Very Happy Flag Day, my fellow Americans. All of you. Left. Right. Middle of the Road. Politically Agnostic. The American flag belongs to each and every one of us. The flag belongs to those oppressed in countries around the globe who aspire to live in our Country, under our Constitution symbolized by our beautiful flag. There is no need to reclaim the flag from the “other side” or make the American flag great again. It is great and it doesn’t belong to a “side” unless they actively don’t want it. Hmmm?

If you are as blessed as I am to live in a place like Knoxville, Tennessee, the flag is part of our daily lives. It is there. We don’t think of it as a “side’s flag”. But, then Salon Magazine probably isn’t greatly read here either. Not that we don’t read. The recently deceased Cormac McCarthy is associated with Knoxville along with James Agee, Alex Haley and Frances Hodgson Burnett, along with many others. We just don’t read rubbish.

I was not surprised to find an article in Salon on Flag Day by Kirk Swearingen title “Make the American flag great again“. The article is subtitled: “The left should reclaim their share of the flag which has been monopolized by the right for far too long”. If the flag of this country needs to be reclaimed by the Left, it is because the Left rejected the flag. If the flag is monopolized by the Right, it is because the Left abandoned it.

Mr. Swearingen begins his article with some confusion over wearing an actual flag as an article of clothing and wearing clothes designed with the symbols of the American flag. He follows with a complaint against Mickey Mouse and used car lots. I have no idea:

Well, look at the flag these days: It’s ubiquitous, appearing not only on baseball caps and T-shirts (this Disney Mickey U.S. Flag T-shirt should be a collector’s item, at least in Florida), but on pins and bumper stickers, the union downward, all black, or clutched in a screaming bald eagle’s talons. The flag appears on guns and on NRA merchandise. And it flies at night and in rainstorms, “bigly” over banks and used-car lots and the whatevers and whatnots of strip malls because Congress eagerly loosened the rules of display back in the bicentennial year, 1976. Our flags are polyester now, said the lobbyists (with fists full of dollars), so there’s no need to lower them.

Mr. Swearingen. Yes, you may purchase a polyester flag, and I don’t think lobbyists have anything to do with that, but you can also easily purchase all-cotton American Flags, made in America. It’s a shocker, right?
In this following paragraph, Mr. Swearingen’s hatred for his fellow Americans reads like a primal scream:

The offense is to allow the flag to vanish into ubiquity and not be handled with care by children and other citizens.
Why are those absurdly huge flags flying over that bank, grocery, and car lot? You know why, and it’s not about patriotism. Let’s call it what it is: a hypocritical mercantile form of “patriotism,” a misuse of the red, white, and blue. If a supporter of book banning or voter suppression wears the American flag, they become a walking contradiction of terms. I’m flying the flag and reading more deeply about the history of the country because I’m getting older and acutely aware that our democracy is under constant attack now, from outright repugnant fascists (think, say, Steve Bannon or Roger Stone) to those who would like to sell authoritarianism as “illiberal democracy,” as Hungary’s “strongman” Viktor Orban markets it, making it a simulacrum of the real thing. It is what John Quincy Adams, fearing oligarchy, called “the smokescreen of democracy.”

Poor Mr. Swearingen, there are no people in his world. The bank, the grocery and the car lot are all owned by…wait for it…people. It’s not hypocritical mercantilism if you have friends, neighbors or relations serving and deployed. I have a loved one in Syria, Mr. Swearingen. Did you know that we have 800 personnel in Syria? Mr. Swearingen may not have any idea that in some high schools, Jr. R.O.T.C. units take care of the flag in the morning and late afternoon in the proper fashion. I have a Navy JROTC Mom for four years. I know.

What about the flags in cemeteries on Memorial Day? This is the Lyon’s View Pike Veterans Cemetery down the street:

Here’s more:

One might argue that compared to the despot-admiring white Christian nationalists and plain old religious grifters in the Trumpist Party who ban books and fight their culture wars and have no interest in governing for all the people, our founding fathers were in spirit, if not always in deed, eminently “woke.” Consider that the next time a Republican who supports censorship or bad mouths the free press or pushes their personal religious beliefs on the rest of us invokes one of the founders. Using the flag in protest is quintessentially American; the flag cannot be degraded as its status as a potent symbol is being acknowledged. Those smarty-pants Yippies understood that. Burn it, sure, or wear it as a shirt if you’re hauled in to testify to the government on your “un-American” activities. As the Supreme Court has ruled, you have that right. But to wear it on caps and T-shirts saps its power (again, veterans are exempt from any criticism from the likes of me; if I were a veteran, I’d be wearing the flag every minute of the world, as my paternal grandmother might have said). But, generally speaking, if the flag is everywhere, it’s nowhere.

My First Amendment says that my neighbors and I can wear the American flag every day, all day. “If the flag is everywhere, it’s nowhere” has no significance to us. Trumpist Party? Really, my dude. We won’t push our “religious beliefs”, if you don’t push your perversions. Gee. Never our side will keep the flag. Happy Flag Day. I have something else for Mr. Swearingen. Enjoy!

I’ll get the smelling salts. And Happy Birthday to the U.S. Army.

Featured Image: Gay Street, Knoxville, Tennessee by Toni S. Williams/cropped/All Rights Reserved