Absurdity Jam

History Of the Pledge Of Allegiance



It seems that every year, this becomes a hot button issue with people. It's unfortunate, because I think the issue has taken over the entire purpose of the pledge. If you check out the link I provided, it gives you a short history of the pledge.

Recently, you read online or in the news that schools have eliminated the pledge as part of the morning exercises, or kids refusing, or religious groups rioting or non-religious people causing an uproar.

When you take a step back, and look at the way you yourself looked at reciting the pledge when you were in grammar school, did you at all think "Wow, Under God? That's scandalous!!!"? No, unless your parents reacted that way. I remember it wasn't that cool to opening recite it, to be the loudest one in the class. I also remember everyone standing up, mumbling or whatever, but regardless, doing it. I don't think we had all religious kids in the class, but everyone stood for the act of reciting.

I think it's an important part of American culture, just as an important part is to read and remember the constitution the best you can. I believe this because the interpretations that are given today for these things are not the same as they were when initially created. If you look at the history of the pledge, you'll see that it's been altered several times, to get it right. It's amazing that instead of trying to change something, they try to rid it entirely. Why not, instead of causing such an uproar, stick with the version without 'Under God'? Kids don't consider the importance, until their parents decide it's an issue. Those parents need a fucking slap. Sorry.

I go to church, and I pray. I am the guy who doesn't vocalize my participation in the 'let us pray' part where we ask for forgiveness. I have a personalized way of doing that. Why can't that be brought to the schools? Stand, appreciate the country that was created for you, and be respectful in your own way. Sitting down, or objecting to a word is inappropriate. The 4th graders who stand even know that, without knowing the consequences.

I'd love some input on this. It's annoying, more than anything else. It's comparable to the Boy Scouts Scout Law, where the last law is a Scout Is Reverent. It's as though they forget completely the other amazing laws and focus of the one that can be interpreted different ways. Fuckin A!

The pledge begins: I pledge allegiance to the flag.

It says this before even mentioning America.

What the fuck? Its a flag! Cloth! Red and white stripes! A blue field with fifty stars! Yes, I'll display it. Yes, I'll take proper care of it. But I don't owe it my loyalty.

The flag is a symbol.

It is a symbol of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; of democracy; of fairness. It evokes the memory of all who have dedicated their lives to upholding them. Those are sacred. The flag is not. I will proudly display an American flag as a symbol of my loyalty to the sacred tenets of our nation. But I will not hold the flag itself in equal regard. The flag does not grant me liberty. This country does.

The flag is in itself only important as a symbol, and it is vital that we remember that so that those who seek to rob us of our liberty do not disguise their motives by wrapping themselves in the flag.

You know of whom I speak.

All that having been said, its true. Not everyone thinks about this. Maybe that's part of the problem; maybe I'm reading too much into this. My point is that having the pledge in grade school is reinforcing the supposed importance of a symbol. It conditions us from an early age to be accepting of someone who associates himself in it. So that when some fucker waves the flag and points us towards an unjust war, it is seen as unpatriotic to disagree. Not everyone falls for it, but you'd better bet your ass it has an impact.

I'm all for patriotism. I love this country.

My loalties lie in this nation. In liberty and democracy.

The flag doesn't enter into it. And yes, I'm aware that this may sound paranoid and pissantic. I don't care. It's too goddamned important not to think about.

And you don't even need to rake through Milton's hubris.

To keep up with our coverage of all things disallowed from polite discussion--We'll get to sex, I swear-- We move on to the tricky subject of God. We've certainly heard a lot about him lately. Apparently they voted him out of Dover, Pennsylvania, and he's not going to reply to their pleas for help anymore. But who is this guy, anyways? Much like Shakespeare, we really only know him through his works, and there is some doubt even there. There are some who say that he created the Universe, and (of more recent signifigance) Man. Of course, anyone with any sort of legal oversight can see this for the brazen act of slander that it is; especially the bit about Man having been created in God's image. In fact, this entire Intelligent Design issue could be put to rest by a simple lawsuit filed on behalf of God.

Therein lies the rub. You can't file suit on behalf of the dead.

And let's get this straight right up front. Nietzsche was right. The dude is fucking toast, and Man holds the smoking gun. This is a post-mortem

The interesting thing though is trying to figure out when exactly he kicked it. Let's work from the beginning.

We're going to take the history of time up to the beginning of human life as read, because it's been discussed, and if you're not happy with Einstein and Hawking and Darwin you'll hardly find any satisfaction in me explaining. Let's just say that they're right, avoiding the whole slander issue.

Let's now look to some of the wisdom of the late, great, Douglas Adams. His arguement, at length, can be found here, and it is absolutely reccommended that you read it as it is a stunningly brilliant piece of work. However, it is long. Therefore, for the sake of arriving at a conclusion at some point within our natural lives, I shall condense it, and yes, take it in a bit of a different direction.

So early Man is out in the wild, hunting. Clutching his trusty spear, he pauses and thinks for a moment about just how lucky he is to have something so exceedingly useful. He can use it to hunt any number of beasts. He can use it to prod the fire he's made to cook them... "It's a good thing I made it," he thinks. Then he looks back to his work. He scans the woods for his prey, sees nothing, and once again loses himself in thought. "Now That I think of it, this entire world is pretty fucking well catered to my needs. Animals whose meat I can eat and skin I can wear; trees whose branches I can use to make spears like this one... Huh. I wonder who made it."

He figures that since the only sort of thing he knows that can make other things (e.g. the spear) is himself, the Earth would have to be the work of a larger, more powerful sort of being such as himself. By now the sun has begun to set and its time to get back to the cave, and naturally, he has nothing to show for his foray. But that doesn't stop him from sharing his revelation with the rest of the hunters as they swap stories around the fire. And his conclusion makes sense to his friends. While discussing this, one of the hunters raises a point: "This guy is totally responsible for us. I have a kid, and I provide for him. Where the fuck is this guy?"

Soon an entire species is feeling entitled. And of course because they are used to dealing with other humans, and have concieved their image of God as thus, they assume that getting favors granted can be a quid-pro-quo sort of thing. So, sacrifices, etc.

Meanwhile, God is hanging about in the cosmos, doing whatever it is a divine being does for kicks, when he takes notice of these pathetic pleas for help. Now, God is a total chump, and he gets the sort of feeling you might get if you see a child in the middle of a mall all alone and crying for his mommy. He feels he needs to help them. Problem is, he can't do it himself. They're just not ready for someone like him, all without definable form or limitation. So he delegates. Shitloads of gods of lesser power and influence are created in images that Man can comprehend, and sent to Earth to help Man out. They station themselves in places like Olympus and Azgard, and run shit according to their own whims as God goes back to enjoying his existence. A few thousand years go by and he realizes that this was a pretty fucking bad move.

These lesser gods were heck of undisciplined. Causing the Trojan War by telling Paris that he he's destined to marry Helen of Troy, and then helping the Greeks sack Troy, tossing Odysseus around at sea for all of seventeen years... to produce a complete list of any one pantheon would be an enormous undertaking well beyond the scope of this writitng. Suffice to say, they were fucking shit up. Eventually God comes to realize this and starts to go about phasing out the other gods, who sure as fuck wouldn't give up all their power on their own. The time had come to reveal his true form to humankind. So he starts to spread the news across various cultures and timelines (he exists parallel to our time, so he can do that) . He tries to convert Egypt to monotheism based on the Sun God, but that turns out to be a fiasco. He also tries a similar conversion with Julius Caeser, but when Caesar presents the idea to others he tried to become the one god because he thinks its his only chance at Heaven.

Almost ready to give up, God turns to Abraham

He tells him that he was the one all-powerful God, and that all other gods are lesser beings of his creation. As a result, that is one thing in all of history that only the Jews have gotten right. To this day, the Ten Commandments don't say that there is only one God, or that one is forbidden from recognizing other gods, merely that there be no gods "before me."

Of course, he has to jazz his story up a bit to make it more believeable. He holds for the time being to the popular belief that he created Man, and the Earth, and he add some myths and rituals. Because he's got a sick sense of humor he throws circumcision in there. And thus he acheives his first success in revealing himself to Man. He even eventually tells Moses his name; Yaweh.

Of course, by informing an entire people of a truth that no one else is prepared to accept, he's putting a huge target on them. Basically everyone gives them a hard time, which sucks, and because he's responsible, he's got to look after them. And he's getting pretty exhausted by it. By now he's delegating again, this time with angels who have no free will of their own (fuck you Milton, I'm not using your mythos). But he decides that he's going to get himself some help again.

He therefore appears to the prophet Isaiah and fortells the coming of his son (nepotism, go figure), only words it to make him think that its going to be someone who will set the Jewish people free, as opposed to just another guy to help him with administration. So on comes Jesus. But because God doesn't want to lie to his people, he invokes the doctrine of equivocation(scroll to the very bottom of the entry)and uses the birth and death of Jesus as a means of allowing human souls to share in his divinity after death, thus, "freeing" them in a sense of the word. So he's got a right hand man, and just for good measure he throws in a sort of hard-to-define essence that Trinitarians call the Holy Spirit and once again he's found a way to reduce his workload.

As Christianity takes its hold, God decides that it's time to let humanity in on a bit more of the truth. First of all, he wants to shuffle off this rumor that he was responsible for creating the Earth and Mankind, so he first inspires Copurnicus and Gallileo. He drops the apple on Newton. And the three of them describe the Universe in a more accurate way, one that would shed doubt onto the belief that he was responsible for it. Then, he nudges Darwin in the direction of the Galapagos Islands and lets him figure the rest out for himself.

Now, it's important to remember that God perceives time in a different way than you or I, as he exists parallel to our understanding of it (as I mentioned above). He is at all times capable of interacting with all times at once, but that's rather more confusing than he would like it so in general he keeps with natural time, and on occasion a sort of thematic chronology just to organize things. And setting up those scientific discoveries was hard work, consuming a lot of his attention. So it comes as a shock to him when his attention is drawn to the Crusades as he's finishing up with Darwin, and in an instant he sees in front of him all of the heinous acts done in his name. From the Spanish Inquisition (he never expected it) to the zealous hatred of Falwell, Robertson, Jack Chick, and the Christian Coalition. He never intended any of them, and yet, by patronizing humanity with his divinity he was absolutely resposible for each and every instance.

He responded to this wave of guilt by killing himself, taking with him all of the angels, the lesser gods that somehow survived the worldwide paradigm shift, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, all of which were derived from his power.

And that, my friends, is the story.

I did vote in the last election but sadly the election was predetermined by the previous one; sex lies and videotapes, a gutless lame party which could never find a voice that resonated with anyone but a few dogs in upstate New York and those were half breed pit bulls.


I am dealing on a daily basis with the guilt I feel for the ire I have toward the generations ahead of me.
(Yes you, I’m talking to you). I often think I am being too hard on you. I am trying to come to terms with that anger by several techniques I have learned since coming to this city. I have found spitting out windows onto people below does wonders to alleviate some of this anger as does kicking a metal garbage can top into an alley that is almost but not quite empty of people. The sound is amazing.

I digress so I will address you { group hug} now briefly:


I know it wasn’t your fault that you let the situation get out of hand. You were living the American dream, dancing in the street and mourning John Lennon, raising future soccer players and CEO’S. This understandably caused some of you to lose focus. The stress of trying to be number one, do it all, bring home the bacon and fry it up in the pan. The consumption of time caused by coaching little league, helping at school so Johnny would get into Harvard (you knew you could get him better grades that way, it's not like Harvard wouldn't be able to tell that he was really an imbecile so that might have all been for naught), and trying to keep a straight face when telling your kids you never got high was about all you could take. The government became some vague concept which you no longer understood, (well, you knew something about three branches) and didn't need to as long as there was money in your bank account, a new car every couple of years and a roof over your head - preferably a large roof - in a large home with many closets all of which contained various designer items and enough dog food for that purebred golden that adorned your front steps.

It's not your fault that after the shock of nine eleven you rallied around the President even if you didn't vote for him. It is; however, your fault that you really didn't know why you didn't vote for him or why the candidate you did vote for was better.


Let's do better next time people.

I'm from the Y generation.

I'm here to help.

I'll grant that a good portion of the blame lies in our predecessor electorate, but my ire is focused upon the Democratic Party. Democrats, it is due to your nonenending bullshit that there are people who use the word liberal (which I am tired of reminding people means open minded) as a slur. You had to shift your stance a bit after 9-11. I get it. That doesn't mean you get to check your spine at the door when you enter the Capitol. Fuckers, you voted for the Patriot Act and the Iraq war and robbed yourselves and your constituents of credibility. You let your opposition use the Straw Man Fallacy as a debate tool and NEVER FUCKING CALL THEM ON IT. You allowed them to paint John Kerry as a flip-flopper despite the enormous holes in the arguement evident to anyone willing to do a little simple fact-checking. You didn't even do anything about the heinous deffamation of character that allowed a man who may not have even showed up to his National Guard post to cast a Silver Star recipient's war record in a negative light. You are, in short, a bunch of five-thumbed fuck-ups.

That having been said, you have not directly conspired to defame me, or strip me of my rights. You haven't launched an assault on rational thought, or sullied our environment or international diplomacy. We can still work together.

But seriously, meet me halfway, will you?

These first five years of the twenty-first century have been plagued by acts of open war upon science and intelligence in general. This began with the election of our current charlatan-in-cheif, and has progressed through such measures as the Clear Skies Act, and a general culture of ignorance regarding the environment in general and global warming in specific. The penultimate entry in this log is that of Intelligent Design Theory, which claims Evolution as a fallacy because it hasn't been proven as an absolute, despite the fact that the model has worked whenever tested. This is getting to be batshit insane.

It has been said that schools and libraries are the last bastions of democracy. That this culture of ignorance has successfully infiltrated the former ought to be a call to arms. The gloves are off. The Rules of Engagement have changed. We must either destroy this infection or cauterize it immedeately.

Let's start with cautery. It would involve extracting the intelligent people from those states that have approved the "theory" for teaching in science classes, and moving them into more sensible states. However, there would be an issue of living conditions. To make the plan feasible, the "idiotic minority" of the states that haven't approved Intelligent Design would have to be forcibly extracted and moved into the states that have to make room. This could be tricky. In Massachusetts, for example, the idiots are entrenched. They have their own newspaper, their own radio stations, and their own governor. Moving them would require a vast paramilitary operation that, quite frankly, we don't have at our disposal at this time. That having been said, this plan should be filed away for future use.

The solution lies, therefore, in covert ops.

The plan is thus: Commision an independent development studio to create a video game in which the player brutally murders the biblethumpers incumbent in their local school boards (It is of course common knowledge that violent videogames train kids to commit actual acts of murder) . When the students find the games under their Christmas tree, the wheels shall turn, and victory shall fall into the hands of the mentally competent

Hello. I'm EsotericWombat, and welcome to Absurdity Jam. Before I get the ball rolling, I'ma explain the way things work here. On this site you will find expert discussion and commentary on a potentially unlimited number of things. It should be noted that the members of this blog are not experts on an unlimited number of things. Therefore some of this will naturally be smoke and mirrors, sometimes even in the case of things that we do know about.

Also it should be noted that the order of posts here is not strictly chronological. Posts that share a topic will progress from top to bottom from the first post on the topic to the last. this will be done by a falsification of the Time and Date stamp. Response posts will be stamped to have been posted a minute before the post that began the discussion. That way, a sort of logical progression can be sustained. Posts that start a new topic, however, will be stamped as they are posted so that the most recent discussion will take the top.

Commentary of your own is welcome and in fact encouraged.

So yeah. That about covers it