Our Flag
Sam Alito and his flags have tongues wagging all over America. And well it should. What would the Alitos have done if their neighbor in response, had grabbed their American flag, and incinerated it in front of Mrs. A. Assuming a way to accomplish that without violating open burning laws [I suggest using your Weber, they smother quickly], what would she do? She can’t have her neighbor arrested for exercising their free speech right.
Our flag is sacred to the men and women who carried it into battle. This weekend houses that never fly flags will fly one this Memorial Day. How many understand the difference between Memorial Day and Veterans Day? I’m betting less than fifty percent. How many of those people know how many stripes our flag has? Again, I bet < 50%.
This weekend is now called Memorial Day, before it was called Decoration Day. I know this because I had a sibling born on Decoration Day. I still have that sibling, it’s just they’re so MAGA we’re estranged. It wasn’t a day to fly the flag, it was a day to visit the grave of your relative that died in war. The thing is, it was also mainly a Southern thing because the dead they were first visiting died in the Civil War. Whereas Veterans Day has its roots in celebrating the end of “the war to end all wars”.
I display a flag every day of my life. It sits atop a display case full of pictures, trophies and memorabilia. It’s in a handmade flag display case. The flag is the flag that adorned my father’s casket when he died. He didn’t die in war but in my mind he did die because of war.
When he got back from WWII he drank - a lot. His lightning quick temper was blamed on his Irish heritage rather than the PTSD of having been in the third wave to move onto every South Pacific island Gen. MacArthur took. He once boasted he came ashore in the Philippines before Mac.
The flag has a strong connection to my hometown Baltimore. We all know that the Star Spangled Banner was composed in Baltimore Harbor during a battle in the War of 1812. The shot up flag that inspired Francis Scott Key is now in the National Museum of American History, a part of the Smithsonian Museums. However, the house where that flag was sewn by one Mary Pickersgill is still standing along one of downtown Baltimore’s main thoroughfares. It is called “The Star Spangled Banner Flag House” and is managed by the National Park Service.
The flag is both a symbol of patriotism and protest. However, to me protesting is patriotic. When The Donald came into office I wanted to fly our flag upside down to represent the danger to democracy that I viewed him as, even as I attended his inauguration.
I only attended because how often do you get the opportunity to get a ticket to the inauguration of an American president. Even if you despise the man being sworn in, if it's easy to get to Washington, why wouldn’t you go? I wore every liberal issue button in my drawer. That day I left after “So help me God”. I had gotten to see Barack and Michelle Obama, which was more important to me personally.
The Flag and the Anthem cannot be separated. Here’s a shocker, as a very visible activist I never knew until Colin Kaepernick first took a knee about the other verses of our anthem. I also was not taught that Key was a slave holder and his legal practice was in part devoted to defending slavery. Okay so maybe you skip that during the War of 1812 section, but it should have definitely been taught during the Civil War section.
It is not like Maryland was not connected to the Civil War and the debate over slavery. I mean let’s see, the planned attack on the seat of government on April 14, 1865 was hatched by Booth in Maryland. After he shot Lincoln, he ran BACK to Maryland. After he died in Virginia his body was brought back to Baltimore for burial.
This weekend my very Trumpy neighborhood, hidden in Southwest Baltimore County, will be adorned by little flags lining the streets. In ‘16 I had to drive by a house where the whole front wall was a Trump sign. On Monday I doubt we will go to the effort of digging out our flag since we face a small court not a major neighborhood road. That’s okay we voted Blue in the primary and will vote Blue in the general election.