulgent, patriotic jerkfest of an opening montage for the U.S. Open. I have no idea what soldiers and children reciting the pledge have to do with tennis, but if you even offhandedly suggest that there are people dying to “protect our freedom” to whack a yellow bouncy ball over a net while overdramatically sighing, I’ll seriously reach through your internet connection, even if it’s wi-fi, and slap you across the face for being an absolute fucking moron. Actually, I’d do that even if you said you were just watching tennis.
Anyway, NBC apologized, but the networks (including their own) will continue to drag this out for the next week or so as an excuse to bash atheists and focus on trivial topics that distract from the real problems our country is facing – two things the media is excellent at. It’s sad that the only time the majority of this country is willing to discuss matters of mixing church and state is when some overpaid pundit jumps on a non-issue like this one, and their point is never to “discuss” anything. They just push all the right buttons, and like mindless, reactionary robots, we scream about the evils of godlessness and the preserving of great American traditions and other logical fallacies that fail to address the heart of the subject or contain any semblance of truth.
Hey Twitter, do you know who else left out “under god” out of the Pledge of Allegiance? THE FUCKING GUY WHO WROTE IT. Francis Bellamy wrote the pledge in 1892, and despite being a Baptist minister, he never thought to include his religious belief in that simple oath, hoping to unite rather than divide. In fact, he also considered himself a Christian socialist, so it was ironic that his words were later changed out of fear of some of the very ideas its original author stood for. The pledge was formally recognized by Congress in 1942, but in 1954, in a cowardly reaction to the Red Scare, President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized the official addition of the religious phrase. I’ve found that the people who seem to talk the most about rights and freedoms are those who are working the hardest to take those very things away from you, and nothing embodied that more than the ensuing wave of McCarthyism.
It’s funny how Americans spend so much time sucking off the Founding Fathers and raising them up like infallible gods on high, yet Bellamy specifically wrote the pledge with their intentions in mind and here we are claiming it’s “un-American” to not include a phrase that wasn’t found in its first draft or even its first official adoption. It’s also a phrase that you won’t find in any of the documents the country was founded on, yet we let fear mongers slap it on our currency and indoctrinate us with it in prejudiced campaigns that often resembled those of our enemies. You hear so much about how our country was better off “back in the good old days,” yet these same flag-waving dipshits would rather recite a 57-year-old pledge over a 119-year-old pledge. I know it’s more fun to make up your own version of history that fits your narrow-minded, spoon-fed worldview, but let’s try to remember that fifth grade education, people. It’s a pledge, not a prayer; you’re swearing allegiance to the country, not to a higher power – all you have to do is read it to understand that much.
I also love how often the word “godless” is thrown around in these debates as a negative term, though to call those “debates” imply that the other side is actually listening and responding to the others’ arguments. The true atheists aren’t actually heard from at all during these one-sided, hate-filled tirades, and if they are, it’s only to put them on for a 30-second segment in which they have no time to form a cohesive sentence, never mind a rebuttal. Secular, largely atheistic countries have the lowest crime and teen pregnancy rates in the world, and less than one percent of America’s prisons contain godless criminals, but again and again people are told that atheism leads to moral degradation, and again and again the unwashed masses eat it up without question. If one of those same pundits used “Jewish,” for example, in the same nasty, condescending tone they use to utter “godless,” you better believe that network would have him fired faster than you could tweet, “I’m offended!” Guess what? #noonecares
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if NBC’s exclusion of those words was due to poor editing or to make a purposeful statement – what matters is that the thoughtful dialogue that could result from such snafus always ends up being reduced to 140 character whining with absolutely no context or forethought. You’re not special, you’re not quotable, you’re not clever, and you’re definitely not ready for a real discussion on real national concerns. Everyone I’ve refuted on this wasn’t too happy about having their history corrected, but you shouldn’t bring it up if you don’t want to look as stupid as you clearly are.
And what were any of you doing watching tennis anyway? If you really have that little to do, America, try picking up the book you use to balance your coffee table and actually reading it. In the same time it takes to exercise your freedoms, you could actually learn about why you have them in the first place. Spoiler: It’s not because of the theocratic bullshit being spewed by “news” programs and “concerned” politicians.
“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”
-Thomas Jefferson, in an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association
