From Glenn R. Geist MadMikesAmerica:
Of course, you might write off my increasing distress at the increasing infantilism of Americans to my increasing age, but might I be forgiven if I think that the longer I read and listen and experience, the more discriminating I become? Or you might just join the commercially supported mockery of all that challenges our main national product. We don’t make all that steel anymore, but we make advertising. we make noise. Older people? Hahaha!
And if some visitors from another planet were to judge us by what is coming over the air, you might forgive them for seeing a species with little purpose beyond constant wild, antic, vulgar, and corybantic gyration with little purpose. Turn on the tube and you’ll see people dancing around with diabetes and jubilating a host of moderate to severe alphabet soup diseases. Even those with metastatic cancer seem to be having a better time than I am having to watch endless ads or watching someone singing the anthem while dressed in a deflated balloon.
Look, nobody is disgusted by American History more than I am. I see ritual patriotism as just another fraud and hypocritical lie. but if we are to have an anthem, please can it be an anthem? Can we set it to a ragtime beat and still call in an anthem? There is no officially designated arrangement after all. Can we paint the White House blue? There’s no law against it!