Flags and symbols of patriotism in context
Recently I was watching the World War 2 series "Masters of the Air". In one of the last scenes, there is an American prisoner of war who climbs up the flag pole and replaces the German flag with the American flag as American troops liberate the camp. I thought it was a powerful aesthetic image: A battered flag of freedom replacing a flag of oppression.
The American flag looks very nice to me, especially used in dramatic art. But I think that's mostly the connotations of my upbringing. If you look at the aesthetics of it without any history of it, it looks like a striped tablecloth sewn to a starry apron or something. And to a lot of other people in the world it looks like greed or violence or oppression or something else again.
I'm sure these aren't original thoughts, but the use of this flag as a symbol has been bothering me for the last 8 or 10 years. It's been co-opted to mean something different than before, inside the very places where it previously would have much more positive connotations. If I see that flag on a big pickup truck, I have a strongly negative connotation with it. Or if I see it defaced with a blue line on it. Or if I see it on the pin of a politician. Or on a pole in a used car lot. Or in any advertisement.
This is more about my own naivete about whatever the United States was actually about, separate from what we are taught as children and the stories we tell ourselves. But I'm guessing a lot more people have these thoughts than did a few years ago.
I remember some people a few years ago were telling progressives to "Take back the flag from the right wing". I guess I don't know if that's going to work, there seems to be a poisoned well now and anyway everyone always brings their own experiences to such symbols and your display of positivity may have the opposite effect on others.
I know some folks were feeling "I might fly a flag" as the Dem ticket picked up steam. Probably not now so much.
I have thought about it, in part because I hate the cheap printed flags flying on all the Trump signs around here. A quality stitched flag is really nice. But, I don't think so. I'd forget to bring it in and I'm picky about Flag code stuff.
I lost a lot of interest in flying the flag during the Colin Kaepernick thing where right wing people said he was disrespecting veterans and people had bumper stickers with "STAND FOR THE FLAG". So, they think we live in Starship Troopers universe where the flag is only for soldiers?
That's why I finally took mine down for good as soon as the local bad weather started. So many people put it up and forget about it until it's on complete tatters. My neighbors' got so bad I actually bought them a replacement, it bothered me so much.
It's remarkable how much the meaning has changed in such a short time.
Now that, more often than not, an American flag means MAGA it feels outright oppressive. Not so much a symbol of an ideology I disagree with as a symbol of small mindedness and hate. The patriotic sentiment it represents really a synonym for fear and disillusionment.
I always thought it was kind of ugly, even back when I was a teenager and pretty indoctrinated into thinking that America is the best country on earth. The colors don't compliment each other, the stars and stripes manage to be both busy and boring, and there's no symmetry or balance. I'm also just not really fond of red. To be fair, I think most flags are pretty ugly, though. The flags that I think are pretty don't correlate at all with my feelings about the nation. I love the flags of Honduras, Argentina and the Bahamas. Kazakhstan's flag might be my favorite, and Bhutan's has a nice color palette. I'm not a big fan of governments or nation-states anyway, but if pressed to make a list of my favorites, none of those countries would be on it.
Honestly, the US should just switch back to the old union stars-in-a-circle flag. Sure, they're supposed to symbolize all the different states, but surely there's something that could address that - like stars-in-stars, perhaps 5 stars deep so you can have 10 stars in the circle.
You could just have 50 stars all in a circle. It wouldn't just have to be the outline of a circle, there could be a few rows. They could still be on a blue background, but it would be circular, and the red and white stripes could be behind that. I still wouldn't like the colors but the summetry and balance would be much better.
I'm one of those folks fully aware of that, as someone that became an adult shortly after 9/11 and watched us go mad as a nation. It was not difficult to trace that back.
I get "patriotic" around the Olympics and the World Cup, where we can "hands up for your colors" without it being weird war mongering. And there are some things about the ideals of America I still grab onto, even if we have never ever lived up to them.
But many of us know our history very well.