The American Flag: Recoverable or No?
I've mentioned to a few folks recently that it feels like the US flag has been stolen. I feel no sense of pride in the flag. This is a sentiment I've heard others talk about as well. Mostly, it gets tracked back to the attempted insurrection on January 6, 2021. But for me it goes further back than that. I'm not sure when exactly the flag soured for me, but long before it was associated with a mob on the capital I'd developed an association of it with racists and Christian Nationalists.
When discussing this feeling with Dems and the Indivisible-type crowds, it always seems to garner the same response: "That's our flag, too. We need to reclaim it. We can't let them have it!"
But the way I see it lately, in order to take it back they have to let it go. Will they ever? Can they, even? I think to reclaim the flag—to liberate it from the spiteful grip that holds it now—it has to no longer represent hatred, oppression, and white supremacy. And when in US history has it shaken the weight of those ailments?
"But what if instead of them letting go, we just all hold on and it remains EVERYONE'S flag?!" Sure, that may sound ideal. That's how it's always been, right? For more than 150 years, we've shared the flag with those who might've preferred the one surrendered in 1865. And all the while, we've failed to move on from our racist and elitist past. Sure, we've made progress in leaps and bounds. And now, at least in part because we failed to snuff out the flames of bigotry way back then, we're backsliding. I know we'll move forward again someday. Progress is never really linear, after all, and I'm determined to do my part (small as it may be) to help point us back in the right direction. But I don't feel compelled to reclaim the flag. I will not pledge allegiance, and I certainly won't tolerate bigotry for the sake of a nation united by skin deep sentiments and technofascist conveniences shrouded in red, white, and blue.
It's not that I don't want to be an American. It's that I want being an American to mean something different. Something it's never really meant before, though not for a lack of trying by many, many brave Americans. I don't know if it ever will. I hope so, though. Until then, the flag isn't a source of pride for me and I can't shake the idea that it's been lost. I won't give up on the US. But I'm not holding my breath for Old Glory.