The American flag has always been a revered symbol, certainly in my lifetime. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the issue of flag-burning was all the rage, with efforts by presidents and representatives to make flag-burning unconstitutional and a criminal offense.
Never mind that most Americans never saw, have never seen, and will never see an American flag burned. I mean in person.
I can certainly understand the iconic and inspirational value of raising the Stars & Stripes at the top of Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima in February 1945. That image, particular to the U.S. Marine Corps but sculpted in larger-than-life-size bronze, graces Arlington National Cemetery.
But since 9/11, the fetishization of our flag has become epidemic, ridiculous, even comedic. In the wake of 9/11, for instance, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania enacted a law requiring that the American flag be displayed in every classroom of every public, private, and parochial school in the state.
I’ll bet dollars to donuts that you can’t find a politician wearing a suit who isn’t sporting an American flag lapel pin. Or a car dealership that isn’t flying an American flag so large it takes gale force winds to make it fly, which is especially delicious when the cars on sale are Japanese, Korean, and German.
It has become pro forma now that every National Football League game begin with a couple of hundred people dragging out an American flag big enough to cover the entire playing field, frantically waving their arms to make the flag appear to be rippling in the breeze. The flag ripplers are as often as not active duty military personnel, veterans, police officers, firefighters, or emergency medical technicians.
The players themselves now have little American flags affixed to the back of their helmets so that, in the course of watching a game, one is reminded hundreds of times that football is an American sport and we live in the United States of America. The same is true of many if not all college football teams, and high school teams as well.
Every NASCAR race begins with a Color Guard and presentation of the Colors.
When one of my nieces was a high school senior, the school posed her in front of an American flag backdrop for her graduation photo. And this was a Quaker school. The cheeseburger I ordered recently at a restaurant came with a little American flag stuck in it and “W.D.” written on it in black ink. I thought it was in honor of me since my initials are W. D. for William Daniel, but it turned out to mean “Well Done.”
I don’t know of any other country in the world that makes such a big deal out of its national flag, that demands you see it a dozen or 40, 70 or 100 times a day lest you forget what country you live in.
All of which is especially ironic because today’s United States of America is about as disunited as it has been since the decades leading up to our Civil War.
In an essay called “Flag-Burning” that appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Oct. 25, 1989, I wrote that when the substance of freedom is subverted by a hypocritical genuflection to the symbols of freedom, we’re all in a whole lot of trouble.
A quarter of a century later, we find ourselves living in a country where mass murder has become routine; legislators send Christmas cards to their constituents with showing their family members armed to the teeth and smiling happily; vaccinations are perceived as a Deep State plot; facts are treated as fake news; Moms for Liberty is convinced that teachers are trying to make their kids gay; white men are an oppressed minority; immigrants are unwelcome; maldistribution of wealth is worse than it was in Medieval Europe; the front-running Republican candidate for the presidency was impeached twice and indicted 91 times; the Democratic front-runner is already the oldest sitting president in U.S. history with the next election still a year away; and elections are stolen unless the guy we voted for wins.
And over it all, above it all, in the midst of it all, everywhere you look: the Red White & Blue of the Stars & Stripes. What so proudly we hail.
W.D. Ehrhart received the Purple Heart Medal, Navy Combat Action Ribbon, and a Division Commander’s Commendation for his service as a Marine in Vietnam. A Pennridge High School graduate, he now lives in Bryn Mawr.
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