'Pirate Flag on Top' 

Editor:

The American flag should fly above the Earth flag because that arrangement portrays our view of the world ("Judge: Arcata Can't Put Earth Flag on Top," April 11). The Project for the New American Century is alive and well, with its mantra of "military strength and moral clarity ... good for both America and the world" as articulated by Dick Cheney et al. in 1997. We've claimed that right — to be on top of the world — by turning a bunch of countries to rubble, killing and displacing millions, and pushing close to a thousand military bases into countries around the world.

After Gorbachev lifted the Berlin wall, we treacherously broke our word, and marched a missile-loaded NATO eastward to the Russian border. Then we put Russia on our "to-do" list for a later time when, tired of destroying little countries on the cheap, we would want a "near-peer" war. We're trying mightily to provoke a near-peer war with China, too. We just have to find and incite the right proxies (probably the Uyghurs, well infiltrated with Isis).

It's become impossible to list all the crimes of this country in the last 30 years! Subsidizing insurrections, terrorists, sanctions, assassinations ... We've broken most weapons treaties. And now we're on autopilot: Congress frozen in lockstep, and the money flows to a gas-chamber-like genocide without the commander-in-chief having to lift a finger.

As regarding respect for the Earth, the U.S. leads the world in fossil fuel production (last year's government-subsidized production at an all-time high). We don't even try to measure our military's greenhouse gas production!

It's nice to have Cheney's "moral clarity" when we're saying the Pledge of Allegiance. But if Arcata's flag problem were presented to AI, it would put the pirate flag on top.

Ellen Taylor, Petrolia