"Allegiance per blunt instruments"

 This has not overall been a good few weeks for civil liberties. 

Our Secretary of Defense has openly called for a major cable news outlet to be acquired by one of Trump's billionaire cronies so that it will cover Trump's war more deferentially. 

Trump's chief goon over at the FCC has openly threatened to revoke the broadcast licenses of disobedient news outlets that refuse to toe the government line on the war. 

A group of protesters in Texas have been convicted on criminal charges of providing "material support" to "domestic terrorism" because they were alleged to be part of an "antifa cell." 

The evidence? They wore black. They possessed and transported "radical" anarchist zines. Observers have called the prosecution's case tantamount to a theory of "guilt by literature." 

The government even seized a printing press as "evidence," in the course of building their case, because it had been used to produce leftist zines. 

One is reminded once again of the fate of the radical printer Carl Hamblin, in Edgar Lee Masters's poem: 

"The press of the Spoon River Clarion was wrecked, / And I was tarred and feathered"—merely for publishing a poem that was deemed to be overly sympathetic to "the Anarchists" who were "were hanged in Chicago."

But there was one bright spot this week on the civil liberties side. 

Pam Bondi's Justice Department found itself obliged to drop charges against a U.S. veteran who had burned a flag in order to make a patriotic point about freedom of expression. 

Earlier, recall, Trump had issued an executive order demanding that federal prosecutors crack down on "flag burning"—even though directly on-point Supreme Court precedent had upheld it as protected symbolic speech. 

A U.S. veteran burned a flag in response to this order—not in order to condemn the U.S. Constitution, but to fulfill it. 

His flag-burning made him a true patriot, in contrast to the false patriots in the executive branch who are trying to burn the Bill of Rights. 

The government knew they couldn't directly criminalize an act that the Supreme Court had already placed squarely under the protection of the First Amendment. 

And so, instead, they got him on a few misdemeanor charges related to setting fires in public areas, etc. He pleaded guilty to these. 

But then, the federal judge overseeing the case inquired into whether DOJ had only undertaken these lesser charges in the first place because of Trump's executive order, which could make this a vindictive prosecution. 

The government wisely chose to drop the charges at this point—rather than further brief a case that would almost certainly have disclosed the fact that yes, indeed, they were persecuting this man on Trump's orders. 

All of this—the white nationalists in the Justice Department and the Pentagon—their bullying and criminalization of anyone who dissents from their ungodly and unlawful and unpatriotic wars—

Their ceaseless efforts to make us worship a flag while all the time they personally take a royal dump on the Constitution and principles for which that flag stands—

It calls to mind nothing so much as E.E. Cummings's poem: 

i sing of Olaf glad and big

whose warmest heart recoiled at war:

a conscientious object-or

his wellbelovéd colonel(trig

westpointer most succinctly bred)

took erring Olaf soon in hand;

but--though an host of overjoyed

noncoms(first knocking on the head

him)do through icy waters roll

that helplessness which others stroke

with brushes recently employed

anent this muddy toiletbowl,

while kindred intellects evoke

allegiance per blunt instruments--

Olaf(being to all intents

a corpse and wanting any rag

upon what God unto him gave)

responds,without getting annoyed

"I will not kiss your fucking flag"

straightway the silver bird looked grave

(departing hurriedly to shave)

but--though all kinds of officers

(a yearning nation's blueeyed pride)

their passive prey did kick and curse

until for wear their clarion

voices and boots were much the worse,

and egged the firstclassprivates on

his rectum wickedly to tease

by means of skilfully applied

bayonets roasted hot with heat--

Olaf(upon what were once knees)

does almost ceaselessly repeat

"there is some shit I will not eat"

our president,being of which

assertions duly notified

threw the yellowsonofabitch

into a dungeon,where he died