It’d be wild if that country had a national anthem that glorifies carnage and mythologizes a battle in a bourgeois revolution. Or maybe even if they forced their youth to pledge loyalty to that flag. I don’t know, I’m just spitballing. Sounds pretty cartoonish don’t you think?
The Battle of Baltimore took place during the War of 1812, not the Revolutionary War, and it doesn’t really glorify the carnage since the poem is about the American defenders getting their teeth kicked in by the British Navy, but the flag remaining over the fort defending the entrance to the city till the British ran out of ammunition.
Despite that, the anthem still sucks. It was a good poem, but awful as a song. Pledge of allegiance is also absurd.
Probably one of the ugliest flag designs to ever exist
The kind of place that would put “In God We Trust” on the only thing they really worship, which is their money. Oh, but they also worship guns, so throw some bible verses on those too.
The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit— and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate— died of malnutrition— because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
What is this from, comrade? Did you create this? This is poetic in how it is written. If you wrote this, well done! If this is from a source, please inform.
