He slammed the boy to the ground because of his hat

Aug 7th, 2019 | By
Category: Notes and Comment Blog

Meanwhile, in Trump’s America –

A 39-year-old man has been charged with felony assault of a minor in Montana after he allegedly slammed a 13-year-old boy to the ground for not taking his hat off during the national anthem. The incident took place Saturday at the Mineral County Fair and Rodeo in western Montana. Witnesses told a local CBS affiliate that as the anthem began, Curt Brockway grabbed the teen, picked him up, and then slammed him headfirst to the ground. As people nearby approached, Brockway said he slammed the boy to the ground because of his hat. “He said (the boy) was disrespecting the national anthem so he had every right to do that,” eyewitness Taylor Hennick said.

So, what are we respecting when we “respect” the “national anthem”? Are we “respecting” a country where certain gestures and postures are mandatory when a particular song is heard, on pain of extreme violence?

Why would we respect a country like that? It sounds like a horrible dystopian nightmare, not like something to respect.

What does Curt Brockway think the song stands for, I wonder. Slavery? Genocide? Conquest? Capital punishment? Endemic poverty?

“There was a little boy lying on the ground,” Hennick told the Missoulian. “He was bleeding out of his ears, seizing on the ground, just not coherent.” She said she had heard a “pop” when the anthem began and recognized the boy as the neighbor of a family member. The injuries sustained by the boy were severe: He was taken to a local hospital where he was diagnosed with temporal skull fractures before being flown to a children’s hospital in Spokane, Washington. The boy’s parents said he continued bleeding from the ear for nearly six hours after the incident.

Yeah yeah yeah but national anthem. Respect it or die.

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