This was an anticommunist addition during McCarthyism, but they couldn’t just outright say “under capitalism.”

Well the whole pledge is creepy as fuck to an outsider like me. It looks like a caricature of indoctrination that one would find in a subpar dystopian novel...

The first time I saw it I literally got goosebumps

Oh, you mean when they violated separation of church and state? Yeah, that was pretty cool. /s

I’ll pledge allegiance to the flag when it stands for something worth being proud of.

Random thought, if both the Senate and House have to recite the pledge before they start their session, how do they go directly from "with liberty and justice for all" to "let me tell you why these women and blacks and gays don't deserve rights" without the faintest bit of irony? Do they snicker during the last line of the pledge? Cross their fingers behind their backs?

It was a very weird time, but thankfully we pulled back from embracing the Bellamy Salute… some events in formerly Weimar Germany made that too uncomfortable

I stopped saying it when I learned that around my mid twenties. Now it's just "one nation, (pause for breath), indivisible". And before you ask, even as an adult I'm asked to recite the pledge, we do it at American Legion meetings as well as monthly fire and EMS meetings.