Weaponizing the American Flag

The lack of confederate flags as we crossed the Mason-Dixon line was very noticeable to us. We have probably only seen 2 or 3 confederate flags while driving the rural roads and cities in the south through Virginia, Georgia, Alabama and Florida. I have seen that many in my hometown of Enfield, New York.

We did see many more American flags than in the past, which I was fine with until I realized that for some people, the confederate flag is now subsumed within the American Flag. I saw a lot of American flags with Trump flags and yard signs. I imagined that in the past that might have been a confederate flag. I will say that up North there are also American flags with Black Lives Matter and Pride flags. It is not clear what the American flag really stands for to the person flying it unless they give some other clues. For me, flying the American Flag and saying the Pledge of Allegiance has been performative, without a lot of meaning. As a nation we truely need to address what “liberty and justice for all” really means and embrace healing change. Only then can we stand unified “as one nation” and “indivisible”.

I listened to a podcast on NPR from 2020 that said: “We heard a lot from people who shared this worry the U.S. flag has been weaponized, deliberately redefined as a more conservative symbol owned by some Americans more than others.” It went on to quote, Ben Eagleson, a mechanic from Onley, Illinois: “We had a Black Lives Matter rally in our town and there were a lot of people driving by with American flags on the back of their pickup trucks as a counter-protest,” “It was like those of us supporting Black Lives Matter were somehow un-American or something.” Eagleson, who is white, said he took his American flag down for a time, but it’s flying again now on a pole outside him home. “I’d let something that had always been for me a positive symbol take on a negative meaning and I guess I just decided to reclaim it,” he said. Food for thought…