A little background here, invisible audience: Oregon is a blue state purely on the strength of the liberals overrunning our most populous areas--Portland, Eugene-Springield, Salem. The rest of the state is as red as they come...the farther south you go, the redder it gets. Think of the guys that took over Malheur last winter. Down here in these parts--we're in Klamath Falls right now--the folks were definitely siding with the Bundys.
So...we went to lunch at a local watering hole this afternoon, the kind with a tv-screen in every corner. As it happened, we were tuned into the very beginning of a football game. Up there on the tv, some guy steps up to a mike, doffs his cowboy hat and starts to belt out "The Star Spangled Banner."
And a guy at the next table takes off his ball cap, stands at attention and puts his hand over his heart.
It made me uncomfortable. And I was uncomfortable with being uncomfortable about it. "Quit being an ass," I told myself. "It's a free country. He's not bothering you." Still, a nagging bit of disapproval followed me through my meal, and out the door.
A little while later, after thinking about it some more, it came to my mind what exactly made me uncomfortable about this guy standing up in a bar showing off his ostentatious brand of in-your-face "patriotism."
It was because it reminded me WAY too much of this (from 1972's film version of "Cabaret."):
turns out tomorrow belonged to our worst nightmares. Wonder if this little storm trooper survived the war of if he ended up marched off to a Russian Gulag on the eastern front.
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