I can’t believe that I am still seeing people on social media complaining about those pictures that were circulating, you know the pictures, the ones featuring people standing on the American flag.

You rabid, flag-waving assholes really just don’t seem to get it at all, and I suppose that I can’t blame you, you’re just fundamentally stupid or so blindly patriotic that you can’t wrap your head around the fact that the rest of the nation isn’t living under the sheltering blanket of straight, white, Christian, male privilege that you have spent your whole life benefitting from.

You can keep your symbol; since that is apparently the only thing about this nation you actually place value on. I’ll side with the people standing on that symbol, the people who place their value on the rights and magnificence that symbol is supposed to represent…even though it never really has, except for on paper.

We live in a divided nation in so many ways.

We live in a nation where two major political parties are at odds, sometimes rising to the point of violence between subscribers to their respective affiliations…even though neither of those parties are even half as invested in the best interests of the American people as they are focused on their own personal self-glorification and the agendas that they’re invested in.

We live in a nation where ignorant, fundamentalist Christians are setting themselves up as a ruling class in their own imaginations, pretending that they are being attacked by anyone who doesn’t agree with their worldview, while voicing clear opinions that anyone not like them should be penalized in defiance of the wishes of our Founding Fathers (don’t imagine it’s just the Separation of Church and State that spells it out, the wording of the Treaty of Tripoli that was unanimously adopted by John Adams and the Senate in 1797 makes it very clear that this was never intended to be a Christian nation).

We live in a nation where anyone who isn’t a straight, white, Christian male experiences clear bigotry on a nearly constant basis, but are ignored when they attempt to change that fact through peaceful means, where they are met with lip service and platitudes until the only way to respond is by violence and extreme measures when tension has reached a boiling point.

We live in a nation where there is a very real fight between an outdated, out-of-touch religious ideology and those who happen to love others of the same sex, and the civil rights of a minority of our population are actually treated as a battleground.

Tell me again of the importance of this symbol that you worship. Tell me again of how unpatriotic and horrible these people are who have stood on the flag. You can keep it. You can have that tainted symbol. It doesn’t stand for what you seem to think it stands for. I’d rather stand for the rights that the symbol is supposed to represent, and the actual people of this country, not just those who fall into your narrow perspective of what people should be. You can keep the symbol. You clearly don’t care about the rights, because it is one of those rights that these people can desecrate that symbol.

If you care more about the flag than your fellow American’s rights, you’re an asshole and you are a bigger part of the problem with this nation than they will ever be.