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Odd Patriotism

              Since the Arab attack on the United States on September 11^th, something very positive happened to the American flag.

            The flag became a universal symbol again, representing everyone in America and displayed by people of all colors and walks of life, including Arab-Americans. The flag is once again the province of everyone, and not the overused symbol of the American right-wing, as it had become during the final years of the divisive Vietnam War and continued to be for decades thereafter. It is deeply ironic that it took the acts of Islamo-fascists to wrest the flag away from American conservatives and give it back to the public at large.

            But an odd factor has also emerged in the renewed spirit behind the display of our flag. It is becoming increasingly commonplace to see the flag rotting away as it flutters from car antennas and various stanchions, some homemade and others manufactured.

            Clearly some of the flags were put on cars, trucks and buildings immediately after 9/11 and then ignored if not forgotten. Some are actually half gone, and others are faded and flutter in strips. But these flags haven’t proudly and defiantly flown over a field of battle, they’ve simply weathered the winter.

Perhaps the Americans displaying them don’t see anything unusual or wrong in letting the national symbol rot away. Perhaps they never knew that once upon a time it was considered wrong to leave the flag out at night, and that when it was taken down it was not supposed to touch the ground. Maybe they never knew that if a flag was displayed at night, it was supposed to have a light shone upon it.

To put the flag up and forget it seems an odd sort of patriotism.

But even if some of our hands are careless, at least the flag is again back in all of our hands.