Gonna delete your original comment, Linda, and any other replies. Thanks for acknowledging the mistake - and if I've written about Trump before, that was my mistake. Politics really isn't my sport.
Being a NYer on 9/11 there has been an American flag attached to my Jewish home since 9/12/2001. It has a prominent place next to the mezuzah. You can see what you want to see when it comes to the US. I see promise, hope, and freedom. It's why millions risk life and limb to come here.
I refuse to let dopes at both ends of the political spectrum redefine what the flag, or the US, means to me.
EKB nailed it. As a veteran I fly the star spangled banner for love of my country. Don’t care if a dog pisses on my grass, it’s a dog, it’s what they do. The flag is not on my truck and I don’t cut people off. To me it stands for the future of the United States. Don’t give in to the shock effect as it is lame and tired. God Bless the USA. 🇺🇸 + 🇮🇱 = ☮️
I’ve always derided flags because of some weird detachment imparted by my lefty parents. But now I say, give me a flag, plaster my yard and my house with flags, take the flag back and away from the fascists. How dare they appropriate that flag? How dare trump and his stormtroopers and all the ignorant reactive bible thumpers say they own the flag? They don’t.
I’m so glad to see Percival Everett’s name here. Wonderful writer; the incisiveness and irony, just like our friend here, and each with their own unique voices and literary terrain. What a gift, theirs and ours, eh!
That's the Bellamy Salute, named for the man who authored the original Pledge of Allegiance, the one without "under God", which those wonderful folks at the Knights of Columbus managed to shoehorn into the pledge. Ironically, the reason that Mr. Bellamy came up with that idiotic pledge in the first place was to stimulate the sales of American Flags...nobody works for free!
And once a work of art is released to the public, it takes on a life of its own. It gets interpreted, re-interpreted, re-re-interpreted, and so on, until people forget the original meaning. The peace symbol was definitely not about peace and love when it was initially used. The swastika, turned both right and left, has had numerous meanings throughout history. Volkswagen’s Beetle was originally part of Hitler’s master plan. He wanted everyone in Germany to own one. Now, all of these symbols mean something completely different than their original intent. What’s most important is, how you treat others, and how honest you are.
I think that's an interesting comparison. And there may be nothing we can do when a symbol that we know as positive and beloved gets used in a way we find abhorrent, like at the end of anti-Semitic emails - other than to say so, which is what I've tried to do here. Beckett, before he died, established a group to protect his work from being altered (I suffered through an "updated" production of Chekov's The Cherry Orchard which included long and artless monologues about climate change, so I can understand his concern). At the time I thought he was wrong to do that, but I'm no longer sure.
The Confederate Flag, the most popular version, has been co opted by actual bigot. I don’t know the original intent. I do know that that version is not what the South flew during the Civil War. The USA Flag still means the same thing to pretty much everyone. Every USA citizen. Only leftists and others with a very active imagination ascribe other meanings to it.
Parallel to the sale of ankle monitors for those very brief periods when people committing poverty-related crimes - or merely targeted by the criminal “justice” industry - are temporarily released to appease public protest and then promptly locked up again.
Powerful message in your story. I get it. My father was a US Navy pilot who loved the flag and of course it covered his casket at his funeral. I have his flight jacket and used to love wearing it (I’m a small 63 year old woman), but these days, it just attracts the wrong kind of attention so it hangs in the closet.
Oh, my. The complaints I get are mild compared to this. I've been called a bigot and someone with no critical thinking skills. Also a lot of huffy "I Will Not Discuss This!" (What comes of being raised not as you were but in a girls' school . . . .which now advertises its devotion to DEI, "restorative practices" and "gender diversity"--oh, and "affinity groups" based not on interests but on ethnic background.) So I'm cheering not for the meaning certain numbskulls ascribe to the flag or to America but for the meaning given to both by Abraham Lincoln, the Gettysburg Address, and the Declaration. A belated happy Fourth to you.
Loved this post. I realized as I read it that I feel precisely the same way but had never quite formed these thoughts. I’ve never been comfortable with expressions of patriotism because there is so much about our country that I see as needing improvement, but I also hate the co-opting of the flag by just those people who use it to express the beliefs I think of as unamerican. You’ve explained why I feel that way. Thank you!
It’s for this exact reason that hubby got a flag and put it up next to our “science is real, love is love, etc.” sign. It’s our flag too, no matter what Magats think. They’re NOT patriots. They don’t honor the constitution. I never cared much about the flag before those dipshits turned it into their symbol. I agree that our country has a lot of work to do to atone for the past and do better in the future. To me being patriotic means being willing to put in that work- our country is worth the effort.
"....perhaps all flags are an implicit threat to the person not waving them." chilling words that should go down in the annuls of political history to illustrate the fucked up notions of allegiance rampant in these days. To my mind too, bring down all the flags until we all learn to do better. Too many idiots and maniacs hide behind flags like a screen for their naked stupidity. Sad, such a sadly important piece, thanks Shalom.
This article has articulated exactly what I've been trying to explain ... to myself and to my husband. (Both of us, btw, are centrist with the needle shivering being slightly left to libertarian.) Four years ago, our MAGA land neighborhood draped itself in not only American flags, but Trump flags to. Whenever I left the house, I'd be slapped with those two symbols: one that I loved and often moves me to tears, and the other a writhing snake of the coming Fourth Reich.
Since then, and as Trump has proved himself to be a raving jackass, all but two of the Trump flags have disappeared from the ubiquitous front yard standards, to my relief. Yes, the clothing and truck bed flags appear now and then, but only on a few people. I try to restrain myself from yelling, "READ THE FUCKING FLAG CODE!" And the hatred experienced during COVID has drained away. Everybody's tired. Those days four years ago seem quaint.
MAGA is a bit more subtle here on the edge of the Nevada desert these days. The GOP is busy infiltrating MAGA into the school board and the primary/caucus process. But the parents have formed their own army, wearing red tees and suing the Board members who are causing the trouble. There's push-back in Mayberry. And during the holidays when the valley shines with Christmas lights, there's a growing number of homes shining blue door lights. (I've been told those are Jewish families.) The Jewish couple who run the very successful chocolate shop here makes candies, cookies, and other goodies with the blue Star of David on them. Of course, I know there are people like your "reader" who undoubtedly insult this couple and the Blacks, LGBTQ+, etc. people in town. So far, the guys shooting their guns at the makeshift gun range a block away and preparing for that government wonk who's going to knock on their door for some damned reason. Somehow, the furor of four years ago has lightened. I think. I hope. Of course, I don't go out much anymore. People scare me. You never know when they'll turn on you. And this is the West. People come here to reinvent themselves. Many people who left New Orleans after Katrina moved to the West and very few of them returned to Nola.
I also get the sense that there is a certain exhaustion with all the hate and finger-pointing. Who knows, maybe one day the flag will stand for the Radical Middle, for the 80% of us who aren't insane? But then my shrink always did say I have a troubling streak of optimism...
He's following Hitler's tactic. Heal the economy, then squeeze our the undesireables. Trade on people's already deep seated prejudices and organize them into an army of angry, uneducated, easily fired up soldiers. Thus, Jan. 6, 2020. He's further organized his minnions to infiltrate local governments and agencies so they will do his bidding against the will of the people. We're seeing that here with the three new school board Trustees. They've booted out the long-standing people in the schools, much tot he dismay of parents, have insulted those parents publically, have cost the District thousands of dollars by hiring a Trumpkin lawyer who knows nothing about educational law and is billing the taxpayers for his education in this area. I could go on. It blows my mind to see this actually happening in our country.
Everything that Trump’s haters and critics have said he would do, The Clinton, Obama and Biden administrations have done. And people decide what to do on their own. They don’t need someone else to tell them.
True, we don't need anyone to tell us what to do ... until some deep state bureaucrat knocks on the door with a ticket for a code violation, etcetcetc. It would be interesting to live in a libertarian world ... maybe ... yet another bunch of cats to herd ... but at present we don't.
It would greatly help if most people were well educated and had strong morals. That alone would prevent a lot of problems. But there will never be a society without some form of government, just like true communism cannot sustain itself.
I have been flying an American flag for my late father, a WWII veteran, since he died. Holidays, his birthday -- .
Now since October 7, 2023, I fly it constantly as a way of saying, No matter how often the malcontents march, no matter how often our noisy minorities of masked Marxist, Islamist, and BLM adherents take over our public spaces and "flood the streets" for malignant, misbegotten causes, this is a country that has done marvelous things for humankind and is still a beacon to millions. No other country in history has given such opportunities to those who came to its shores or invented medical and engineering miracles that everyone benefits from today.
Unless the protesters believe that the migrants massing on and crossing our borders are rank opportunists and wannabe parasites, then they must admit that the United States offers more to its people than anywhere else on earth. We didn't always get things right, as they say, but the good we have done far outweighs the bad.
It's a fine flag.
A neighbor told me that if Trump wins the election, he'll burn his flag. Our country will survive and far outlive a second Trump presidency. Whether it can survive the assaults on it by the far Left is another matter, but I have confidence that it will.
Another reason why I feel more comfortable living in the Netherlands where the most flag related violence is the BBB - farmers’ political party - who is very opposed to any sanctions on the size of their farty cow herds, so they protest by hanging the Dutch flag 🇳🇱 upsidedown!
Gonna delete your original comment, Linda, and any other replies. Thanks for acknowledging the mistake - and if I've written about Trump before, that was my mistake. Politics really isn't my sport.
Being a NYer on 9/11 there has been an American flag attached to my Jewish home since 9/12/2001. It has a prominent place next to the mezuzah. You can see what you want to see when it comes to the US. I see promise, hope, and freedom. It's why millions risk life and limb to come here.
I refuse to let dopes at both ends of the political spectrum redefine what the flag, or the US, means to me.
Well done, EKB. Precisely right.
EKB nailed it. As a veteran I fly the star spangled banner for love of my country. Don’t care if a dog pisses on my grass, it’s a dog, it’s what they do. The flag is not on my truck and I don’t cut people off. To me it stands for the future of the United States. Don’t give in to the shock effect as it is lame and tired. God Bless the USA. 🇺🇸 + 🇮🇱 = ☮️
I’ve always derided flags because of some weird detachment imparted by my lefty parents. But now I say, give me a flag, plaster my yard and my house with flags, take the flag back and away from the fascists. How dare they appropriate that flag? How dare trump and his stormtroopers and all the ignorant reactive bible thumpers say they own the flag? They don’t.
A friend of mine feels the same way - not a flag guy, but getting flags to take it back.
Echoes of Percival Everett’s story The Appropriation of Cultures, the re-claiming of “Dixie” with profound effects…
In the meantime, I’m with Shalom: flags give me the willies too these days
I’m so glad to see Percival Everett’s name here. Wonderful writer; the incisiveness and irony, just like our friend here, and each with their own unique voices and literary terrain. What a gift, theirs and ours, eh!
That's the Bellamy Salute, named for the man who authored the original Pledge of Allegiance, the one without "under God", which those wonderful folks at the Knights of Columbus managed to shoehorn into the pledge. Ironically, the reason that Mr. Bellamy came up with that idiotic pledge in the first place was to stimulate the sales of American Flags...nobody works for free!
There's a book called "The Pledge: A History of the Pledge of Allegiance," by Jones and Meyer, which provides a great history of all this.
And once a work of art is released to the public, it takes on a life of its own. It gets interpreted, re-interpreted, re-re-interpreted, and so on, until people forget the original meaning. The peace symbol was definitely not about peace and love when it was initially used. The swastika, turned both right and left, has had numerous meanings throughout history. Volkswagen’s Beetle was originally part of Hitler’s master plan. He wanted everyone in Germany to own one. Now, all of these symbols mean something completely different than their original intent. What’s most important is, how you treat others, and how honest you are.
I think that's an interesting comparison. And there may be nothing we can do when a symbol that we know as positive and beloved gets used in a way we find abhorrent, like at the end of anti-Semitic emails - other than to say so, which is what I've tried to do here. Beckett, before he died, established a group to protect his work from being altered (I suffered through an "updated" production of Chekov's The Cherry Orchard which included long and artless monologues about climate change, so I can understand his concern). At the time I thought he was wrong to do that, but I'm no longer sure.
The Confederate Flag, the most popular version, has been co opted by actual bigot. I don’t know the original intent. I do know that that version is not what the South flew during the Civil War. The USA Flag still means the same thing to pretty much everyone. Every USA citizen. Only leftists and others with a very active imagination ascribe other meanings to it.
Actual bigots, I mean, and racists. Nazi sympathizers in Europe.
Parallel to the sale of ankle monitors for those very brief periods when people committing poverty-related crimes - or merely targeted by the criminal “justice” industry - are temporarily released to appease public protest and then promptly locked up again.
People who love the flag and hate everything else are a loud minority, but they are still very much a minority.
Powerful message in your story. I get it. My father was a US Navy pilot who loved the flag and of course it covered his casket at his funeral. I have his flight jacket and used to love wearing it (I’m a small 63 year old woman), but these days, it just attracts the wrong kind of attention so it hangs in the closet.
Oh, my. The complaints I get are mild compared to this. I've been called a bigot and someone with no critical thinking skills. Also a lot of huffy "I Will Not Discuss This!" (What comes of being raised not as you were but in a girls' school . . . .which now advertises its devotion to DEI, "restorative practices" and "gender diversity"--oh, and "affinity groups" based not on interests but on ethnic background.) So I'm cheering not for the meaning certain numbskulls ascribe to the flag or to America but for the meaning given to both by Abraham Lincoln, the Gettysburg Address, and the Declaration. A belated happy Fourth to you.
You managed to make me laugh and scare me at the same time. Kind of a cool feeling. And yeah. Spot on. Thanks for saying it.
I read this and felt serious and then I scrolled back up and noticed that the guy in the photo has a cap that says "Butt Snorkeler".
Loved this post. I realized as I read it that I feel precisely the same way but had never quite formed these thoughts. I’ve never been comfortable with expressions of patriotism because there is so much about our country that I see as needing improvement, but I also hate the co-opting of the flag by just those people who use it to express the beliefs I think of as unamerican. You’ve explained why I feel that way. Thank you!
It’s for this exact reason that hubby got a flag and put it up next to our “science is real, love is love, etc.” sign. It’s our flag too, no matter what Magats think. They’re NOT patriots. They don’t honor the constitution. I never cared much about the flag before those dipshits turned it into their symbol. I agree that our country has a lot of work to do to atone for the past and do better in the future. To me being patriotic means being willing to put in that work- our country is worth the effort.
The flag fetishists are the least likely to be real patriots.
Totally agree. They have no idea what patriotism is. (OK, I'm not gonna launch myself into a long tirade...)
"....perhaps all flags are an implicit threat to the person not waving them." chilling words that should go down in the annuls of political history to illustrate the fucked up notions of allegiance rampant in these days. To my mind too, bring down all the flags until we all learn to do better. Too many idiots and maniacs hide behind flags like a screen for their naked stupidity. Sad, such a sadly important piece, thanks Shalom.
This article has articulated exactly what I've been trying to explain ... to myself and to my husband. (Both of us, btw, are centrist with the needle shivering being slightly left to libertarian.) Four years ago, our MAGA land neighborhood draped itself in not only American flags, but Trump flags to. Whenever I left the house, I'd be slapped with those two symbols: one that I loved and often moves me to tears, and the other a writhing snake of the coming Fourth Reich.
Since then, and as Trump has proved himself to be a raving jackass, all but two of the Trump flags have disappeared from the ubiquitous front yard standards, to my relief. Yes, the clothing and truck bed flags appear now and then, but only on a few people. I try to restrain myself from yelling, "READ THE FUCKING FLAG CODE!" And the hatred experienced during COVID has drained away. Everybody's tired. Those days four years ago seem quaint.
MAGA is a bit more subtle here on the edge of the Nevada desert these days. The GOP is busy infiltrating MAGA into the school board and the primary/caucus process. But the parents have formed their own army, wearing red tees and suing the Board members who are causing the trouble. There's push-back in Mayberry. And during the holidays when the valley shines with Christmas lights, there's a growing number of homes shining blue door lights. (I've been told those are Jewish families.) The Jewish couple who run the very successful chocolate shop here makes candies, cookies, and other goodies with the blue Star of David on them. Of course, I know there are people like your "reader" who undoubtedly insult this couple and the Blacks, LGBTQ+, etc. people in town. So far, the guys shooting their guns at the makeshift gun range a block away and preparing for that government wonk who's going to knock on their door for some damned reason. Somehow, the furor of four years ago has lightened. I think. I hope. Of course, I don't go out much anymore. People scare me. You never know when they'll turn on you. And this is the West. People come here to reinvent themselves. Many people who left New Orleans after Katrina moved to the West and very few of them returned to Nola.
I also get the sense that there is a certain exhaustion with all the hate and finger-pointing. Who knows, maybe one day the flag will stand for the Radical Middle, for the 80% of us who aren't insane? But then my shrink always did say I have a troubling streak of optimism...
That streak of optimism is pure rebellion. Hang on to it as if your life depends on it, Shalom.
Hurray to the troubling streaks of optimism!
What is insane about wanting closed borders and more jobs, less imports?
Yeah, Trump is a Nazi. Or something. This image summarizes what his followers want.
He's following Hitler's tactic. Heal the economy, then squeeze our the undesireables. Trade on people's already deep seated prejudices and organize them into an army of angry, uneducated, easily fired up soldiers. Thus, Jan. 6, 2020. He's further organized his minnions to infiltrate local governments and agencies so they will do his bidding against the will of the people. We're seeing that here with the three new school board Trustees. They've booted out the long-standing people in the schools, much tot he dismay of parents, have insulted those parents publically, have cost the District thousands of dollars by hiring a Trumpkin lawyer who knows nothing about educational law and is billing the taxpayers for his education in this area. I could go on. It blows my mind to see this actually happening in our country.
Everything that Trump’s haters and critics have said he would do, The Clinton, Obama and Biden administrations have done. And people decide what to do on their own. They don’t need someone else to tell them.
True, we don't need anyone to tell us what to do ... until some deep state bureaucrat knocks on the door with a ticket for a code violation, etcetcetc. It would be interesting to live in a libertarian world ... maybe ... yet another bunch of cats to herd ... but at present we don't.
It would greatly help if most people were well educated and had strong morals. That alone would prevent a lot of problems. But there will never be a society without some form of government, just like true communism cannot sustain itself.
My left wing parents always put out their American flag on the 4th of July. And now I do too. Time to reclaim our symbol.
I have been flying an American flag for my late father, a WWII veteran, since he died. Holidays, his birthday -- .
Now since October 7, 2023, I fly it constantly as a way of saying, No matter how often the malcontents march, no matter how often our noisy minorities of masked Marxist, Islamist, and BLM adherents take over our public spaces and "flood the streets" for malignant, misbegotten causes, this is a country that has done marvelous things for humankind and is still a beacon to millions. No other country in history has given such opportunities to those who came to its shores or invented medical and engineering miracles that everyone benefits from today.
Unless the protesters believe that the migrants massing on and crossing our borders are rank opportunists and wannabe parasites, then they must admit that the United States offers more to its people than anywhere else on earth. We didn't always get things right, as they say, but the good we have done far outweighs the bad.
It's a fine flag.
A neighbor told me that if Trump wins the election, he'll burn his flag. Our country will survive and far outlive a second Trump presidency. Whether it can survive the assaults on it by the far Left is another matter, but I have confidence that it will.
I'll keep flying mine.
💯
What a superb riposte - nailing your colours to the mast of humour is the only way forward.
Another reason why I feel more comfortable living in the Netherlands where the most flag related violence is the BBB - farmers’ political party - who is very opposed to any sanctions on the size of their farty cow herds, so they protest by hanging the Dutch flag 🇳🇱 upsidedown!
😂