Student sits during pledge of allegiance; gets chair kicked out from beneath him

[henryp]

I think the coerced nationalistic virtue signalling could also be viewed as a harmless agreed upon social norm to politely show respect.

I meet someone and they put out their hand, I know the act of holding hands and wiggling them a couple times is fucking dumb.  But that's what we came up with.  Is it so dumb that I'm going to start slapping people's hands away and calling them morons?  I don't really see a need for that.  We shake hands, and move on.

You could just not shake the person's hand.  Some people are germophobes and some people are simply uncomfortable with physical contact.

If I don't want to shake your hand, I'm just not going to do it.

Yeah, if you have a reason, not shaking hands is perfectly reasonable.  If you just refuse to adopt social norms because "you're not the boss of me!", that's fine too.  But you'll have to deal with the somewhat deserved repercussions as well.