By ERIC D. SNIDER
We as Americans had better get our heads out of the sand and start paying attention, or else before you know it we’ll have become slaves to a master race of government-engineered super-computers and talking monkeys.
You’ll hopefully pardon my incoherent ramblings. I’ve been reading letters to the editor again, and I’ve been alerted to the dangers we face, including conspiracies, cover-ups, and people not standing still when the national anthem is playing.
First we have a letter published in the Feb. 1 issue of the Provo Daily Herald (motto: “Where BYU Graduates Go When the Daily Universe Finally Kicks Them Out”), written by Grant N. Mildenhall of American Fork. This letter addresses many issues, not the least of which is the fact that NASA did not send a man to the moon in 1969, as they claimed, but that it was in fact staged by the government. Well, actually, it wasn’t even the government. According to Grant N. Mildenhall, it was “that evil system called the Military Industrial Complex,” which controls the government, the TV networks and the media, and which is headed by a cigarette-smoking man, as you know if you have ever watched “The X-Files.”
This same organization also assassinated several important people, such as John F. Kennedy and Princess Diana. How do we know this? Because Grant N. Mildenhall said so, and are YOU going to argue with him?
Why isn’t Grant N. Mildenhall afraid of being “silenced” by the Military Industrial Complex, since he has now exposed them? I suppose if you were to ask him, he would say he feels safe because of the magic invisible forcefield placed around him by the people of his home planet.
While the theories put forth in this letter may be alarming and perhaps even stupid, they cannot compare with another theory, presented in a Feb. 24 letter to the editor printed in The Daily Universe (motto: “Inching Slowly Toward a Mistake-Free Newspapper”). This letter makes it abundantly clear that persons who do not stand motionless when the national anthem is being played pose a threat to national security. I quote the letter in part:
“As a proud citizen of the United States living on American soil, I think that it is totally disrespectful for people not to stop and cover their heart during the playing of the national anthem….
“I call on the Honor Code Office to take action against students who refuse to respect the nation’s symbol.
“Those who refuse to show respect should be forced to give up their place at this prestigious institution and make room for those with greater patriotic fervor and love for their country.”
What this man says is true, and I applaud The Daily Universe for having the courage to print such a letter, containing, as it does, actual truth, which is often a prohibitive factor in determining whether or not something gets printed. Every morning and afternoon, the ROTC raises and lowers the flag as a recording of the national anthem plays over the campus sound system. When you hear this music — even if you can’t see the flag — it has become tradition to stop moving, even if you are late for class, even if you have severed a limb and are on the way to the hospital, and even if it is snowing heavily and you are allergic to moisture.
If you do not stop, you are subject to the most prevalent and deadly weapon at BYU: The Self-Righteous Stare. This is a multi-purpose stare, of course, used primarily against people with facial hair, but in this case it means, “I am much better than you because I am standing here in the cold, wasting two minutes of my time, because I can faintly hear a song coming from somewhere. You, on the other hand, must be some kind of genetic mutation.”
So of course people should stop. Again, it doesn’t matter if you can’t see the flag. You should still participate in the flag-raising ceremony. It’s the same as how when you’re in your apartment and you know your parents are probably just sitting down to dinner several hundred miles away, you should probably bow your head while they say grace.
Obviously this nation’s forefathers, being angry and bitter and selfish, would want us to stand motionless in the cold whenever we heard “The Star-Spangled Banner.” (Of course they would probably also want us to know all the words to it, and not just the first verse, but that’s another issue.) And it should not just be during the flag ceremony. If it’s the Fourth of July and a radio station plays the song, you should immediately stop your car in the middle of traffic and wait patiently. Anyone who unpatriotically rear-ends you is merely proving his or her un-Americanness. If I stand up in the middle of the library and begin singing the national anthem, you should stand up and salute until I have finished. The security guards, if they are any kind of Americans, should also wait until I’m done before arresting me.
The letter-writer suggested kicking students out of BYU for not stopping when they hear the national anthem, but I think that’s too lenient. I think people should have to sing along with it, too. Since most of the people who stop walking only do so because everyone ELSE does — the same reason they wear those braided belts and say “fetch” — it would only take a few of us to start singing along with the music before EVERYONE was doing it just as a matter of conformity. And the singers would give the Self-Righteous Stare to the non-singers, as if singing the national anthem every time you heard it were a basic requirement of being American, and duh, doesn’t everybody KNOW that?, even though we really just made it up. And of course we’d give the Honor Code Office full authority to expel anyone who didn’t stop and sing, and we’d send them back to whatever backwards country they came from, the Commie pinko freak-heads.
Or, we could just turn them over to the Military Industrial Complex.
