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President Donald J. Trump on March 2, 2019, at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Oxon Hill, Md. (Official White House photo by Tia Dufour, via Wikimedia Commons)
Monday is Flag Day.
At any time in living memory there are flags that are more important or interpreted in various wild ways as they are in the battle for the political soul of the country. From the Confederate flags at the “Unite the Right Rally” in Charlottesville in 2017 to the random displays of hatred in everyday life to the range of banners launched on the insurrection on January 6, our passions and prejudice is waved for the world to see.
I reflected on how these colorful rectangular fabrics could evoke such respect and division.
If you think you are immune to the electricity held by our flags, I invite you to stand under the flags at the state Capitol rotunda in Topeka or any similar display in state capitals across the country and not react to the Stars and Stripes are a mixture of others. Rotunda flags represent Europe -centered countries or states that claimed all or part of what is now Kansas, beginning with the United Kingdom, and continuing to France and Spain and Mexico and the Republic of Texas and ending on the 15-star Flag of the United States in 1803, which flew at the time of the Louisiana Purchase. There is no flag or symbol of the First People among the others.
The flags on the rotunda at the Kansas Capitol represent European -centered countries or states that have claimed all or part of what is now Kansas. (Max McCoy / Kansas Reflector)
Back in civics class in junior high, I learned the U.S. Flag Code which says the American flag should be treated as a living thing. It should be displayed only from dawn to dusk, unless proper lighting is available. It should not be worn as clothing, there should be no pictures superimposed on it, and when it reaches the end of its life, it should be respectfully destroyed, preferably by burning (as opposed to burning it in protest, which was in 1989 the US Supreme Court has ruled a protected form of speech). This is the flag that my father, my uncles and my brother fought for.
While my pride in the American flag has been tempered in recent years with embarrassment at the darker times in our history that the 15-star flag hanging on the rotunda also represents a country founded on slavery has I still have a visceral reaction to the flag. If it touches the floor, I’m a little embarrassed.
I had the same sad feeling when watching video footage of insurrectionists on Jan. 6 waving the American flag, on smaller banners, because they violently violated the U.S. Capitol. There were other flags, sure, including a Confederate flag paraded in the halls of an insurrectionist, many Trump campaign banners, homemade flags with crosses and skulls, and the yellow “Don’t Tread on Me ”Gadsden Flag that, for $ 25, you can immediately get a Kansas plaque to support a state gun rights group.
Clearly, the flags are representative of current events in a way that would not happen unless the country was in danger. The flags were burned by protesters during the Vietnam War, of course. We rallied behind Stars and Strips in the aftermath of 9/11, but rarely were our hopes and fears so clearly defined by the banners we carried.
To be even closer, you have to go back to at least World War II. That’s when AP photographer Joe Rosenthal, in 1945, took a photo of the flag rising over Mount Suribachi in Iwo Jima. The news picture is believed to be the most re-imagined image in history, giving Americans hope during the most difficult days of World War II. Before Rosenthal’s picture, you have to go back to the Civil War, when our flags stood either union and equality or slavery and uprising.
Other flags are important, of course. The rainbow flag fluttered in unison from our front porch when same-sex marriage was declared land law by the Supreme Court in 2015, and there was a flag with a peace symbol hanging on the window of the room where I played my electric guitar.
Then there’s the Kansas flag, which is offensive.
Those who study flags are called vexollogists, and they know great flag design. The North American Vexollogical Association offers five rules: 1) keep it simple; 2) use meaningful symbolism; 3) use two or three primary colors; 4) no lettering or brands of any kind; and 5) be unique.
The Kansas flag violates all of them.
First, there is the stamp, and that brand is impossible to complicate. Let’s see, there are bison and First Person and a farmer plowing and a cabin and a wagon train. Oh, and there’s a steamboat and, in the background, mountains. While steamboats and mountains were historically accurate landing the steamboats dotted the Kaw River and originally Kansas Territory that ended in the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains in what is now just the head of the scratchers to most people today, and not certified as state symbols The stamp uses 10 or more colors to make all of this heritage celebrated, and thrown into the state motto “Ad Astra Per Aspera,” to boot. If you are a native Kansan, you probably know what that means. The motto is above the 34 stars count, as Kansas is accepted as the 34th state. Oh, and there’s a sunflower above the seal.
The Kansas flag was adopted in 1927. It was designed by costume maker Hazel Avery, who first made the flag for a fourth July parade in 1925 in her hometown of Lincoln, in north-central Kansas. In 1961, the explanation “KANSAS” was added at the bottom, to help the confused.
The flag of the state of Kansas. (Wikimedia Commons)
All this thinking about flags reminds me of the disgusting images of Donald Trump abusing Old Glory at the CPAC in 2019. Clearly Trump has not read the U.S. Flag Code, for then he would know the flag, as a living thing, should not be manhandled and slowly dance to “God Bless the USA” The show sickened me, a feeling I often experienced in the Trump Era. But his followers at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference seemed less disturbed, and even encouraged the buffoonery.
We must be wary of such dangerous appeals to nationalism, because the authors are fond of waving the flag. The very people who are likely to say that the flag is sacred to the GOP, now the Trump Party is engineering its blasphemy by removing the most important thing it represents.
Strangely, and surprisingly, Flag Day is also Trump’s birthday.
If Trump and his illegal ballots in statehouses across the country succeeded in eliminating the impartial counting of the legal machinery that makes democracy possible, what might the future Flag Days look like?
Imagine Trump being “returned” as president in August, because he claimed it would happen. Either future elections will be decided by partisan third-party vote counters, or that a “Myanmar-style” coup will bring him back to power.
Now imagine another flag rising above capitals across the country, a flag that accurately reflects the efforts of Trump and his loyal marching soldiers to reshape America.
The banner is different from what has gone before. One of the first must -go is the blue from red, white and blue because, you know. Blue. Too Dem, too liberal. So the canton of blue where the field of white stars resides needs to be changed to a different color. Red makes sense. Then it will be old Red and White, which works for the Party of Trump on a number of levels.
Next there is the question of all those stars. Only one will make more sense. Remember the rules of vexollogy. Simplify, make it simple. Ultimately, the presidential flag commission (a commission of one) can only completely overthrow the star, as it competes with the single element of the flag that really matters.
Trump’s face.
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