You Know Were You Can Put Your Passive-aggressive Flag!!!

I am sure it is well known to the readers of the blog how I think of fundamentalist thinking.  Today is no exception.  The strangest thing happened today.  We live in an upscale neighborhood by the Oquirrh Mountain Temple in Daybreak, South Jordan, UT.  We moved into this home about 8 months ago.  The house has a flag pole.  It had a flag on it with tattered edges.  We replaced that flag with our own.  The flag has not weathered the winter sun well.  It became tattered and faded and bound itself around the flag pole.

I was sitting in my office proofing a paper that my lovely wife had written.  I saw a shadow flash across the blinds of the window that faces the porch.  There was a thump like a package had been delivered at the front door but no knock at the door and no door bell.  I have been waiting for a text book that was supposed to be delivered today and I assumed that was it.  I did not immediately get up and go to the door instead I continued to proof the paper.  Several minutes later I got up and went to the door.  There was a package on the door step.  I was a distinctive red white and blue box.  I opened it and found our tattered flag inside with an advertisement to have the flag repaired and the care and proper handling instructions for the American flag.    There was a new flag on the pole.

Oh how nice right?  Wrong!  Passive-aggressive self-righteous behavior is never nice.  I am aware that some people wear their patriotism on their sleeve and know in their heart that this is the greatest country in the world!  I know to them our tattered flag is an insult to their patriotism.  Such an insult that they were spurred into action to replace our flag and to rub our noses in their patriotism.  This chicken shit act of anonymously replacing our flag, coming on to our property, and self-righteously depositing our tattered flag on the porch with "protocol" instructions doesn't make you a patriot it makes you an ugly-American.  

Ugly American is an epithet used to refer to perceptions of loud, arrogant, demeaning, thoughtless and ethnocentric behavior of American citizens mainly abroad, but also at home.

As we have walked in our front door over the last 6 weeks or so, we have been aware that the flag needed to come down.  We have had a couple of conversations about that.  However, with the demands of our family, my school load, and the extra care my ill mother has taken..... the condition of that flag has ranked last on my priorities.

You might be tempted to say that nice neighbor did you a favor. They didn't!  My wife has been humiliated by the thoughtless act.  She has told me that our next move will take us out of Daybreak and out of South Jordan.  She stated unequivocally that she hates living here.  She cried for the better part of an hour.  She already felt like a misfit because was we don't assimilate into the local culture.  This was the straw.

The American flag is not a sacred symbol to me and I refuse to bestow a piece of cloth with any amount of adoration.  I am not a chest thumping patriot.  I don't think that America is beyond reproach.  I think there are several other countries I could live in and thrive in.  I am as much as a citizen of the world and humanity as I am an American.  I won't ever say if you live in America you had better learn goddamn English.  I don't give members of the military extra respect because they served the "country".  I served the country for 25 years domestically as a police officer.  I have been shot at, physically assaulted and willing put myself in harms way to protect the very thing that was taken from my wife today.... the right to live peacefully the way she chooses.

I don't know who was responsible because they didn't have the personal integrity to knock on my door.  The net result of their action is that my wife feels more isolated than ever.  I personally resent their fundamental patriotism and would have no problem telling them that to their face!