Faded Glory

Photo by Alex Martinez on Unsplash

By Geoff Carter

A couple of weeks ago, we went up to the family cabin in Northern Wisconsin for a short vacation. Our family has had the place there for years, since I was a boy. It’s an area that has been slowly changing, turning older and more politically conservative as more retirees move up there to enjoy their golden years. My wife and I took the canoe out one evening and were paddling past the row of cottages lining the shore just east of our dock. It was hard not to notice that an American flag flew at the end of nearly every single pier. 

One of the cabins, near the end of the row, was flying a flag with an eagle’s head embossed over a magnified view of red and white stripes. It looked odd, out of place, somehow sinister. Scenes of the January 6^th riot at the Capitol Building started coming back to me. The smoke, the chaos, the thousands of screaming zealots, and the myriad flags. I couldn’t help thinking that this flag might be the emblem of some obscure extremist outlier organization. My wife thought the same thing, so we looked it up on the internet when we got home and were relieved to find it was simply a variation of a garden variety outdoor American flag—a sort of weird mutation.

This incessant flag-flying is a relatively new phenomenon up at the lake. In years past, maybe one or two homes flew flags on the Fourth of July, but seeing them in front of every property was not an everyday thing. The same was true in our neighborhood back home in Milwaukee, but that was before the 9/11 attacks, when everything changed and unfettered patriotism began running rampant through the streets. After the attack, people started flying flags everywhere as—originally (I believe)—a sign of solidarity and support. But then, somehow, this sincere call for unity morphed into something else. 

After the horror, shock, and anger at the carnage and destruction of 9/11, citizens stood behind the flag at first as a symbol of strength, but then—subtly—things changed. As time passed, and fears of more attacks grew, xenophobia and suspicion started taking hold of the American consciousness, and we hid ourselves—and our worst tendencies—behind the façade of our patriotism. 

When we lived through fears of chemical attacks, the Home Security Advisory System color-coded terrorist threat alarm (remember the orange and yellow level alerts?), new airport security precautions, racist attacks against those of Middle Eastern descent, and general paranoia, our patriotism started to become defensive. We didn’t stand by the flag; we used it as a weapon.

Then, in 2009, after the election of Barack Obama, came the rise of the Tea Party, an ultra-right conservative group that vowed to dismantle parts of the Federal government, including the Department of Education, Medicare, and Social Security. Their rallies were marked by scores of protestors with flags—some American flags, some Gadsden flags (with some variations), and even some Betsy Ross flags. 

Although this was probably not the intention of the Tea Party members, the flag started to become associated with extremism. We’d see it on the news every night at the latest Tea Party rally, waving next to people holding signs like, “Not my government” or “Born Free but Taxed to Death”. Ironically, the American flag was being equated with anti-government and anti-American protests. It might be argued that these two entities are not the same, but since our government representatives are duly elected by the people, to be anti-government is nothing more than a protest against the will of the people. So, by extension, the flag had transformed into a symbol of protest. 

No doubt the Tea Party members were seeking to draw a positive comparison with the American revolutionaries who won their independence from Britain, but their use of the American flag as a symbol of their dissatisfaction was puzzling. They were, in a sense, protesting against themselves (which was somewhat disturbingly underlined with a woman holding a sign reading “Government hands off my Medicare!”). 

After Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, the symbolic ambiguity of our flag became even fuzzier. During the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, when members of extremist groups like The Proud Boys, The Oath Keepers, and various neo-Nazi bands came together to express their solidarity, the American flag flew alongside the Confederate and the Nazi flag. Strange bedfellows, indeed. Two former mortal enemies of the United States, Nazi Germany and the Confederacy—enemies to freedom and democracy—were being equated to and legitimized by their association with the American flag. The stars and stripes was becoming a symbol not of unity, but of the fractionalization of our society. It had been preempted by the far right. 

Then, on January 6^th, a horrified nation watched as a mob, incited by Donald Trump, and bent on preventing the certification of our duly elected president, descended on the Capitol Building. The crowd brandished Trump campaign flags, the Gadsden flags, Betsy Ross flags, and even the skull and crossbones. One memorable photo showed a protestor brandishing a Confederate flag inside the Capitol Building. These were all carried side by side with the American flag. 

The rioters broke down barricades, smashed windows, attacked Capitol police, and broke into the Capitol. Some used the American flags they were carrying as weapons, beating and spearing police during the attack. A few entered the Senate chamber and rummaged through representatives’ desks. 

This past Fourth of July, we went down to the lakefront to watch the fireworks. It was a very nice gathering. Thousands of families had come down for the show and were eating, drinking, running around, and having a great time. On the walk down to see the show, we passed by a number of homes displaying the flag. Hundreds of those miniature flags on sticks were planted along the sidewalk in front of some homes. It was Independence Day, a holiday, after all. Yet I found myself looking closely at some of these flags, looking for I wasn’t sure what. Swastikas? Segmented snakes? Some of the flags had alterations—eagle’s heads embossed over the stars and stripes, blue stripes to symbolize police solidarity, and others. I began examining each of them closely as we passed. Were these flags really symbols of American pride or were they something more—or less?

I am proud to be an American, proud of our history and our heritage, but that love can no longer comfortably be expressed solely through our flag. It has been preempted, stolen, kidnapped by those who use it not as a symbol of unity and strength but as a symbol of their own discontent and narrowminded beliefs. For them, it only represents their America, whatever that might be. It is now used to demonstrate a sort of ideological territoriality. 

That night at our place up north, I was watching the great film Saving Private Ryan. The initial shot shows an American flag waving in the wind with the sun shining behind it. The light is so bright, however, that the colors are washed out and the flag is only a ghostly remnant of its former self. I only hope the same is not true of the country it represents. 

Notes

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/magazine/28FOB-idealab-t.html