The Bank of the West branch at Two Steele Street in Cherry Creek has for many years proudly flown an American flag on a tall pole in front of its building. I was contacted by a customer who has banked there for 30 years. Last week, he asked a bank employee why the flag was no longer flying, said he was disturbed by that and was thinking of closing his account.
I investigated and discovered the flag had been vandalized multiple times, including being turned upside down on its flagpole, an expression of hatred for it. The branch manager had replaced flags repeatedly to no avail.
On Monday I spoke with BOTW’s Executive Vice President of the Rocky Mountain region, Shawn Cole. He discredited a rumor that the bank had been told to keep it down by BOTW’s corporate headquarters in San Francisco, assured me that their HQ had done no such thing and that he’d never have approved that, adding that “we are proud to fly the flag.” He promised a new flag would be put up as soon as possible. In fact, he got that done the very next day.
The thought that radical activists who complained about the bank flying the flag or desecrated it could succeed in “cancelling” it outraged me. I suggested that the bank could follow traditional flag protocol and take it down at the end of the day, raising it again each morning. Shawn agreed and added that the flagpole will also be modified with a locking system to deter vandalism. I’d like to see future vandals wind up behind the bars of the Denver jail’s “locking system.”
Our 
country is being torn apart by radical leftists; anarchists; Marxist revolutionaries; haters of American history; social justice warriors; culture cancellers; Critical Race Theory propaganda of anti-white racists that has infected our schools, military, and corporations; and others who would divide us. It’s time to fight back. I’ve never been an advocate for boycotts, a favored tactic of leftist malcontents. But it’s time to fight fire with fire.
BOTW should be commended for defending the flag and not capitulating to America-hating hoodlums, but too many cowardly corporate CEO’s have buckled under pressure from socialist progressives and belligerent “woke” antagonists because they subscribe to the ideology or, more likely, are in fear of bad publicity, boycotts, or violence.
Coca-Cola and Delta Airlines, both headquartered in Atlanta, appeased leftist radicals and overreacted with theatrical virtue-signaling by criticizing Georgia legislators for enacting entirely reasonable reforms to improve election integrity. And Major League Baseball fecklessly piled on by moving the All Star Game out of Atlanta. I’m not giving up on baseball yet but I’m done with Coke and Delta. I’ll go with Pepsi and Southwest from now on.
Countless businesses are submitting their employees to woke brainwashing and guilt sessions. Big corporations have contributed millions of dollars to the radical Black Lives Matter organization founded by three Marxist black women who hate capitalism. Isn’t that ironic, corporations funding anti-capitalist extremists.
In the classic 1976 movie “Network,” Howard Beale, an enraged TV network news anchor, stares, into the camera and screams to his audience “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!” That should be the rallying cry for the vast majority of Americans who love this country, don’t murder, loot, burn, riot, block roadways, tear down statues, deface public buildings or hate the police and set their cars on fire. If we, boycott and divest from corporations that pander to the radicals, it will hit them where it hurts and get their attention. Let them be scared of the rest of us for a change. Punish a few, and others will take notice.
That’ll take organization, a blacklist (no racial offense intended) and a great deal of public participation. I’ve always believed in private enterprise and a market economy. And I still do. Willi Shlamm, a European ex-communist who became a U.S, citizen profoundly observed, “The trouble with communism is communism. The trouble with capitalism is capitalists” Or at least some of them.
On other fronts, let’s elect conservatives to school boards to reclaim our public schools from the teachers unions that support hateful anti-white CRT indoctrination of our students. Let’s shun colleges dominated by leftist ideology. Republicans can expand their appeal to blacks and Latinos with school choice and private school vouchers to help them escape from failing public schools. Democrats in tow to the unions will never do that.
This is an existential battle for the future of America.
Longtime KOA radio talk host and columnist for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News Mike Rosen now writes for CompleteColorado.com.
