Woman faces fines for wreath peace sign

Do you think you are free to do as you please with YOUR private property? Well, not if you’re in a development with crazy people:

Some residents who have complained have children serving in Iraq, said Bob Kearns, president of the Loma Linda Homeowners Association in Pagosa Springs. He said some residents have also believed it was a symbol of Satan. Three or four residents complained, he said.

“Somebody could put up signs that say drop bombs on Iraq. If you let one go up you have to let them all go up,” he said in a telephone interview Sunday.

Lisa Jensen said she wasn’t thinking of the war when she hung the wreath. She said, “Peace is way bigger than not being at war. This is a spiritual thing.”

I’m sure that a big huge yellow ribbon stuck to the slab of concrete would be perfectly fine.
This sort of herd-like behavior isn’t uniquely American, of course, but it is sadly endemic for a country that pats itself on the back for being “free”. Those who’re most loud about being patriotic, or being “good Christians”, are often the most thin-skinned about being confronted by something that is, or is imagined to be, “offensive”. Often remarkably easily bruised, these people often object based on weird beliefs and conspiracy theories, like the continual insistence that the peace symbol is “satanic”. Some call it “Nero’s Cross”, an inverted cross or the “witch’s foot”.  The symbol was actually designed by Gerald Holtom, a professional designer and artist and a graduate of the Royal College of Arts and was meant to invoke the semophore symbols for “N” and “D”, standing for nuclear disarmament.

Gerald Holtom, a conscientious objector who had worked on a farm in Norfolk during the Second World War, explained that the symbol incorporated the semaphore letters N(uclear) and D(isarmament). He later wrote to Hugh Brock, editor of Peace News, explaining the genesis of his idea in greater, more personal depth:

I was in despair. Deep despair. I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya’s peasant before the firing squad. I formalised the drawing into a line and put a circle round it.

Eric Austin added his own interpretation of the design: “the gesture of despair had long been associated with the death of Man and the circle with the unborn child.”

The symbol went on to become a broader symbol for peace as counter-culture demonstrations spread:

The symbol almost at once crossed the Atlantic. Bayard Rustin, a close associate of Martin Luther King had come over from the US in order to take part in that first Aldermaston March. He took the symbol back to the United States where it was used on civil rights marches. Later it appeared on anti-Vietnam War demonstrations and was even seen daubed in protest on their helmets by American GIs. Simpler to draw than the Picasso peace dove, it became known, first in the US and then round the world as the peace symbol. It appeared on the walls of Prague when the Soviet tanks invaded in 1968, on the Berlin Wall, in Sarajevo and Belgrade, on the graves of the victims of military dictators from the Greek Colonels to the Argentinian junta, and most recently in East Timor.

Many Americans would rather wallow in their ignorance and preconceptions, so these niggling little details would matter not a whit to Ms. Jensen’s neighbors. What matters to them are the cozy little myths and superstitions that protect their narrow little worldviews. Use the cross to “support the troops” … that would doubtless be okay. Scatter little mangers or Santas or reindeer around to your heart’s content, but if you dare to stumble across the easily-bruised psyches of these disturbed people then you may find some representative of authority telling you what you can do with your land, and what thoughts you’re allowed to share with the world around you.

Free thought isn’t welcome in the land of the blind and ignorant.