“I want to ask you something. I notice that in outer Baltimore City and Baltimore County there are for sale signs going up at a rapid pace. For every for sale sign there are both security bars and American flags going up on houses that are not for sale. I don’t just mean holiday flags that mount on a porch railing, they are putting up literal flag poles in the front yard. I want to ask you your opinion on this. Why do you think this is happening?
All of the homeowners are middle aged and elderly as far as can be determined.
A small minority are blacks that have moved from the city into the county, only to have For sale signs sprout up among them like weeds.
Corner row houses are more likely to have flags than middle of the row houses.
Single family homes and trailers are more likely to have flags than row houses.
Vehicles tend to include at least one pickup truck or SUV in the driveway.
The only Trump banners that were seen during our tour of eastern Baltimore County were accompanied by American flags. However, only three Trump banners were seen.
Sample Answers
Dan, retired Baltimore County cop.
“People are waking up to what the country is becoming. They are taking a moral stance even though it is too little and too late. Back in the day, in the 70’s, if people would have stood up and said crime is not okay, then that was the time. Now if you're that guy and you run up your flag and you’re the only one left in the neighborhood with a job, what good does it do you? They are going to vandalize and destroy your house while you are gone. So, I think the flags are saying We should have, but we didn’t. The truth is the Silent Majority is not the majority anymore.”
Peter, a current city cop
“I think these people are Trump supporters showing their choice in an implicit way so as to avoid trouble. They are trying in their own way to find something to latch onto, a reminder of the sense of a nation that was taken for granted. People are angry and pissed off at this bullshit under this clown (referring to some guy in some important political position). I think a lot more people are for Trump than are letting on. We will see in November.”
James, crackpot writer
“I think that people are running up flags in their yard hoping that when the tactical cops, the military contractors and the National Guard show up on their street these operators will see their house as a friendly site and a rally point. The Shoppers supermarket at Mondawmin was the only business at the epicenter of last year’s purge that did not get looted because it served as a police rallying point, offering refreshments and restrooms for the police and National Guard. I regard myself as an inmate of this evil nation. However, I went to the ballgame when I boy and still feel a swelling in my chest when I see a flag flap in the wind. Maybe flags are being raised because they are also being burned by the criminal elements of the current Leftist political factions.”
Brad, Bus Patron
“They are looking to a symbol of hope, one that they dimly remember. The American flag still means something to people in the age range you describe. What the hell do they have anymore, everything has fallen apart other than sports and stuffing their faces.”
Svetlana, retired medical transcriptionist
“Based on the age and the peripheral location of these homeowners, I would say, that like you and I, these people already cleared out once when they were younger. Now where do they go? Thirty miles out you start running into people who are running from Philly or DC. There is also the fact that they may not have the financial means that they had when they were younger. I think they are taking a stand and are digging in.
To your humble observer, my opinions are interwoven and pretty close to all the above. These fine folk are fairly intelligent and experienced in the harsh vagaries of life. It is at once sad and horrifying but I will add that it is also quite fitting.
I am trying to get to a more balanced, post resentment view of the Stars and Stripes. I am not there yet. In many ways this is what is deserved and that evil flag has been at the forefront of bringing about the conditions that these people now face.
Have you seen American flags being raised at an increased rate where you live?
If so, and even if not, what do you think this means?
Taboo You: Deluxe Man Cave Edition
After I got through reading these last two articles and being an old man I have decided to take my American Flag down and have also decided to let American go as you advised in the last article. The lyrics from a song from the seventies called One Tin Soldier kept running through my mind so I went to YouTube to listen to it and it sort of reminds me of what's going on in todays world. Here's part of the lyrics.
Go ahead and hate your neighbor , go ahead and cheat a friend, do it in the name of heaven you can justify it in the end. There won't be any trumpets blowing come the judgement day. On the bloody morning after one tin soldier rides away. Peace and good night!
I agree with all of the above except you, James. People don't think tactically, other than that the flags indicate they plan on going out blasting.
Personally - if things are truly as bad as made out here - I think the people should elect themselves a sheriff and take a variety of actions outside the control of the local or federal government. All of these actions should be clandestine:
1. Transformers to section 8 houses should be shot-out or junction boxes damaged repeatedly.
2. Automobiles of section 8ers should be vandalize.
3. My fast-acting dry rot or stucco-eating fungus idea.
4. Drug dealers should be shot from cover with various non-lethal rounds (suppressed airguns, other rimfire cartridges). More ambitious residents should plan ambushes seeking to break limbs.
5. Remotely-operated jamming of local cellular base stations or cutting of power supply.
6. Pouring of dry detergent into section 8 housing heating oil supply.
Masculine Franklin, I have been enjoying your contributions to the Institute of Crackpottery that is jameslafond.com. Making peace with the flag is a bit of Hegelian dialectic. First we learn the mythology of America's founding, then the truth, or at least part of it. Then for me it becomes, "It may be far from perfect, but it is mine." And if things get really hairy, I want to be on the same side as the types of rednecks who unironically fly the flag.
“Who here is so vile that will not love his country?” – Julius Caesar, Act III Scene II, William Shakespeare
“American liberals don't love America. They despise it. All they love is their own fantasy of what America could become. They are false patriots.” - John J. Ray, Brisbane, Australia, 2008.
“O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming?”
So they are flying the Star-Spangled Banner in Baltimore, eh? Imagine that!!! Just like 202 years ago. What’s happening to our country is not happening by accident or happenstance. Our Leftist ruling elite intends to “elect a new people” this year. Folks like the “bitter clingers” displaying the flag have clearly come to understand this. They are flying their colors in an act of defiance and to show solidarity with like-minded people in their community. Being the jingoistic myrmidon that I am, and given all that the poor white folks of Harm City have had to endure of late, I find their actions inspiring!
O thus be it ever when free-men shall stand
Between their lov'd home and the war's desolation;
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
Praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserv'd us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust!”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
(Fourth Stanza of “The Star- Spangled Banner” by Francis Scott Key, 1814)
The flag thing is VERY interesting. A real harbinger of...something. Really interesting. You know if Trump doesn't have people come out in droves to vote for him they will just steal the election.
I'm with PR and fuck the flag. Let it burn. This is not my country anymore. I will iterate. Small toy drones for ranging and silenced spigot mortars.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spigot_mortar
g2mil.com/West-anti-armor.htm
The most powerful weapon on any battle field is artillery. Artillery killed more people in wars than anything. Mortars are just the portable type. As we have no control over the territory we need to be able to silently use offset actions to retaliate. Mortars. The spigot mortar is the only mortar that can be silenced.
A lot of drones have built in auto pilot. You'd be better off with two people but one could do with drone automation. So you set the drone on auto. Circle the area at 400 feet. Look for cops and the enemy. No cops and you have the enemy in sight. Stop the drone and hover. Haul out the mortar and fire away. Use the video from the drone to correct. Get off 3,4 shots pull the whole thing in. Repeat as needed.
It would be like kicking an ant hill but there's really just not enough cops to control the situation. As James says you hardly ever see them where you need them. At the worst it would have the cops hanging around just where you want them, to the severe consternation of the enemy. HA.
James LaFond is decent honorable man. A warrior and a noble fighter. With all due respect and admiration to Mr. LaFond that is exactly what we shouldn't be doing. We should be studying to be underhanded, cheating, nasty, sorry assed, guerilla fighters that they never see but are constantly fucking up the day of the enemy. PR "definitely" has the right idea. We need to be the people they are calling cowards for not coming out to fight like real Men. If renting section 8 to the enemy caused constant, unrelenting, wallet draining losses then it will stop. Laws or no laws.
I of course am not advocating any such actions this is just an idea for a stupid story I might or might not write.