Respect is reciprocal. To get respect, you must give respect. I respect you, you respect me.
At least that’s how it always worked until the current breed of toxic Republicans came along.
Republicans like Nassau County, New York, County Executive Bruce Blakeman, who ordered flags on county buildings not be lowered to honor President Jimmy Carter, who died last week (see story here).
Flying flags at half-staff for 30 days when a sitting or former president passes away isn’t partisan or political; it has been standard practice since President Eisenhower issued a proclamation in 1954, and is a protocol embedded in the U.S. Flag Code, which provides guidance on such matters as how to properly fold a flag.
Blakeman (photo below), a spottily-successful politician who over his career lost more elections than he won (see his bio here), and who now leads a county government in a Democratic-majority county and state, didn’t dream up the flag refusal himself.
He took his cues from Trump, who whined in a social media post that “because of the death of President Jimmy Carter, the Flag may, for the first time ever during an Inauguration of a future President, be at half mast. Nobody wants to see this, and no American can be happy about it.” (See story here.)
A Democratic county official responded, “Politics shouldn’t play into this right now. This should be about what’s right for a person who represented our country, who guided our country and then served our country when they were done as president, and it’s the right thing to do.”
But doing the right thing isn’t what guides Republican politicians these days. Partisan politics, and Trump’s selfish whims, do.
No respect given, none returned, nor any deserved. I guess that’s how it’s gonna be now. I wish it was different.
