Summary
Dawson City in Canada is facing a crisis as the new mayor and councillors won’t take the required oath of allegiance to King Charles.
They refused in support of an Indigenous councillor who opposes the oath due to the Crown’s history with Indigenous people.
Without the oath, their election could be canceled, and they can’t make official decisions.
The council has asked for a different oath, but Yukon law requires the pledge. Authorities are now looking into the situation.
Not just an inanimate object - an idea that that object is meant to represent! We’re about one level of abstraction away from the pledge of allegiance becoming a meaningless mantra of words with no meaning or relation to one another strung together to make a pretty song that is always sung off-key by grade school children.
I mean bag on the pledge of allegiance all you like, but using the flag as a synecdoche of the nation as a whole doesn’t seem like it is as great a leap of logic as you are making it out to be.