HOW FOX IS MAKING PEOPLE STUPIDER TODAY (updated)

According to Fox, a "Dem" is in cahoots with ... them:

Dem Flies Communist Flag at State Capitol Until Patriots Come Take It Down @ffweekend http://t.co/YBMaWJEYvm pic.twitter.com/Icyf2jHGp2

— FoxNewsInsider (@FoxNewsInsider) April 6, 2015

See? A commie flag at a state capitol! Your Fox-watching uncle is emailing you at this very minute to say he told you there's no difference between the philosophy of the Democrat Party and full-blown Marxist-Leninist-Maoist-Stalist revolutionary communism -- but you wouldn't listen!

So, um, what's the story here? Well, here it is:

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee decided to fly a Communist China flag right next to the American flag at the Washington State capitol to honor a visiting Chinese ambassador.

Inslee, a Democrat, ordered the Chinese flag be raised right between Old Glory and the state flag outside the capitol building in Olympia.

Some local patriots, however, were not pleased and took matters into their own hands.

With the help of a Washington State Trooper, several activists lowered the Chinese flag.

They said that flying the flag of Communist China at the same height as the stars and stripes was disrespectful....

It's disrespectful to fly the flag of China at the same height as the U.S. flag? You mean like this?



That's a photo from Chinese president Hu Jintao's visit to the White House in April 2006. Here's another photo, from the archived Bush-era whitehouse.gov:



FactCheck.org posted the first photo in 2009, when President Hu was about to visit the White House again, this time to see the newly inaugurated President Obama; at that time, plans to fly the Chinese flag were making wingnuts flip out. (Some flipped out even when Bush did it.)

The flag display in Washington State (which, by the way, does a massive amount of trade with China) stirred up the usual idiots (hello, Jim Hoft) -- and, as noted above, it led a crew of self-styled patriots to demand that the Chinese flag be taken down, which actually happened:



I see from the video that flying the damn Tea Party flag at the same height as the U.S. flag is just fine with these guys.

Early in the video, one of the True Patriots looks at the state trooper who's overseeing the flag's removal and says, "Now, that's an oath keeper there." I don't think he's saying that the trooper is literally an Oath Keeper -- i.e., a member of the group of law enforcement officers who pledge never to enforce an "unconstitutional" order, "unconstitutional" being defined strictly by the group itself -- but he's admiring the guy for taking the law into his own hands, which is something all True Patriots feel entitled to do. They're Americans, see. You're not. The governor of Washington State is not. You haver to understand that the Constitution mystically speaks to these guys and tells them who counts as a citizen and who doesn't.

****

UPDATE: Wonkette's Doktor Zoom learns that the flag removal had nothing to do with the protest:

... as we confirmed with a call to Jaime Smith, Director of Media Relations for Gov. Inslee, the Chinese flag had been flying to honor the ambassador’s visit. She noted that it’s common protocol for national flags of visiting diplomatic and trade delegations to fly at the Capitol during official visits, as a routine show of goodwill. When the visit is over, the flag comes down. Totally normal, and the “patriots” had nothing to do with it.

So these guys are even more delusional than I thought they were.