Half staffed flags used to be a rarity but sadly, not so much these days in this here land I so love.

I’m from the X’d generation that was born into believing that we were the best nation in the world but swiftly learned soon after, from perpetual disillusionments, the disappointing lesson that no, we are not.

We’re just the cracked & shedded skin of the glorious U S of A that we used to be.

These days “we the people” of these “united” States are quite divided between:

Left and right…
Brown and Black and White…
Dems and Reps…
Libs & Tea Partiers…
Haves and the eternal have nots…
Scientists and religious zealots…
Gun-toters and gun controllers…
Me too’s and their #’d accused…
Baby boomer gloom’s and millennial’s baby shoe blues…

We once stood united in our dividedness but the state of our current union is slipping below the summit and our half staffed flags are living proof that we are on our deathbed. Every day our symptoms get worse. Daily headline news crawls report on the condition this Nation is in. Each beat we get closer to the throes of death.

What this time has warranted this visual symbol of 1) respect 2) mourning 3) distress? Was it yet another sad school shooting? or a man-made and/or mother nature disaster? or a mass killing? or a domestic terrorist attack? or some dignitary death?…

I shake my head in disbelief at the immense grief and grave danger our country is on the precipice of experiencing. We are in the lousy care of loud-meowed fat cats who sit back, cleaning their teeth, readying themselves for the feast they are about to receive. These fat cat vs. mouse games they play, the battles they wage, these are the Wars that sit ominously on our horizon:

Race Wars;
Economy Wars;
Class Wars;
Environmental Wars;
Terrorist Wars;
Immigration Wars;
Technology Wars;
Second Amendment Wars;
World War Wars

… the list could go on if I wasn’t so mad and saddened by what I see. Sadly, this is our reality.

So now, when I see the all-too-common half-staffed flag, I think to myself – this display is not for anything specific but a general statement about the state of this dying divided union.

The red white and blue’s stunted ascent halfway up the pole shows how this once great nation of ours is on life-support, quickly dying and the half-staffed flag is in mourning for what we the people were and what that sickly Stars and Stripes once stood for.

Epilogue: I woke up today to see the flags once again blowing freely in the breezes, the sun rays kissing the withered edges, a lone bird perched proudly upon the mast and a feeling creeped in, awakening in me again a sense of hope and never dying pride for this land, OUR land, of the free.