The American flag

The other day I saw a tattered flag hanging on a flag pole near the side of the road. The red and white stripes were shredded like strings of linguini, blowing in the wind.

This struck me as disrespectful – which is extremely silly. There are so many bigger fish to fry. The United States is falling apart, any promise it still entailed thrown in the garbage, MAGA completely trashing it. It’s the same old story of Nero playing the fiddle while Rome is burning.

Nevertheless, I still feel a reflex to care about the flag. I was taught as a child that if a flag is in shreds, it should not be hung. It should, quoting Title 4 of the United States Code, “be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning."

Also in the United States Code:

A photo of Donald Trump walking across the lawn of the White House. An American flag has fallen to the ground.
dump at the White House, walking past a flag that has fallen to the ground. (Source)

Just another example of basic decorum that is (literally) stepped on by this administration and late stage capitalist culture. Though nothing compared to the actual human rights violations affecting real people, it does feel symbolic.

Although recent events – and really, our whole blood-stained history, down to the “three-fifths compromise” and even long before that – have all made me thoroughly agnostic about the American experiment, I still find the flag hung in distress to be a powerful symbol.

The silhouette of a person waving a large, upside down American flag.
“The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life” (Source)

And I was very relieved to see my neighbor hanging his flag upside down the day dump was elected.

Why do I still care? Clearly, I was brainwashed to feel a sense of patriotism since childhood. But, despite everything, and the horrors of our own history and current moment, I also feel a sort of sentimentality for what could have been.[1] In the words of Wendell Berry,

Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.

  1. As much as there is to say on Thomas Jefferson’s hypocrisy, he got one thing right when he suggested that the Constitution be rewritten every nineteen years: “...no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. ... A law of limited duration is much more manageable than one which needs a repeal.” ↩︎