Meanwhile, in North Korea…
Come for the casual racism, stay for the weird aggrandizement of Dear Leader.
Via USAT: National parks cut free entry for MLK Day, add Trump’s birthday.
In 2026, Americans will get free admission to national parks on President Donald Trump‘s birthday but no longer on Juneteenth and Martin Luther King Jr. Day, according to the National Park Service website.
Previously, the National Park Service included these two federal holidays among its free-entry days for around 100 park sites.
[…]
The NPS also added more free-admission days for next year – calling them “patriotic fee-free days” – such as Trump’s birthday on June 14, July 4th weekend and the 110th Birthday of NPS.
[…]
Starting next year, the free days will only apply to U.S. citizens and residents, according to the NPS website.
We have here the following.
- The conscious denigration of the sole holiday dedicated to a specific Black American and to the holiday dedicated to celebrating the end of slavery. This is a clear white nationalist signal and says what this admininstration values and what it does not.
- The elevation of the sitting president’s birthday in a move that is the kind of egoistic politics we tend to associate with authoritarian regimes. Associating it with being “patriotic” just enhances the Dear Leader of it all.
- The chef’s kiss of added nativism by charging those dirty foreigners extra to see our national treasures.
I will note that June 14th is also Flag Day, and so I am sure it is all a coincidence that it also happens to be Trump’s birthday. But, of course, to take that view one would have to accept the notion that Flag Day is a more significant holiday than MLK Day or Juneteenth. I guess one might think that if one was more interested in hollow patriotic symbolism over celebrating the civil rights movement or the cessation of chattel slavery. Readers can do the math, but the answer is pretty obvious.
While none of this is as important as an administration that has decided murder is a legitimate tool of law enforcement or that is altering the vaccine schedule in a way that will lead to the preventable disease from spreading in our population, it is still all clear examples of what this group values (to pick just two examples that are currently in the news).
They keep telling us who they are.
This is Mao or Kim Jung Un level of cult of personalitiy. I have a letter to my congresscritters on this subject already written to be sent tomorrow. I limit myself to one a day. I do not ask them anymore whether they support this. I just accuse them of acquiesence and cowardice. Don’t know if it has any impact. People say it does but I just can’t believe it anymore.
The hatred is intentional. If you want to fellate Piggy-boi and make his birthday fee-free, go ahead. I’m willing to bet that the fat fuck has never been to a Natl Park, outside DC, but no matter. There’s no reason to eliminate the other fee-free days. That’s only explained by rank bigotry.
Of course it is. There’s a very important pledge of allegiance to the flag, that gets recited uncomprehendingly every day. What can possibly be more important than that?
The controversy over whether it should contain the words “under god,” entirely misses the point. People give more importance to what’s listed first, even if it’s known, or it’s made explicit, there’s no particular order.
So, the problem is that it makes the “republic for which it stands,” a secondary consideration. and “liberty and justice for all,” a quaternary one. The primary is the flag. That’s why there’s a flag fetish, bit not a liberty and justice for all fetish.
Not to mention that the flag is treated like a scared object. you know, it cannot touch the ground, it must be folded in a very specific way, if damaged it must be cremated, it must be hoisted with all due ceremony, it must be saluted, etc. Hell, the national anthem is named for the flag, based on a poem about a flag that stood through a battle (because in battle, a symbol is not that important to take out).
When a symbol is treated this way and made the primary object of allegiance, is it any wonder the principles the symbol purports to represent are neglected and dismissed when they prove inconvenient? El Taco may be a tyrant, but he loves the flag so much he fondles it in public.
To be sure, other countries have their flag fetish, too. In Mexico there’s a flag hoisting ceremony complete with song (Se levanta en el mastil mi bandera como un sol entre cefiros y trinos, etc.) It’s quite sickening, but it’s played/enacted like once a year at the start of a school term, and not in all schools. The military does it on some occasions, not daily. And the anthem doesn’t even mention the flag.
So, it’s more a symbol than a sacred object.