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CounterPunch
January
29, 2003
Caught in Bush's
Bad Movie
My Flag Held
Hostage
by PHILIP FARRUGGIO
After viewing President Bush's State of the Union
last night it makes one realize that life can imitate film.
In Barry Levinson's 1997 satire "Wag the Dog", one
sees how the "powers that be" can manufacture a crisis
to mask domestic problems- carrying a nation right into a war.
In Norman Jewison's chilling 1975 "futuristic" (yeah
right) "Rollerball", one sees how the corporate controlled
state can destroy the "individual", and what once was
"history", to suit their agenda. Finally, in Harold
Becker's 1996 "City Hall", the mayor of NYC, played
by Al Pacino, gives the most rousing speech this writer has ever
heard, in fantasy or in reality. Pacino's Mayor Pappas, attending
the church service for a young black boy killed innocently during
a "cop and robbers" shootout, bellows to the congregation
about how "this city should be a Palace".... where
a society melds together in safety and harmony.
They have succeeded in stripping me of
"my flag". They, the common man and woman, influenced
by the political bosses through the corporate owned and controlled
media, have forced me into "hiding" my flag. I no longer
display it in my windows, my lawn, my car, or on my lapel. "They"
have made it "their flag", representing a different
America than the one I have come to love and cherish. To paraphrase
Mayor Pappas, they have taken over "my palace'!
My flag did not wave from the frigates
and the aircraft that have bombed away innocent lives these many
decades since the "Big One". My flag did not wave from
the corporate offshore factories that exploited (exploit) the
cheap labor pools throughout the underdeveloped world- much to
the detriment of my neighbors here, now forced to become part
time salesclerks wearing foolish high school nameplates. My flag
will not be there on those troop transports taking America's
finest low and middle income youth to destroy some country (
and its own finest youth) in the name of some mega mergered oil
conglomerate! Finally, it is not "my flag" that incites
the ever increasing terrorist populations throughout the world
with what it has come to represent. All that hype and spin about
"their flag" symbolizing freedom and democracy is just
that. "My flag" represents those noble axioms- "their
flag", the confederate one used by the political and military-
industrial bosses- it represents nothing but "profits over
people"!!
Before condemning me for my principles,
you out there who waves and wears "their flag', pause for
a few minutes. Take five. Go to the library, the "public"
library that "they" wish to privatize, and get yourself
some of the many documentary films of WWII. Check out the ones
about Germany in the 30's and early 40's. Look at those myriads
of flags seemingly all over the place. Check out the powerful
rantings and ravings of the paperhanger. See how the masses "Zig
Heiled" so "mesmorizingly obedient" to their Fatherland
and their flag. Whoever said "history repeats itself"
was a genius.
Philip A Farruggio is a baby boomer Brooklyn NY born, bred and
educated (Brooklyn College '74). He can be reached at brooklynphilly@aol.com
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January 25
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