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| It all began with "Eat Flag Bread." In a little storefront on the Lower East Side, the Flag Bakery was set up. They baked rolls and long loaves and packaged them in a colorful wrapper that resembled the American flag. |
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| Then the war came, and it became almost a patriotic duty to buy bread from the Flag Bakery. The wrappers were seen everywhere on the counters and kitchen tables of people like you and me. Then one day the worst happened: a deranged kitten in the home of Ms. Mona Linoleum got into the cabinets and ate a loaf of Flag Bread. This gave the kitten, who wasn't really prepared for it, supernatural powers of poetic observation, and she became a sort of rogue prophet who appeared twice on Nightline. But all this is beside the point. |
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| What I'm really trying to say is how the slogan "Eat Flag Bread" destroyed democracy once and for all in America. Once Seth Martin got hold of the Flag Bread thing, it fireballed and went haywire. He pumped it for what it was worth, and got a good long ride out of it, too. By the time he was done some of our greatest cities, Indianapolis and St. Paul, Fort Lauderdale and Tucson, were reduced to rubble. On the charred remains was erected a primitive culture of mud huts, and the boys from the Port Authority found themselves in control. They instantly made slaves of the so-called "normal" population, and anyone who disobeyed their command was arrested for vagrancy. |
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| Strangely enough, the simple folk found themselves loving their new rulers. They argued among themselves as to which was the keener pleasure, to submit at once or resist and be punished. All sorts of stories were told about the tortures committed by the Port Authority boys on the prisoners they loved best. "They cannot show love except by giving pain," was what was rumored about them, and this sent a delicious tremor over the skin of even the weakest member of the tribe. |
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| In the elders' council, where the tribe met to consider how to make decisions, one impetuous brave stood up and said, "Let us rise against these men. If they kill the first of us, there will be others! Let me be the first to fight. I am not afraid to feel pain, and I am not afraid to die." But no one even pretended to understand him, and life went on pretty much as before. |
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