Letter: Flying flag with expletive against current president is childish
To the editor,
–Driving up to Home Depot on Saturday, I passed the Del Rio overpass and saw something very ugly: a man holding a large flag with the F word on it. It was quite visible on the dark blue flag, declaring an epithet against our current elected president, right next to a flag with the name of the former president who lost the election.
Seeing a grown man, in his mid- to late 50s by the look of him, holding a childish and churlish flag like that with no apparent agenda other than railing against our democratic system of voting, was a disappointing sight in this city I have loved and lived in for so long. I figure that man is so hopped up on toxic anger there’s probably no hope for him, but I want to write this note for the younger residents of Atascadero, who are probably as baffled as I am at the immature and foul action that attempted to present itself as a valid substitute for reasonable communication: You deserve better.
You deserve better adults in your community than those who use public spaces to fly their flags of obscenities. You deserve better grown up behavior in your neighbors than those who want to tear down the truth that their candidate lost, and yet they can’t seem to accept reality and simply work with those whose candidate won. I’ve seen that cooperation happen many times in the past, but there seems to be a shift in a minority population today that cannot share the playground with others, and so they toss out F-bombs instead of being neighborly. You deserve better than the toxic rancor that runs through our social media sites and propels grown men to fly their F-flags for reasons that baffle the kind and rational folks of Atascadero.
I hope for all of our sake this man rethinks his toxic rage and puts his flags away (although he is always welcome to fly the Stars and Stripes – that’s one we all agree on) and grow the “F” up and act like the adults our young people deserve to have around us.
Gabriel Lanson
Atascadero
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