Matthis and Agosto: flag burning is cool

| March 25, 2010
Matthis Chiroux of the IVAW burns an American flag in Lafayette Park, DC

Matthis Chiroux IVAW burns flag

Two new blog posts at IVAW, one by Victor Agosto another by Matthis Chiroux, explain why they’re cool to like flag burning and you’re not. First, Victor rolls out a list of terrible things Americans have done – none of them anything done by people we know, but things that happened before we were all born;

The flag represents the U.S. but it does not represent us. The flag represents the state, a tool the ruling class uses to further its interests. This state has killed its indigenous inhabitants and has enslaved its people.

Yeah, that’s not from the International Socialist Organization, is it?

It is a state which serves the interests of insurance companies rather than the interests of people who are ill. It bails out banks but not hard working people who face foreclosure. It facilitates corporate exploitation of workers all over the world. It engages in wars for control and profit.

I am for the people who live within the territorial bounds of the “republic.” I am proud of their struggles for an eight-hour work day, gender equality, racial desegregation, ending child labor, and ending wars. However, we are not better than the rest of the world’s people. We are all one human family.

That could’ve been taken from a speech by Eugene V. Debs, the socialist who ran against Woodrow Wilson in 1920 from prison. All of the same talking points. Now that Agosto is out of prison, he can go anywhere he wants. I urge him to go to a country that doesn’t embarrass him quite so much.

But Matthis takes his fractured rhetoric to comedic heights;

As the burning American flag clutched in my fist above me bathed my fingers in yellow flame, I felt no pain nor shame of conscience. I stared into the eyes of 5,000 people and returned to dust a genocidal fairytale. One force-fed to me since birth and later used to enslave my body. A bed-time story of epic deceptions. A lost dream groped for in the empty darkness.

What a douche. Of course, he tried to write about the flag, but, as always with Matthis, he can’t help but make himself the center of the room.

I long to take the needle off this skipping record and rest it on my broken heart.

Me, too, you drama queen. I hope your broken heart doesn’t take as long to heal as your broken leg, you pansy. I wonder if Jesse MacBeth is writing his stuff these days.

I didn’t put links in because you can’t get to IVAW from here – don’t ask me why, it makes no sense, but they blocked incoming traffic from TAH. But you can get there from Yahoo or Google.

All of the ISO members of IVAW are changing their avatars on Facebook to the picture of Chiroux burning the flag according to people who can see their profiles. Camilo Mejas is one of them.

Word on the street is that one of the board members of IVAW is planning to file a grievance with the rest of the board over this incident. Of course, knowing who that board member is, I don’t believe he has the testicular fortitude to follow through. He’ll probably be bought off by the rest of the board with the promise of a Skittles castle with a moat of Snickers bars.

Category: Antiwar crowd, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Phony soldiers, Usual Suspects

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Anonymous

Back by popular demand (and need lately):

The “Fuck Communism!” sign.
http://ep.tc/realist/fuckcommunism/

Show leftists you care! (May’ve been sarcasm by The Realist magazine originally, but more fun used directly.)

OldTrooper

I’m wondering if our resident apologist/defender of IVAW will be along to defend the latest and tell us how that org hasn’t been taken over by the fricken commies, because they really care about Vets?

jerry920

Geeze what a whiney, emotive, PMS’ing little b#*ch he is. Time to jump on the boat with the 2 Cyndi’s, Sheehan and McKinney and travel to a happier place. Perhaps Cuba? You’ll be welcome there.

Sorry, I have PSTD from guarding the motor pool in Ft. Riley.

TSO

Anyone else notice how Matthis is slowly (or not so slowly) morphing into Richard Simmons? He writes like a 12 year old girl bemoaning how fat she is.

UpNorth

TSO, an alert would have been nice!!! And poor Matthis is hallucinating yet again, he saw 5000 people in his mind.

OldTrooper

Jeezus TSO, next time warn a guy huh!? Now if you’ll excuse me, my PTSD is flaring up from guarding an ammo dump in the middle of nowhere with no radio to call in the airstrike when I was gonna be overrunn.

amazing stuff here

Real combat veterans need to come to Austin this summer for the “IV”AW Annual Conference. Let’s screw with them

freebirdnavybrat

TSO, you’re priceless.

B Woodman

I’d have laughed like an escaped lunatic if he’d caught fire from that little stunt. And I wouldn’t even piss on him to put it out.

He’s going to cry “wolf” one too many times, and no one will come to him when something bad REALLY happens. ANd I hope I’m there to see it. (Not too likely, but I can wish, can’t I?)

IronRanger116

Jerry920, I too saw some fierce motor pool action on Ft. Riley. Trust me man, I feel your pain.

Anonymous

All of you people busy saying he cries wolf and says he whines, get over yourself. He’s been through things you probably couldn’t imagine and if you could and still feel that way then you’re blind. If you don’t want to hear what he has to say then why the hell are you reading what he writes.

Sporkmaster

You mean when the Chow hall runs out of ice cream? I do not know what makes you think that ether one have been outside the wire. Matthis never left the wire and stayed for less then a month. Victor is a self admitted fobbit who never left the base. Meaning nether of these two saw anything.

Many of us HAVE been outside the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Have you?

ROS

Is there a reason you had to drag this up after a year, Anonymous? Frankly, the picture gives me urges to hit that bastard in the face with a 2′ piece of rebar, and dragging it up to the front only exacerbates that desire.

Yat Yas 1833

I read his pathetic crap for the comedic value. That’s all it’s good for.

Ann

Yet another sighting of the feral Douchemus Fuckwitticus in their native habitat.