Just a few years ago, our great leader stood on piles of smoldering rubble and encouraged us to buy more flags, distrust weirdos, and generally be more "Amurican." All over the Midwest, factories pumped out photos, keychains, and vanity plates of stern-looking bald eagles soaring through red, white, and blue skies that were hilarious then but now float around like cigarette butts in warm beer - tragic reminders of a brutal hangover.
The bald eagle was a symbol of America's toughness and majesty, but today, the eagle patriot is a reminder of a rigidity and unwillingness to adapt as things change in an accelerating world. An albatross wearing a white wig and picking fish out of an oil spill. Perhaps in the future we will have a new bird symbol for our country that represents a different idea of patriotism. I'd like to propose the swallow. Eating bugs and building nests in barns - that's something I can still wave a flag about.
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