Burning Flag Birthday Suit
Patriotism is wonderful, except when it's not. And when it's not, it's pretty awful. Take this article (via) about big giant flags, for instance:
On the field before the All-Star Game, Major League Baseball plans to assemble the largest gathering of Hall of Fame players in baseball history. And as fans salute their heroes, the former players will join the crowd in saluting the American flag — one that is roughly 75 feet by 150 feet, as long as a 15-story building is tall, spread horizontally over the Yankee Stadium turf.
That is a relatively small flag by big-event standards in American sports these days. But it will signal the latest can’t-miss blend of sports and patriotism, a combination increasingly presenting itself through gigantic American flags, unfurled by dozens or hundreds of people in an attempt to elicit a sense of awe and nationalism in the surrounding crowd.
Nothing wrong with that, so far. Big giant flags. Huzzah. However:
“People go ape when they see it,” said Jim Alexander, a retired Coast Guard commander who runs Superflag, the company that basically invented the industry and once held the world record for the largest flag, which temporarily hung on the Hoover Dam. It was 255 by 505 feet and has been surpassed by a flag in Israel that measures 2,165 by 330 feet. “It’s a feeling. It’s a feeling that takes over a whole stadium. If anyone in the stands opened their mouth and objected, there would be hell to pay.”
Don't say a word against the big giant flag! The fun thing here is the barely-concealed desire for somebody to object -- some hippie or other -- so that an excuse may be found to kick the snot out of him.
That's the kind of coercive patriotism, the patriotism of implied violence, that creeps me the hell out. See also here, where we are enjoined:
Never surrender. Never submit. Never be silenced. Freedom and independence forever.
Because all American citizens are of course mere minutes away from being forcibly converted to Islam. Which, you know, we're not, actually.
This form of patriotism is paranoid, vicious, thin-skinned, self-righteous --it needs an enemy, and if there aren't any real ones, it will invent some. It perhaps presents even more of a threat to our democracy than Swarthmore graduates who teach in elementary schools, if you can believe it. Hell, it might even be closer to a "secular religion" than liberalism, what with its rejection of torture and unwillingness to give the Chief Executive the unchecked power to conduct surveillance on private citizens. Could be!
Anyway, tonight I'm taking the 8-Year-Old to a minor league baseball game, where we'll have hot dogs, & I might get a beer. Afterwards we'll watch some fireworks. If anyone has a problem with that, I hope you get nuked by Islamofascist hippies, dammit.
The biggest fucking junior high school in the world.
Posted by: K. Ron Silkwood | July 04, 2008 at 05:20 PM
I was really hoping the story about "going ape" at the sight of a giant flag was a joke article.
Hope you and the boy have a fun evening!
Posted by: refinnej | July 04, 2008 at 06:37 PM
Anyway, tonight I'm taking the 8-Year-Old to a minor league baseball game, where we'll have hot dogs, & I might get a beer.
There better be a flag involved you leftwing commie pinko....
Posted by: flory | July 04, 2008 at 06:55 PM
Hope the weather is nice where you are; hope you enjoy the game and the fireworks (and the beer)... NYC's sky right now is very cloudy and grey, so I don;t think I'll see much of the fireworks show on the East River. (I'm eating hot dogs as I wait for the fireworks to start.)
Posted by: PurpleGirl | July 04, 2008 at 08:50 PM
Never surrender. Never submit. Never be silenced. Freedom and independence forever.
God Canadians live a horrible life.
Posted by: Righteous Bubba | July 04, 2008 at 10:30 PM
The giant flags are pretty pathetic. Is there any other country on Earth that does this shit? Besides North Korea of course.
Just who are they trying to convince anyway?
Posted by: Gundamhead | July 05, 2008 at 12:32 AM
Just who are they trying to convince anyway?
Themselves. They are so insecure about everything that they need to have the biggest of anything to prove to themselves that they are better and right and... Yeah, stupid, but then the stupid it burns.
Posted by: PurpleGirl | July 05, 2008 at 09:22 AM
Ostentatious displays of wealth, religion, and patriotism all have the same disgusting effect. McMansions, praying on TV, big flags, all the same. Disgusting.
Posted by: Davis | July 05, 2008 at 11:34 AM
The fun thing here is the barely-concealed desire for somebody to object -- some hippie or other -- so that an excuse may be found to kick the snot out of him.
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Kinda jumps out at you, doesn't it ...
Posted by: Ghost of Joe Liebling's Dog | July 05, 2008 at 01:08 PM