Apparently May 1st is now “Loyalty Day” in the US:
“NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2003, as Loyalty Day. I call upon all the people of the United States to join in support of this national observance.”
Ironically, the events which May Day commemorate actually occured in the US.
That the US celebrates Labor Day on a more benign day with no historical significance or ties to early post-industrialization attempts at humane labor conditions may not seem Orwellian to you, but May Day’s deliberate replacement with “Loyalty Day” really should make you stop and think.
Can you imagine a “Loyalty Day” in any other industrialized country in the world? If you suggested it in England or Italy or Sweden you’d be laughed at. In Germany you’d be called a Nazi and regarded with suspicion. In Japan its probably unconstitutional.
It sounds more like something from North Korea, or the USSR, or fascist Japan. Think about it.
Nice sentiments, stupid name.** Bush** is stupid about names. Patroits Bill indeed.** Homeland Security** indeed. Has Duba no language advisors? Loyalty Day indeed.
Ah yes, a feel-good useless thing that you can’t be against without sounding like a traitor. Now THIS is what really I want my legislators spending time and money on.
This is just another example about how Bush is trying to distance the United States from the rest of Western society. “Loyalty Day” is a stupid thing to begin with. But, holding it on a day so wraught with signifigance both here and abroad is a deliberate affront to European countries, and labor causes in general. Imagine if the European countries declared Thanksgiving day “non-agression day”. The signifigance would not be lost on us.
I’ll bet Liberia doesn’t celebrate it in any real capacity.
Americans may have a long habit of covering up, forgetting, and just plain making shit up in regards to their own history… but it’s not like we’re alone in the world in that.
If this day was what it claims to be, I don’t see how anyone sane could call it “Loyalty” day. If there’s one thing the founders WEREN’T symbols, it was loyalty. They, after all, led a revolution against their own country.
C’mon guys. A significant percentage of Americans feel that Bush isn’t really the president, that he was never elected but APPOINTED to the post by corrupt judicial hacks as part of a blatant electoral theft.
Of COURSE he’s all for Loyalty Day. Needs all of it he can get.
Only a “significant portion”? More proof that the war against ignorance is a Prime Directive.
This smells like Karl Rove, GeeDubya’s Eminence Greasy. Co-opting a socialist-type “day” plays directly to the carbon-encrusted hearts of the extreme right. I’m surprised they haven’t moved stogie-sucking “labor bosses” up there with lesbian trial lawyers. Same kind of button-pushing emotional pandering that moved them to time the Republican Convention so they can segue it into a Sept. 11th remembrance. Pimps.
I think they’re panicking. When Gulf War I was over, G. the first was way more approved that G. the second. He was so far ahead all the major Democratic candidates bailed out and a snotty young punk from Arkansas got nominated.
GeeDubya has to wave the bloody shirt, wrap his sorry ass in my flag, and intone a boxcar full of jingoistic platitudes, delivered with jaw-jutting defiance. He preaches exclusively to the choir.
Read your kid’s history books. You’ll find they reduce the blood and stife of the labor movement into a murmured negotiation over tea. The rich and powerful of America, in thier wisdom and benign grace, stooped to empower the working man as though he were their equal…
elucidator passes out copies of the Internationale for a good, old-fashioned, Smash-the-State-and-Bugger-the-Bosses singalong. People’s key of C.
Bush is many things, but not stupid. He has gotten as much of his policy through as we see by having his foe underestimate his resolve and the strength of those around him.
I am a conservative republican. I also have read 1984 and recognize double speak when I see it. I agree with many of Bush’s economic policies. I hate the way he and Ashcroft have wrapped themselves in the flag at our expense.
Keep in mind, I don’t plant trees on Arbor day, I do treat the mailman to lunch on Mail Carries day, I don’t follow or observe 99.9% of the Federal Holidays.
How did you guys celebrate Loyalty Day? Since it’s such a new holiday, there doesn’t seem to be any tradition to follow. I was kind of at a loss for an appropriately symbolic gesture to demonstrate my allegiance to the nation, but eventually I simply decided to clip a photo of President G. W. Bush out of the newspaper and ceremonially anoint it with my own bodily fluids. God bless America.
Frankly, it’s hard to understand how the country managed to last this long without an official Loyalty Day. How did our disloyal, traitorous forefathers manage to keep the nation together all this time? We should probably look into establishing a Patriotism Day and an Obedience Day, just to be on the safe side.
Given how successfully they have convinced the sheep that criticism of Bush and/or the war is tantamount to anti-Americanism, there is no doubt in my mind that a primary reason for making this “holiday” is for people to celebrate by shutting up. They could have just as well called is “National shut the fuck up ya Commie hippie!” day.
So to celebrate Loyalty Day, you simple reflect upon how great our leadership is, and how inappropriate and treasonous it is to disagree with them.
According to this page, the idea for “Loyalty Day” goes back to the 1930s, and “In May 1, 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower made it a day of national observance.” – The Loyalty Day.
