by Debbie Morse
Long may it wave o'er the land of the free. But how long do we zealously wave Old Glory from our car antennas, our front doors, our lapels?
President Bush's order to fly the flag at half-mast ended Sunday, although, of course, that doesn't mean flags will come down altogether. The House of Representatives passed a measure Sept. 13 urging all Americans to display American flags for 30 days at home, work and in public places, as a sign of solidarity.
Yet, when I learned Madonna had worn a kilt fashioned from an American flag for the last performance of her concert tour, three days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, I felt I'd already reached the point of stars-and-stripes fatigue--call it "flagtigue."
I came of age, politically, during the Vietnam War. It was a time when the country was divided between war protesters and war-protester haters. We, the protesters, adopted as our symbol the peace sign. The other guys got the American flag.
That flag came to mean, to me, "(Bleep) you, hippie," or maybe even, "This is war." I understand, and appreciate, the showing of our colors as a statement of pride and togetherness. But this week I wondered if all the flags whipping in the wind across America might also whip up blood lust.
I asked Paul Snook, a thirtysomething telephone technician in The City who was taking in the sun at Yerba Buena Gardens on Friday, what he thought.
"I'm all for patriotism," he said, "but I'm a little concerned we're moving so quickly, we could lose our precious civil liberties."
For him, the proliferation of flags, as requested by Congress, is "being used as a rallying point, a political maneuver (when) I don't think we've formed a consensus."
Are we at war? With whom? When my husband hung an American flag in the window of his car a couple of days after the attacks, I asked him, "Who are you against?" A national flag is the emblem of its country, I argued; the United States had no national enemy at the time. His answer was, "It's who I'm for."
I asked Nader Akhnoukh, a 24-year-old San Francisco software company employee, whether he thought the flag was being overused. He said, "I feel like patriotism is valid, but it creates this big wall between 'us' and 'them,' and we haven't defined 'them.' It's like a rallying cry for aggression."
Akhnoukh's friend, 24-year-old Molly Anderson, said, "It can get a little militant. It evokes a military imagery." But she added, "San Francisco is a very liberal city. You'd expect a lot of cynicism here, but you see (flags) here, and that's good. Unity is a good thing."
Cynicism. I've got it bad. I am as patriotic as the next guy, and I certainly respect--admire, uphold--the next guy's right to fly that flag. But even if the flag is not seen as a call to arms for most Americans, lately I've been struck by a perception of people wrapping themselves in the flag (in Madonna's case, literally) as a statement not of solidarity, but of "watch me care."
Yes, flag stores nationwide have sold out of American flags, but what kind of "patriot" would steal them from municipal flagpoles, as I read in a recent news report? I looked up the word "flag-waver" and found this synonym: "patrioteer, one who is ostentatiously and chauvinistically patriotic."
I talked to a bartender at a downtown hotel, a native of New Zealand, who said she found it interesting that "it takes something of this magnitude to get people feeling patriotic." She wondered if she was even witnessing true patriotism: "I feel all the flag-waving is just everybody jumping on the bandwagon. Sheep blindly following along. The whole thing seems a bit cheesy."
Not to everyone. Sonia Mansfield, my 30-ish colleague at The Examiner, told me she drove to Chico with her sister the other day, and to pass they time, they counted American flags along the way.
"We counted like 200 flags," she said. "We lost count in Orland. They had flags every two feet."
Did she find it overmuch?
"It makes me think that a lot of people are rediscovering the things that make this country great," Mansfield said. "For a long time we've been sitting around, surfing the Web, playing with our nifty new gadgets without real serious cares in the world. I guess we've all got a case of 'You don't know what you've got till it's gone.' And well, it's not gone, but it was threatened."
My husband told me of a conversation he'd had the other day with a man who had, like myself, "relinquished" the American flag to the right wing during the Vietnam War. He now saw the proud flurry of flags as a reclaiming of a lost symbol, one his--my--generation could once again fly with pride. I wish I shared his joy.
I asked Akhnoukh and Anderson what would happen to American flags if a U.S. missile hit an orphanage or hospital.
"I don't think they will be pulled down," Anderson answered.
"Probably be raised higher," said Akhnoukh. "By the people who are most 'Go get 'em.'"
Debbie Morse is a staff writer for the San Francisco Examiner, where this article originally appeared.
