Flag Day, June 14th

It Belongs to All of Us

Next Saturday, June 14th, 2025, could be exciting. The Red Asset will be doing his imitation and homage to the dictators he admires by reviewing the troops and tanks ostensibly to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Army. There will be flags everywhere.

At the same time, there will be No Kings rallies across the country to protest the Red Asset and his Pitiless Enablers in their attempt to destroy the Republic and create an authoritarian state. There should be American flags everywhere at No Kings rallies.

The reactionary Republican Party and MAGA wing-nuts do not own the American flag. It is now time the rest of us to take it back on Flag Day, June 14th, 2025.

I know. I know. This is almost an us-versus-them tirade. “Give me that flag back! It’s mine too!” sort of rant. But I have caught myself seeing an American flag displayed and making immediate assumptions about the flag’s owner. That’s wrong. A short story to explain, if I may:

Once or twice a weekend a well-used pickup with large tires roars along Broadway Street through Boulder, a decidedly liberal enclave. What makes this pickup unique in Boulder are the two large American flags on short poles flying from behind the cab.

The driver is always an early twenty-something, with a contemptuous look on his face. It’s almost as if he thinks of himself as an Arapaho warrior counting coup by exposing himself and the flags to either the Utes or the Northern Cheyenne, enemies of the Arapaho.

Truth is, we aren’t the enemy here in Boulder. If we think of the kid at all, it is out of annoyance that he is speeding, plus his truck needs mufflers. And we might be slightly concerned that he is denigrating our flag by ripping it apart in the slipstream of his cab.

This all got me to thinking about my relationship to the flag that started with the pledge of allegiance in grade school. And then there was high school where I have no memory of pledging allegiance, but of occasionally having to sing the national anthem.

My dad was a government employee. I grew up in the Maryland suburbs, adjacent to DC. A number of the men in the neighborhood were still members of the armed forces. Almost all the dads in the neighborhood had served in the military.

In my group of kids, we simply assumed that after college, we would do a tour in the military. And then there was Vietnam and friends coming home permanently shattered or in coffins that could not be opened for viewing. With the wasted lives came a stronger and stronger conviction on my part that the war was wrong and I wanted nothing to do with it.

That’s when I stopped putting my hand over my heart at sporting events, didn’t sing the national anthem, and couldn’t look at the flag. I no longer believed in the flag and what it had come to represent.

My political statement went on for years, my head was always down and my eyes averted from the flag. I didn’t sing the national anthem. And then there was a mellowing process. The first time I looked at the flag and felt something again was when the Americans, against all odds, beat the Russians at ice hockey in 1980 Olympics. Like everyone else I was screaming in joy and amazement.

And I got it—everyone watching the celebration on ice and the crowd waving flags was simply an American. Not a liberal or conservative, Republican, Democrat, or Independent, just Americans unified by a totally unexpected victory.

Sometime afterwards, I stumbled on a quote from Abba Eban, “Men and nations behave wisely when they have exhausted all other alternatives.”

After the “miracle on ice” I started singing the national anthem again and looking at the flag and thinking of it as my own.

As liberals, we got three things wrong about the flag. First, we tied the flag to everything we disliked about what our political leaders were doing. Second, we let the loonies wrap themselves in the flag as if they were the only citizens of this country and true patriots. Third, somehow we got it in our collective liberal group-think that if we displayed the flag we would appear to be at least conservatives and maybe wing-nuts.

Now that liberals have exhausted all the alternatives, we need to reconsider our position on the flag. Put simply, this is our flag too and we should be proud of it. Going forward, no one group, should ever be identified as the owner of the flag. To this end, all of us should display it on our homes for holidays and particularly in our marches against the stupidity created by the Red Asset and his Pitiless Enablers. And maybe, just maybe this symbolic act of reconnecting with our flag will be the first step in reunifying this country.

One other thing: far right folks are going to see us carrying our flag at marches and demonstrations. And it’s going to make them mad because they think we aren’t patriots, that we don’t believe in this country.

But the more independent conservatives will begin to think, “Liberals are simply wrong about everything but they have as much right to display and carry the flag as we do.” Admittedly, when we can agree that in spite of our differences, the flag belongs to all of us, it is a small recognition of something all Americans share. And this small point of agreement could open us all to looking for other points of agreement.

We are all Americans, a huge mash-up of every race and religion on the blue planet. We are rancorous, opinionated, enterprising, willful and good-hearted, and in our own ways, always moving forward to make a better way for ourselves, our families, communities, and this imperfect country.

And the kid in the truck?

May he count coup whenever he wants. Just get a muffler.

END

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