Francis Scott Off Key

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/10/opinion/colorado-gop-pride.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/10/us/politics/alito-pride-flag.html#:~:text=the%20justice's%20wife%20said%20to,flag%20for%20the%20next%20month.%E2%80%9D

("Colorado's Trumpified G.O.P. Says to Burn All the Pride Flags", "Justice Alito's Wife, in Secretly Recorded Conversations, Complains About the Pride Flags")

They do love their flags. They wear them proudly on their sleeves and in their hearts. They wave them in your face and they spit in yours when you dare make one a symbol of your own.

What would Francis Scott Key compose today about the great and terrible battle between the red, white and blue and the rainbow coalition? For certain, in the game of capture the flag, the far wrong has claimed ownership of the one illuminated by the rockets’ red glare. 

But not satisfied, not nearly satiated by merely usurping our nation's intended universal statement to their own cause, the Martha-Ann Alitos of this tale have turned their prize possession upside down or maybe inside out as an expression of dismay and distress. So too they have fashioned other flags as declarations of independence from the mayhem and misery caused by those who fail to adhere to their rigid and rigorous belief system.

And, oh that damned pride flag. Don't they know this is not a game that two can play? Only the most conservative values are welcome to a freedom of expression, a freedom of speech and thought through these wordless statements that say so much. And yes, the wife of the Justice should well and rightly be aggrieved for having to view at regular intervals the kaleidoscope of colors that is an intended and intentional slap in her face.

Oh say can you see what we have become? This one might well be called Francis Scott Off Key.