I was stopped at a railroad track the other day for an interminable wait as what must have been a 200-car freight train made its slow, lumbering crawl across the intersection. There’s not much to do in such a situation, and the view of a couple of empty parking lots didn’t captivate me for long.

I zeroed in on the bumper sticker on the car in front of me. “Wars have never solved anything,” big bold letters proclaimed, and I nodded in agreement. And then I read the rest: “except for ending slavery, fascism, Nazism and communism.”

I began to have thoughts that were not entirely peaceful. The bitter bile of an unkind epithet – and I’m being generous – bubbled up and formed on my lips and tasted bad as I swallowed it. Acid reflux perhaps?

Then I reminded myself that this is America, and in America, there is room for all views. Never mind that the point has been entirely lost in the polarized debate through which Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and inexplicable phenomenon Rosie O’Donnell, who chimes in on everything from Donald Trump’s ethics to the detainment of British sailors in Iran, make all Americans look like frothing-at-the-mouth idiots who have lost all ability to reason. I don’t listen to these people voluntarily, but as previously noted in this space, there’s no escaping their claptrap. If you ever want to punish me for something I’ve done, lock me in a room with them and go away for a few days. On your return, I’ll be the one curled in a fetal position in the corner covering my ears and singing “la-la-la-la-la, I can’t hear you.”

Maybe some of them have already joined the white-hot debate over a federal judge’s ruling that Iowa’s flag desecration laws violate the due process clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. As noted earlier, I don’t like to pay too much attention to them. What I have heard is that people think U.S. District Judge Robert Pratt must hate America, veterans, apple pie and his mother. I don’t know him. But I don’t think anyone makes it to the federal bench by hating America.

I can say without hesitation that I’d never burn a flag. The moment a flag goes up in flames, people stop listening, no matter how valid the point or how free Americans are under the First Amendment, which interestingly enough the judge didn’t cite in his ruling, to express themselves in that manner.

I’m more likely to place my palm over my heart as veterans carry it by in a parade or when the spotlight is shone on it during the singing of the National Anthem at a baseball game.

However, I can’t make any promises that if I get good and worked up about an issue, I won’t fly the flag upside down, the cause of action in the federal court case. I kind of like the statement Des Moines attorney Jonathan Wilson made by inverting the framed certificate acknowledging his right to argue cases before the U.S. Supreme Court when justices decided the 2000 presidential election.

And there is plenty to get worked up about when elected officials waste time on emotional arguments over how to treat a symbol of a nation instead of focusing their energies on bettering the treatment of the nation’s citizens. Following that logic, only a select few falsetto sopranos would ever be allowed to sing “The Star Spangled Banner.”

It’s a good thing the caboose showed up when it did and ended this stream of consciousness before O’Reilly, Coulter, Limbaugh and O’Donnell got wind of it.