15 May 2014 American Flag at Half Staff

So I’m walking around downtown on my brunch break and I’m noticing all the American flags are flying at half mast.

It not being a holiday or a day of mourning I find this curious. Checking with coworkers and random gawkers I find they likewise have no idea about this incident.

Doing a bit of research courtesy of everyone’s favorite non-google search engine I turn up that today is Peace Officers Memorial Day.

President Barack Obama seemingly yesterday signed into law a proclamation establishing basically a new holiday and a police week.

Now I appreciate what peace officers do as well as the next guy, however crafting a holiday out of whole cloth, with no discussion, no public input seems… wrong. There is something wrong in its overnight inundation onto the public consciousness. Using an obscure JFK era law to fashion this doctrine from on high.

It goes against the idea of representative government, to have the governed so outside the process of government. A one day turnaround, and taadaa… new holiday.

We already have a memorial day honoring the fallen of wars foreign and domestic. This new memorial while seemingly an innocuous thing, cannot be separated from the ever more paramilitary presence that law enforcement is taking on in the communities they were once tasked with serving.

An adversarial relationship between law enforcement of all stripes and the people, that has grown only more so since the Patriot Act, and President Obama’s numerous sacrifices of liberties and freedoms in his two terms.

We are not on the verge of a police state… we are well into the first tentative days of one, and this whole cloth creation of police holidays while hopefully innocuous, is tainted by the times and is hard not to see… as a dangerous sign, a steeper slide into a nation of unquestionable authority backed by flag waving propaganda.

Or it could just be a flag at half-mast. :). I leave you to judge.

THE MAN OF BRONZE

The statue caught my eye.

The man of bronze looked at me, and I heard

on the wind

something singular

that spoke with voices legion.

Voices that had given

much;

their last,

best measure…

“Don’t fall backwards.”

The voice of the few

and the many

implored

“Don’t fall backwards.

Don’t give ground.

Go forward.

More to do.

Much, much, more.”

Much later I would try to convince myself that the man of bronze could not have spoken, the children of bronze could not have watched me with eyes the color of bombed churches and torched buses.

Much later I would try to find security in rational lies. I would try to un-hear what I heard.

But in the midnight hour

Always in the midnight hour

like an old, tired song

I hear them clearly.

With the voice of men

who go down to the sea in ships

and war heroes

swinging from southern trees

they cry

“More, more, more!”

—words and photos copyright 2012 HT