The arrested man identified himself as a combat veteran and said he was burning the American flag in protest of an executive order Trump signed Monday targeting flag burning.
The arrested man identified himself as a combat veteran and said he was burning the American flag in protest of an executive order Trump signed Monday targeting flag burning.
100% this. I remember when some dopey kid tried to burn the flag at a campus I was at, and one of my roommates was simply beside himself with fury over it.
I thought the whole thing was a great big bowl of wrong. The dumbass that was “protesting” was butthurt about something that had nothing to do with America or the flag, IIRC. He just wanted to be edgy or whatever. But the fury from the reactionaries, including my roommate - hilarious.
My roommate even wrote a letter of outrage to the administration. I mean, he was literally beet red with rage over it. His letter tried to work in the “fire safety” angle too, because deep down, even the dumbass reactionary knew the law when it comes to freedom.
When you make kids swear allegiance to a piece of cloth for years, you get stuff like that.
It wasn’t CMU, was it?
No, this was Penn State, ages ago. I don’t think it made the papers or anything that I know of. Probably not even a police report. Some dumbazz tried to light a flag with a Zippo apparently - several students, including some associates, classmates and friends of mine saw him try it. It was inside a dorm building.
Obviously people restrained him/separated the flag from his Zippo, not because they were fighting for gawd, mom, apple pie and the MURICAN FLAG, but because it’s a pretty fucking stupid idea to burn a piece of cloth inside of a building…
Neither my roommate and I were there. No flag was actually burned or even really charred as I understand it. I’m pretty sure it was his own flag. But my roommate who heard about it just about popped a blood vessel over it, LOL. And not really the blatant fire safety aspect. That’s when I saw first-hand just how irrational some people are about other people exercising freedoms.
Dang. That’s nuts but seems right for teenagers lol. I ask because the same thing happened at CMU in like 2002, but it did make the papers. The whole city turned it into a fucking thing.
Yeah, this was before the 'net really took off. I don’t think it even hit the local paper and I don’t think cops were called. I think it was something most of the students found out about second-hand. And really went no further because it didn’t progress.
These days with everyone taking out their fucking phones for everything, it would have hit social media before the cops even arrived - and oh yeah, I’m sure they would have been called in, stat, given what snowflakes today’s right wing are.
And then I’m sure the usual pipeline for Bullshit Mountain would have blown it wayyyy out of proportion and turned it into something for right wing poutrage, LOL.