MHOAGA

I find the concept of the homeowners associations to be utterly quite baffling and utterly repulsive. All the pains and anxieties of owning a home, and some beady-eyed Dennis Rader wannabe who didn’t have what it takes to become a code enforcement officer dictates what color I can paint my front door?

No thank you.

But this is the United States of America. A nation where almost anyone can take a bad idea and make it worse, more ridiculous or both.

Constitution Lane doesn’t look like much now — just an asphalt road surrounded by vacant lots. But developer Brock Fankhauser has a vision.

A vision of hundreds of rubes giving him so much money for his vacant lots that he can slip away to a tropical island with no extradition treaty with the U.S. patriotism. The best kind of patriotism. The kind that is enforced by an HOA.

Spoilers: Yes Brock did contribute to tRump’s campaign in 2020.

“At 1776, our goal is to bring patriotism to the front porch of housing and the communities that we develop henceforth,” Fankhauser said at the development’s launch party last month, before leading a parade with an armored truck from the sheriff’s office, motorcycles, a pipe-and-drum band and a huge American flag hanging from a firetruck ladder.

Nothing says freedom like a surplus military vehicle bought on the cheap by the local po-po.

Also, who the hell says “henceforth”?

1776 Gastonia is a planned community for people — or rather, “patriots” — 55 and up. A highlight video captured the declaration with the Star-Spangled Banner swelling behind him.

“My purpose is to unite citizens and to do so under the broadest of commonalities, and that is our great nation,” Fankhauser said.

Living on the same street isn’t enough to unite people. Everyone must demonstrate appropriate flag-think. America, fuck yeah!

The most visible sign: All 44 homes will be required to fly an American flag 365 days a year. That’s the only flag allowed. Not even the state flag of North Carolina, as an original colony, is permitted.

[…]

But buyers don’t have to take actual oaths. Those values are just noted in the preamble to the community’s covenants.

“Great movements are known for their intangible ingredients versus the tangible. And that’s what I think excites me about this. It’s in the mind,” Fankhauser said.

Great things are in the mind. That’s why people who pay 450,000 to 700,000 to live in the development must be required to perform patriotism. This man sounds like a graduate of the Moist Von Lipwig École du Scammage.

As an aside, I can’t find any mention of 4 U.S. Code, Chapter 1 in the covenant. Perhaps Brock knows not to push his luck.

Enforcement is a topic of conversation among a few men working beside the 1776 construction site. Victor Pearce, Daion Brown and James Denza say the flag requirement is a turn-off for them. They wondered what would happen if residents forgot.

“They’re older folks, they might forget. So what does that mean for the person that forgets? That’s what I want to know,” Pearce said.

“Do I got to get put out, if I don’t fly it?” Brown asked.

“If it’s an HOA thing, they’ll be like, ‘Hey, they ain’t flying their flag. Get ‘em. Get ‘em,’” Denza said.

But if B.F. is hoping to attract the easiest marks in the union, mission accomplished.

Ida Aldred said she knows exactly whom 1776 is marketed for — conservatives like her.

“I’m assuming that they, almost 95%, would all have to be of the same political affiliation,” said Aldred, referring to Republicans.

She was visiting her in-laws in the neighborhood next door to 1776. Her husband was already eagerly looking up the development online. Living around people with similar politics appeals to them.

The idea of Republicans clustering up in clearly labeled developments appeals to me. But I feel sorry for anyone who is on the Republican hate list who has to go there for work.

“Absolutely, I would live there. Absolutely. I believe that it doesn’t hurt showing your patriotism,” Aldred said.

Her father-in-law Mark Warshawsky shook his head. No one is going to make him fly a flag, although his T-shirt had a flag on it and read, “Land of the free, home of the brave.”

“That means I don’t have to put up the flag if I don’t want to,” Warshawsky said.

People who post off-topic comments own a brace of guns that match Brock’s