Re-Capture the Flag
Re-Capture the Flag
It’s time to make the ultimate American symbol stand for all Americans again.
By Chelsea Ross, University of Wisconsin-Madison Copyright by The Madison Observer
Tuesday November 29, 2005
An earlier version of this article ran in The Madison Observer, a Campus Progress-sponsored publication.
Earlier this fall, as my family and I waited for the Yom Kippur service to begin, my mom chatted with her old friend Penny. Penny described a bumper sticker that recently caught her eye: it was an American flag with the words “I’m a liberal” written over it. She said the sticker made her think about the extent to which our flag has become a symbol of the conservative right.
Penny and my mom both said they won’t even buy postage stamps featuring the American flag anymore.
My mom recollected that she once, not too long ago, had a flag on her car window, but she insisted (with a hint of regret) that she would never display the symbol now.
A few weeks after 9/11, I found an American flag sticker on my mom’s car window. I yanked it off and angrily asked my fervently liberal mother why she would display such a blatant symbol of support for the Bush administration and the blind patriotism that had become de rigueur in the following months.
She answered innocently, “I put it there as a symbol of solidarity with the victims of 9/11 and their families. It has nothing to do with politics.”
My mom put the flag back on her window, but it didn’t stay there for long. She also soon realized that every American flag erected seemed to cover another American’s eyes from the despotic corruption that became constitutional policy in the backrooms of the Capitol.
“But it’s our flag, too,” said my mom at the Yom Kippur conversation.
Throughout the service (an unusually beautiful, progressively minded service), I thought about the conversation between my mom and Penny and what “it’s our flag too” means.
In the four years since the World Trade Towers fell, the flag, a symbol not just of a nation defined geographically, but of a nation defined politically and morally, has become synonymous with the extreme right-end of our nation’s policies and values.
All that post-9/11 reworking of patriotism into a devout don’t-question-the-government national sentiment worked. All that jabber about either being a patriot or standing with the terrorists worked. Now, few Americans can see the flag without thinking of Bush and his cowboy hat halo.
Conservatives stole the flag, but hey, maybe they deserve it, it’s not like the rest of us put up much of a fight. Look at me, the moment I felt a connection between my nation’s flag and my nation’s “leader,” I immediately rejected my own connection to the most clear and definitive symbol of what America is.
But America is so much more than conservative hacks, hawks and the corporate shills that populate the Bush Administration.
I spent a year in Spain defending that notion; every non-American I met asked me if I supported Bush and was surprised to hear that a whole lot of Americans do not support Bush in the least. I explained that many of us oppose the war and, yes, we do know where Iraq is on a map, thank you. In fact, I made it my duty to have the same conversation 100,000 times to make sure that one more person from one more culture knows that America is more than the accumulation of mainstream media simplifications.
However, I still tried to hide my American identity through my physical appearance and I would not have been caught dead with an American flag patch on my backpack (in some places I traveled, such a patch may have put my life in danger).
I rejected my flag, but I can’t reject my country; I’m still here. And for all of us who are here and who give a damn, and especially for those of us who are working for change, separating the two entities is dangerous and counterproductive in our struggle to win back our America.
We are all patriots. And being a patriot doesn’t mean we will unthinkingly swallow the shit proffered by divisive talking heads and toxic politicians.
To relinquish our connection to the flag is to symbolically relinquish our stake in this country. To allow the right to represent the flag is to allow them to represent America, and they are not America – they are only the exaggeratedly powerful minority. (Though they still do love to think of themselves as the “silent majority.”)
So, I guess we have a couple options. We can burn the flag – leave it behind as an emblem of America’s political, social and cultural decay. If we opt for this, I suggest we create a new flag (or some other visual symbol) of what the rest of us represent.
The “rest of us,” however, is not a cohesive group of same-minded people with four easy talking points to subscribe to. We are Democrats, independents, liberals, libertarians, progressives, Greens, socialists and the just plain socially conscious. It seems so much easier to define ourselves by what we are not than by what we are, but then we are constantly working against the current of the oh-so-solid right.
Our other option is to take back the flag, the flag that was created in the face of revolution and in the eye of liberty. Let’s challenge the right-wing to a winner-takes-all game of capture the flag – they may have all the guns, but we have the brain power and a whole lotta street smarts.
So, that was my train of thought during the Yom Kippur service, a service about atonement, release and renewal. I suggest that we atone for allowing the right to pull the flag out from below our feet and off our posts, that we release our sins of inaction and that we begin again with a new sense of purpose and a new meaning to attach to those red and white stripes.
Lets make it stand for compassion, equity, opportunity and an all-encompassing sense of social justice. Now is the time (as the scandals are exposed and the indictments add up) to make the flag stand for Our America.
So go ahead, slap the flag, our flag, on your bumper right next to your “Ignore your rights, they’ll go away,” and your “Doin’ my part to piss off the religious right” stickers.
And don’t worry, if we all do it, no one will confuse you for one of “them,” because my mom was right (don’t tell her I said so): it’s our flag too.
Chelsea Ross is the features editor of The Madison Observer.
It’s time to make the ultimate American symbol stand for all Americans again.
By Chelsea Ross, University of Wisconsin-Madison Copyright by The Madison Observer
Tuesday November 29, 2005
An earlier version of this article ran in The Madison Observer, a Campus Progress-sponsored publication.
Earlier this fall, as my family and I waited for the Yom Kippur service to begin, my mom chatted with her old friend Penny. Penny described a bumper sticker that recently caught her eye: it was an American flag with the words “I’m a liberal” written over it. She said the sticker made her think about the extent to which our flag has become a symbol of the conservative right.
Penny and my mom both said they won’t even buy postage stamps featuring the American flag anymore.
My mom recollected that she once, not too long ago, had a flag on her car window, but she insisted (with a hint of regret) that she would never display the symbol now.
A few weeks after 9/11, I found an American flag sticker on my mom’s car window. I yanked it off and angrily asked my fervently liberal mother why she would display such a blatant symbol of support for the Bush administration and the blind patriotism that had become de rigueur in the following months.
She answered innocently, “I put it there as a symbol of solidarity with the victims of 9/11 and their families. It has nothing to do with politics.”
My mom put the flag back on her window, but it didn’t stay there for long. She also soon realized that every American flag erected seemed to cover another American’s eyes from the despotic corruption that became constitutional policy in the backrooms of the Capitol.
“But it’s our flag, too,” said my mom at the Yom Kippur conversation.
Throughout the service (an unusually beautiful, progressively minded service), I thought about the conversation between my mom and Penny and what “it’s our flag too” means.
In the four years since the World Trade Towers fell, the flag, a symbol not just of a nation defined geographically, but of a nation defined politically and morally, has become synonymous with the extreme right-end of our nation’s policies and values.
All that post-9/11 reworking of patriotism into a devout don’t-question-the-government national sentiment worked. All that jabber about either being a patriot or standing with the terrorists worked. Now, few Americans can see the flag without thinking of Bush and his cowboy hat halo.
Conservatives stole the flag, but hey, maybe they deserve it, it’s not like the rest of us put up much of a fight. Look at me, the moment I felt a connection between my nation’s flag and my nation’s “leader,” I immediately rejected my own connection to the most clear and definitive symbol of what America is.
But America is so much more than conservative hacks, hawks and the corporate shills that populate the Bush Administration.
I spent a year in Spain defending that notion; every non-American I met asked me if I supported Bush and was surprised to hear that a whole lot of Americans do not support Bush in the least. I explained that many of us oppose the war and, yes, we do know where Iraq is on a map, thank you. In fact, I made it my duty to have the same conversation 100,000 times to make sure that one more person from one more culture knows that America is more than the accumulation of mainstream media simplifications.
However, I still tried to hide my American identity through my physical appearance and I would not have been caught dead with an American flag patch on my backpack (in some places I traveled, such a patch may have put my life in danger).
I rejected my flag, but I can’t reject my country; I’m still here. And for all of us who are here and who give a damn, and especially for those of us who are working for change, separating the two entities is dangerous and counterproductive in our struggle to win back our America.
We are all patriots. And being a patriot doesn’t mean we will unthinkingly swallow the shit proffered by divisive talking heads and toxic politicians.
To relinquish our connection to the flag is to symbolically relinquish our stake in this country. To allow the right to represent the flag is to allow them to represent America, and they are not America – they are only the exaggeratedly powerful minority. (Though they still do love to think of themselves as the “silent majority.”)
So, I guess we have a couple options. We can burn the flag – leave it behind as an emblem of America’s political, social and cultural decay. If we opt for this, I suggest we create a new flag (or some other visual symbol) of what the rest of us represent.
The “rest of us,” however, is not a cohesive group of same-minded people with four easy talking points to subscribe to. We are Democrats, independents, liberals, libertarians, progressives, Greens, socialists and the just plain socially conscious. It seems so much easier to define ourselves by what we are not than by what we are, but then we are constantly working against the current of the oh-so-solid right.
Our other option is to take back the flag, the flag that was created in the face of revolution and in the eye of liberty. Let’s challenge the right-wing to a winner-takes-all game of capture the flag – they may have all the guns, but we have the brain power and a whole lotta street smarts.
So, that was my train of thought during the Yom Kippur service, a service about atonement, release and renewal. I suggest that we atone for allowing the right to pull the flag out from below our feet and off our posts, that we release our sins of inaction and that we begin again with a new sense of purpose and a new meaning to attach to those red and white stripes.
Lets make it stand for compassion, equity, opportunity and an all-encompassing sense of social justice. Now is the time (as the scandals are exposed and the indictments add up) to make the flag stand for Our America.
So go ahead, slap the flag, our flag, on your bumper right next to your “Ignore your rights, they’ll go away,” and your “Doin’ my part to piss off the religious right” stickers.
And don’t worry, if we all do it, no one will confuse you for one of “them,” because my mom was right (don’t tell her I said so): it’s our flag too.
Chelsea Ross is the features editor of The Madison Observer.
posted by Carlos T Mock at 12:33 PM
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