I find it really offensive that Rural America has chosen to align itself with bigotry and hate for so many years, while at the same time trying to dictate to their neighbors across the country their beliefs regarding patriotism, as if someone elected them the ultimate guardians of proper patriotic etiquette!
Not for nothing, but they might want to start by setting the example of respecting free and fair election results, instead of flying flags on their property for all to see claiming Trump won when they know he lost! You can’t claim “City Folk Just Don’t Get It”, When you embrace lies, which just to remind Farmer Johnson, is very much un-Christian to do!
Either way, I think it’s about time that Rural America, especially out here where I live make a decision, are you a part of this nation, or are you not? You can’t call yourself an American Citizen when you reject law and order, as one person whose combine was burned for flying Trump Flags on it complained, that all of the issues affecting our nation happened when law enforcement started cracking down on crime out here. He went on to elaborate how “back in the day, you could steal a car out here, get away with it” as if this was something to be proud of or acceptable as long as you were White, and lived in a rural area of the country!
Well, I’m sorry to tell my fellow “locals” but laws apply to everyone in a Republic, and where they don’t apply, there is no nation! That’s fact y’all!
You cannot say you believe in freedom, when you are overwhelmingly voting to elect individuals to office who want to deny freedom to everyone else in the nation!
People who expect the nation to rally behind, and unify with a party that has systematically planned to take hard fought rights away from other Americans, such as the right of women to choose, the rights of other human beings to choose their own identity etc, and then with the same breath talk about freedoms being taken away from them, that really weren’t being taken away in the first place.
It’s hypocrisy in it’s purist form to deny freedom to others except yourself! Like Lincoln so eloquently said referring to Slavery,” When you deny Freedom to the slave, you deny Freedom To The Free”. This being the case I think it’s about time that Rural America either get with the program, or pack up and leave. Intolerance whether it’s in the Big City or Smallville Usa,is fascism! It’s not as “American As Apple Pie”!
There is nothing Patriotic about the Confederate Flag, flying in the bed of a rusted out pick up on one side, and Trump Won on the other, in a state such as ours, where thousands gave their lives, so that this nation might live and Slavery could be ended. Racism and Rural do not belong as a state of being in a free nation such as ours, and as long as it continues, is as long as our Democracy is going to remain in peril. Rural America, you must disenthrall yourselves! It’s time for a new birth of freedom “Out Here”!
Raymond J. Gomez
Grand Rapids
