I was at a college American football game in Florida some time ago. It was upsetting to be asked to swear allegiance to something like every 15 minutes. Like calm down dudes I’m just being here being forced to watch a Handegg game.
I can’t cants the seventh inning stretch in American baseball. It’s like, hold on everybody we have to stop the game and be patriotic to the spaghetti monster real quick with this song or we can’t continue the game.
What does take me out to the ballgame have in it that’s patriotic?
It’s a verse from a song about a girl who is baseball crazy and instead of a normal date she wants to be taken to watch baseball. It’s just supposed to be a fun tradition.
Shame they don’t still do the original salute as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellamy_salute
Would have really driven home the kind of thinking that comes up with such things.
Holy shit. That was definitely not something they admitted to doing. Amusing how the history books leave out these fun facts.
i love that it was replaced in 1942. it’s like they waited to see whether it was even necessary to change or maybe it would work out anyway.
Yep, they might as well go all the way and also wear armbands.
My final conversation with my father a couple of years ago, he basically acknowledged I was right all along ranting at the dinner table, shoving RATM and Fahrenheit 9/11 down his throat for decades since I was about 10. And here I was preparing with my therapist to never have closure!
I think watching a lot of his working class Brooklyn friends go full Trump, and losing relationships, finally opened his eyes completely.
Hey, it’s me, the annoying kid. Sorry about being right and also breathing near you.
Around the 6th grade I realized how weird the pledge was, stopped doing it, and never went back to thinking it was normal. Probably because it isn’t normal.
I think only one teacher seemed to have a problem and that was because I didn’t always sit there perfectly silent while everyone droned their allegiance to my underfunded school’s dollar store flag. Fuck me for doing stuff while you guys pray or whatever.
Same for me. I stopped pledging for a few reasons. At that age, I didn’t know that the pledge didn’t always have “under god” in it, but questioned it because of the separation of church and state, as well as freedom of religion. I also went to catholic school and got into trouble for asking questions about the priests’ vows of poverty despite the opulence of the cathedral…
I was a contrarian child who turned into a disappointed adult.
I was assaulted in school for not saying the pledge, though the kid was specifically upset I didn’t say the new Mexico state pledge. Somehow, his diseased brain equated that to hating Mexicans. His dad was a cop, so I was just told I could go hangout in the cafeteria until the next period. I wonder what became of that shithead, probably followed in his father’s footsteps and is still assaulting people darker than him to this day.
It’s not my fault I’m burdened with being 100% objectively correct at all times. 😔
we suffer from success
I hated standing for the whole thing so I sat down. This was, apparently, defiance, so my mother was called.
A mistake for them. Mother knew the law, and tore into them for trying to force me.
I compromised by placing my hands over my heart as I sat at my desk, saying nothing.
Mother knew I just didn’t want to stand and was annoyed at that but more annoyed at them trying to force me lmao
I refused to do the pledge in 4th grade right after we learned about the (supposed) separation of church and state in this country. I said my religion doesn’t allow worshipping an object and that’s what the pledge feels like.
J dub?
So you were brainwashed by the other thing instead.
No, I just used it as an excuse to not do the pledge. I didn’t go to church either lol
Nice
I stopped doing the pledge when I realized I don’t want to pledge my allegiance to a broken system. I’d happily start doing it again once I see actual beneficial change to our country, not more politics to fight/break apart over.
I’d happily start doing it again…
Don’t. It’s super weird.
It’s lunacy to make children swear fealty to the state.
Helps keep them from questioning why they serve and obey the state as adults.
No question why.
State has way more guns and bodies than I do.
I didn’t do the pledge in high school but luckily for me literally nobody cared. I find it weird that people do or at least enough to be vocal about it.
By the time I was in high school, even the teachers had stopped caring about the pledge lol
I had a very new teacher in I think 6th grade. She had us do the pledge the first day of school, after almost forgetting, and then never again. After a couple days I was like “… Wait. Shit. It is weird we were doing that every day”. It had just seemed normal.
Thanks to that teacher for probably accidentally getting me to think about it.
I wonder if that teacher still teaches.
When I was in high school from 08-2012 basically no one stood up for the pledge. I went to an art school though so nationalism wasn’t really at all prevalent. Ironically though our mascot was a patriot.
The number of times I got in trouble for not standing during the pledge was crazy
