“I am not flying the flag this year” he said, scrunching up his face as from a bad smell. “We just can’t…” she finished, or something like it. It surprised me. A dozen years my senior, they are people who have long flown the flag without hesitation.
We didn’t finish the conversation — it was as if they assumed I understood what they meant. Though my take might be significantly different from what they intended, they are not the first to express such discomfort toward flying the American flag these days.
Like many Boomers, I grew up in a time when my peers were burning the American flag. It was routine, even. There was vociferous feelings both ways about defacing the flag and it even became a crime in some states until the Supreme Court said it was protected free speech (1989). In 2016 Trump reignited the idea that it should be a crime, pandering as he does to any group sentiment that can be exploited.
But the people I know who aren’t feeling like flying the flag would previously have had no problem doing so. In fact, it was a civic ritual they gladly engaged in. Something has happened to change that. An analogy may help.
If you are Christian you may have similar feelings at Easter when an all-encompassing consumeristic culture co-opts the Empty Tomb and substitutes the Easter Bunny for it. Instead of palm fronds, candlelight, and “Alleluia!” you are surrounded by little yellow marshmallow birds, chocolate eggs, and a meaningless nothing at the center of the celebration. Likewise at Christmas, when the story you know is about a refugee family forced by a violent and oppressive empire to leave their home at a critical moment, and so give birth to their child in hay in the dark of night. Instead of that story, you witness a consumption-driven avalanche beginning with Black Friday and ending with Day-after sales. All of it, and with no real explanation, has a fat, bearded superhero and reindeer at the center of it all.
Well, that kind of adulteration has happened to the American flag. Instead of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and Bill of Rights as the clear substance of its symbolic meaning, the American flag has been singed, re-colored, and appropriated by something else. It is being co-opted by right-wing extremism, and a former president who spawned a corrosive national conspiracy theory, and arguably fomented an attempted insurrection.
The blue and white, or black and blue stripped American flags so prominently displayed in yards or on barns and garages, has the effect of stealing the light from the founder’s Constitutional genius inherent in Betsy Ross’s flag, and making it dark and threatening for many. Unfurled as they so often are alongside Trump flags, and even obscenity-laced signs hurling hostility at the current president, they take a symbol of national unity — and honor for those who died in service to the nation — and reduce it to theirs alone.
So not wanting to be associated with a politics of hostility that is often tinged with racist and xenophobic ideas, some feel the need to eschew the flag they would have previously flown. While I do not fly it or any flag myself, when he said they couldn’t do it this year, I felt sad for the loss it implied.
Thanks for articulating the feelings that many of us are having regarding flying the flag in your 7/6 “Blowin’ in the Wind” article. It’s heartbreaking, but perfectly emblematic of the division and disillusionment we are facing as a nation. Unfortunately, I think we are in for a long, cold winter before our collective healing will begin.
Keep up the great work. Thanks.
Tom K.
Geneva, NY
Dear Tom, thank you for the supportive note. It is a tough subject and am grateful to hear from you. Cam
Heh Cam. Good article expressing how we all feel. But we feel compelled to take it a step further. Rather than allowing one political party dictate their ideology we continue to fly the flag in defiance. I love my country. Because of that love I will continue to fight for the freedom of all. It is important to communicate one can fly the flag and have a different position from the predominant ideology associated with the flag. Take back the narrative. We ALL can fly the flag.
Thanks for letting me have my soapbox moment.
Too true, Abbie. There was a good opinion piece in the NYT about the same thing. I appreciate you adding dimension to my column! I have never been someone to fly the flag so my perspective was/is limited that way. I will try to think of you when I see Old Glory rippling from someone’s front porch and feel better about it. Thank you.
Boy, I get it. A few months back, Karen had an unplanned conversation on the subject with other folks and clergy from the Eastern Iowa Deanery, and she landed with the idea that she wasn’t going to let the seditionists steal the notions hoped for by the Founders, and striven for by both our fathers, who were in the Air Corps and Seabees, respectively, in the big war. My dad, who saw firsthand the loss and devastation that came from the nationalistic strivings of the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”, ie, Imperial Japan – places and people destroyed, villages leveled and the vulnerable left starving and exposed to all manner of exploitation and misery. He was present in suburban Tokyo at war’s end to clear streets of rubble and start to re-establish the electric grid. And so, as he would come to say, when witnessing the abuse, the “othering” of Asian-Americans, African Americans, or our fellows of any branch of the Abrahamic faith: “That’s just not right.” And I hear his voice now and can see the left eyebrow turned up, and sense his Irish rising. I get not wanting to be co-opted into this current version of “nationalism” like the blue-flag-flyers and stand with them, but me, I’m flying the flag of my parents’ better hopes for our community. And what’s left of mine. And I have some barely-choked off Navy words for folks who think that this is some exclusive club for people born of the “correct” pigmentation. Thanks, as always, for the dialogue, Fr. Cam.
Fly it high. Lots of people are for the reasons you list. I’m more of an observer in this struggle (over flag) than a participant and I can see both actions as reasonable. Thanks.