The Flag of Fuck You

(Lunatic Reader Mail, July 4th Edition)

I swear I was planning on writing something light-hearted about Independence Day, but a few days ago, as I was preparing to enjoy the holiday, I received a threatening message from a reader who had some decidedly negative opinions about Jews. These were not the trendy “I just found out there was a place called the Middle East/How can Hamas be bad when it has the word Ham in it?” variety, this was good old classic “Children of the devil” stuff.

It felt almost quaint.

“Sexual deviants?” I thought. “Awww, cute! And I AM a sexual deviant!”

For writers with any teeth, these types of emails are common. I’ve been receiving them for thirty years now, so the note itself didn’t concern me. What concerned me was the emoji symbol he signed off with, a symbol that has been appearing more and more of these emails of late, a symbol once known as a symbol of hope and acceptance but that is becoming increasingly associated with venom and scorn:

Had he signed off with a swastika, or “88,” or “WPWW,” or whatever new Super Secret Hate Club Code they come up with next, it wouldn’t have bothered me.

A Nazi cosplayer.

A disaffected teen.

Big deal.

But lately, when I see the American flag, I think, “Oh-oh.”

I think, “This is a real hater.”

I think it’s time to call the police.

Anyone who lives in our nation in this time knows that a pickup truck cutting you off on the highway is very different than a pickup truck with an American flag on it cutting you off on the highway; that the guy in the bar with an American flag cap is probably going to be the one getting into a drunken brawl; that the neighbor with the American flag on his doorpost is probably the one who’s going to come outside waving a handgun if your dog pees on his grass. I’d rather come home to find a swastika spray-painted on my front door than an American flag, and I can’t fucking believe I just wrote that sentence.

I confess: Flags give me the willies, they always have. Perhaps this is to be expected, my having been raised on the Holocaust from a very young age; any rectangular section of fabric capable of inspiring millions of people to kill is going to keep me up at night. But for me, the American flag was different from others. Even in the insular ultra-Orthodox yeshiva of my youth, where everything non-Biblical was suspect or forbidden, we pledged allegiance to the American flag, our rabbis reminding us of the haven this nation has provided our people in an unsafe world, and the debt that we owe it.

But that was then. Then the American flag said, “You are safe here.” It said, “You are home.” I imagined it then as an upright, virtuous man, a free thinker, a person of character. Today, the flag says, “You talkin’ to me?” The flag says, “Fuck around and find out.” The flag has begun to feel like an angry drunk looking for a fight.

While writing this post, I decided to look for a photo of Hitler Youth saluting the Nazi flag; I thought I would photoshop the American flag in its place. You know, for funny.

This is what I found:

Two things:

1 - I swear I was planning on writing something light-hearted about Independence Day, and

2 - I swear the above photo is not photoshopped.

As it turns out, for many years what’s now known as “the Nazi salute” was the traditional salute for the Pledge of Allegiance, until the Nazis began using it to salute Hitler and the meaning changed - so much so that in 1942, Congress banned its use and replaced it with the hand-over-the-heart gesture we know now.

I can’t imagine how surprised the schoolchildren in that photo would be to learn that one day the salute they were using to honor “liberty and justice for all” would represent murder and fascism.

And I can’t imagine how horrified they would be to find the flag they were saluting would come to mean anger and hate.

And so the Fourth of July, once the simplest of holidays, has become complicated. On the one hand, I still believe that America is different, or should aspire to be. On the other hand, as July rolls around and the American flags come out – on homes, shirts, cars, and F-150’s - I feel an anxiety to see them I never as a child imagined I would.

Perhaps that was mere childhood innocence. To many people, of course, the American flag has long represented oppression, and perhaps all flags are an implicit threat to the person not waving them.

But it is an innocence I miss.

Yours in the Fetal Position,

S.

illustrations by Orli Auslander