General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums
"Why the Flag No Longer Flies on My Home in SC and Why I am an Unhappy American"
fyi, I did not write this.
Why the Flag No Longer Flies on My Home in SC and Why I am an Unhappy American
Sunday, May 26, 2024 at 11:32:11a EDT
wjhamilton29464
snip//
I remember when I loved my country. I remember the Tricentennial, the Bicentennial, the first Spoleto Festival USA in 1977. I helped present the Millennium first night celebration in Charleston when we held activities for hundreds of Children at Memminger school. We built the Millennium lighthouse, a 20 foot working model of the Morris Island lighthouse. I remember when that light came on, surrounded by Thousands of people in the middle of my city. With the world at peace, we honestly believed a bright new world and a better America were ahead of us.
A botched Presidential election and September 11th. killed that optimism.
I remember the Sunday before we elected President Obama. The night Obama won, I was walking home from a victory celebration still wearing my voter assistance shirt and hat. I stopped in at a redneck bar for directions. I was insulted and followed for several blocks until I walked up to an unknown person's porch and spoke to them, asking them to call the police. (which they had apparently already done when I rang their doorbell). (My phone was dead, not mistakes I would make today).
My country has become ugly, cruel and stupid. I am now deeply ashamed of it. Trump horrifies me and the fact that 40% of American adults want him to be President makes me sick at heart.
On the 9th. of July 2009, I was with a small, poorly organized healthcare demonstration on the steps of the US Customs house in Charleston. The local right wing radio station, WTMA, which I had worked with for over 20 years attacked us on the air and sent a mob to harass us. 50 of them. 9 of us. They were all waving the flag.
I went home that evening. I got my ladder out of the garage. I leaned it up against the front of my house. I climbed up, against the strict orders of my doctor after my injury. I removed the American Flag, a 15 star, 15 stripe Star Spangled banner from the bracket. I have never put it back up.
I have no confidence that I will ever be able to fly that flag again. After the horrors of January 6, I cannot trust my country any longer. I and America are no longer on the same side. The 40% who love Trump and the 30% who don't care tell me my country is no longer good.
more...
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/5/26/2242870/-Why-the-Flag-No-Longer-Flies-on-My-Home-in-SC-and-Why-I-am-an-Unhappy-American
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
sinkingfeeling
(57,835 posts)
Wuddles440
(2,094 posts)
Marthe48
(23,175 posts)I don't want to fly it now because I don't want people to think I'm a rwnj
Never thought I'd see the day 
GentryDixon
(3,149 posts)My husband & son are both veterans, and I worked for DoD for 30+ years. It was a mutual decision. 😢
Response to sinkingfeeling (Reply #1)
onecaliberal This message was self-deleted by its author.
Wounded Bear
(64,324 posts)
PittBlue
(4,794 posts)Who we lost to Vietnam. Other than that we never fly an American flag since Bush 2 was in office.
DFW
(60,186 posts)We are not soccer fans, first off. My wife and I are from two different countries, and we live in hers, not mine. We both speak the language of the other, but we converse in hers. When we met, her English was not very good. It is better now, but old habits die hard.
We both know who we are and where we come from. We feel no need to remind ourselves every time we enter or leave the house.
Tree Lady
(13,282 posts)I stopped flying it years ago because I started buying flags all year for every season and holiday. Right now I have a beautiful happy spring flag with flowers on it. Fourth of July flag has dog holding American flag. My Republican neighbor and old guy Rick loves my flags. We joke about how crazy we think each other are but underneath still like each other. My new neighbor has small front yard with two American flags. The truck driving gun waving sort. We have given little toys to their kids. I always feel you win people over more with kindness than hate. My example with that has always been Jimmy Carter.
Hope22
(4,746 posts)In the 1980’s many of my family members were beginning careers in the military. Some were in harms way and others married and in the Air Force, made plans for who would drop everything and come for the children if they both were deployed. I flew the flag every day for them. After Iraq and the endless lies it became harder and harder to do. On January 6th where people put flags on poles and used them as weapons that was it. A pick up truck with flags a blazing is to be avoided. They have successfully stolen the flag to forge a hate filled country where women are third class and brown people are targets. Insanity reigns completely void of empathy, reason or love. We have successfully arrived at hell on earth!
keopeli
(3,582 posts)
MarineCombatEngineer
(18,060 posts)That's exactly how I feel.
I refuse to let the MAGAt's take over the true meaning of our flag, it proudly flies at my home and on my truck.
Peacetrain
(24,288 posts)or anyone on the right PERIOD!!
Marthe48
(23,175 posts)and Veteran's Day of the people in my family and my husband's family who served in the military. So many and so many generations.
I appreciate the service of each person, even without a flag on display.
58Sunliner
(6,330 posts)
William Seger
(12,443 posts)Flags are the result of humanity's need throughout history to identify which side you are on in war, so I confess to being a bit flag-shy since my Vietnam protest days. If I get a pole, I'll probably only fly it on Memorial Day for the reason you give. Well, no, I'll also fly the flag the day Biden is declared the winner!
Cherokee100
(454 posts)My flag flys for my best friend/brother (we always had each others back), who was killed in Nam in 68. I still remember, seeing the card his mother got, saying' your son came home in a box, ha-ha'. Obviously from some freedom loving trumpster/draft dogger.
elocs
(24,486 posts)Because you still could be. Just as nobody knows if you are a business flying the flag if you are truly doing it for patriotic reasons or if it's just an advertising ploy. I live next to a hotel that would fly the flag at the entrance on one of my city's most busy streets until it is nothing more than a tattered rag and they were shamed to take it down and never replace it.
Flying the flag is no longer a dependable way to guarantee that those who are rwnjs to not think you are one of them because they just might think you are unless you display something else along with it that proves to them where you stand.
Attilatheblond
(8,877 posts)The Biden Harris yard sign got stolen, and I replaced it that afternoon. We also had a good size (3'x6') Biden Harris fabric banner with many hands upraised, all different colors. That banner I attached to hooks I have in roof fascia, with metal cord connecting the bottom grommets to BIG spikes pounded into our hard, adobe soil. Windows on either side would make that one damned hard to steal.
That latter banner goes back up when I figure out how to turn 2020 into 2024, it's a really nice banner and celebrates diversity along with good leadership.
We must not surrender the flag to the insurrectionists.
bdamomma
(69,532 posts)Remember how the insurrectionists were using the flag as a weapon on Jan 6th, These people have been taught to hate this country, and when you have a sick psychotic person spewing everyday our country is in decay, they believe it. And they call us the radical left??????? WTF.
TomSlick
(13,013 posts)I'll be damned if these insurrectionists can take exclusive rights to the flag.
bdamomma
(69,532 posts)for your service. That flag is for everyone one of us. No cult is going to win.
jmbar2
(7,989 posts)Now I assume that it's a militia-type.
The far right has destroyed the meaning of our flag, democracy, honorable religions. Behind it all, I suspect this is just what the international corporate/criminal cabal have wanted all along. To take down post-war liberal democracies across the globe.
If they succeed, I pity future generations.
hay rick
(9,605 posts)As you mention, when I see a flag on a vehicle I presume the worst. If the flag is accompanied by bumper stickers or other flags, they pledge fealty to the Trump traitor much more often than not. My new knee-jerk reaction to our flag represents something Donald Trump and too many self-described patriots have stolen from me.
Hope22
(4,746 posts)It’s been a while since I had seen the Jan 6th video. I was shocked that day and even more taken aback this week when it came on the screen. That was a battle we witnessed. People died, and lives were ruined by force and chemical agents! Yet we still hear it was a tour of the people’s house. Right! And yes, the Maggots have stolen the flag. I’m trying to decide when I will allow myself to take it back! Hopefully some day soon!
Paladin
(32,354 posts)Afraid of the shitheads that would be attracted/set off. That's the sort of country we live in, now. I'll cast votes to make it better, but I'm not very optimistic.
rubbersole
(11,223 posts)Samuel Johnson, 1775. He didn't mean all patriots were bad, it's that bad people use patriotism when they have nothing else to try to appeal to others. Throw in racism and misogyny and you have the repub trifecta.
misanthrope
(9,495 posts)It belongs in the group.
rubbersole
(11,223 posts)
soldierant
(9,354 posts)I've been thinking tha the name "Christian" was stolen from me 9and more others like me than you can imagine) just as the name "patriot" has been stolen from you and from me - and a few decades earlier - and by essentially the same people.
LT Barclay
(3,180 posts)too.
I wish they'd be honest enough to stick with the swastikas and confederate flags.
NanaCat
(2,332 posts)For centuries, too many christians have stood by and done nothing when the obnoxious among them acted up in public. They buried their head in the sand rather than confront the obnoxious, or, far worse, tried to distance themselves from the bad behaviour by lying that the obnoxious ones weren't christians at all, as if not being a christian could explain their behaviour, Because only christians are good people, and all bad people have to be those who aren't, amirite? Not bigoted at all, there, nosiree!
It's a christian mess, no one else's. It was made by christians in the name of the religion, and too many of those who don't support that kind of behaviour have done too little to rein in the obnoxious actors.
It's time for christians to clean up their own mess and stop ignoring the problem or blaming innocent others for it.
soldierant
(9,354 posts)but stolen in every generation.. Certainly more obviously in some generation than in others.
IbogaProject
(5,913 posts)I still fly it. I'm not ceeding the Stars and Stripes to traitors.
Warpy
(114,615 posts)You know, that flag with the big, cheesy yellow "T" on it.
Let them have their made in China freak flag, it's like flying the southern battle flag, it just warns us by shouting "ASSHOLE HERE!" so we can more easily avoid them.
I can easily understand the pessimism expressed by the poster in the OP, I've lived in the south, too. The cultue down there can grind you down if you don't fit in and I never fit in, at all. I left as soon as I managed to save a few hundred bucks. I would suggest this person take a job outside Dixie and get some perspective. S/he might find out there is a whole, vibrant, ornery, and wonderful country out there.
I'm actually feeling optimistic now, even with the rise of madmen in countries around the world. It's because there's been the rise of a generation that seem equipped to realize how full of shit they are.
And yes, I'vea always felt it was my flag, too. There is no way I was going to let a bunch of right wing blowhards take it away from me.
brooklynite
(96,882 posts)What the writer is saying in effect is that the flag doesn't represent the nation; it represents Trump and the MAGA crowd. That's a ridiculous attitude to take and (in the context of a political blog) a gift to the Right Wing politicians who can freely claim the mantle of patriotism.
Attilatheblond
(8,877 posts)I will NOT surrender one more symbol of our nation to those who wish to dismantle it. I just can't.
Wonder Why
(7,024 posts)becomes a symbol of hate e.g. the Confederate Battle Flag and the Nazi flag. But I don't believe the American flag is like that so I'm not willing to surrender it to the hate makers.
There are no perfect countries. No perfect communities. No perfect nationalities or ethnics. Each has its faults, some more than others. But I haven't given up on this country nor its flag. I will never surrender. We've had dark times before - the slave era, the "Indian War" period, the Depression and we have always come out of it -often at high cost. We will always have to fight for freedom and justice. That war will never end.
E. Normus
(114 posts)most of them are young folks including one of my sons. I understand where you and they are coming from. I feel it too. I tell them this. I also tell them that even though I am well into my sixties, I still believe that this nation can and will surprise and inspire them.
DENVERPOPS
(13,003 posts)When FASCISM comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a bible.............
WASF
Evolve Dammit
(21,774 posts)
cayugafalls
(5,960 posts)According to an article I found a while back when trying to source the quote the earliest found so far(?) is Eugene V. Debs in 1917
In 1917 “The Muncie Sunday Star” of Indiana printed an announcement for a speech that prominent labor activist Eugene V. Debs was planning to deliver. The announcement presented a quotation from Debs which partially matched the saying under examination:[2]Every robber or oppressor in history has wrapped himself in a cloak of patriotism or religion, or both.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/07/28/flag/#return-note-16541-2
DownriverDem
(7,014 posts)We won't let the MAGAs think they own it. We are on a corner. Folks know where we stand by our campaign signs on our lawn closer to the election.
Kalifornia9
(57 posts)Armed and prone to drunken loudmouthed Tomfoolery and associated police visits. Alpha male flies ridiculously oversized stars and Stripes from his beat up, MAGA stickered Pickemuptruck bed. I wouldn't want them to mistake solidarity with any of their MAGA shit.
sop
(18,618 posts)
GenThePerservering
(3,379 posts)in a bubble. I recall *anyone* who did not conform to the rigid right wing doctrine was vilified in the town where I grew up - that was in the late 60s/early 70s. Basically, you were ostracised if you didn't listen to the correct radio station (country western natch), mouth the correct sound bites and vote for the correct (right wing) person.
This country has always been ugly - we just get to see it daily on that poisoned chalice, social media.
I'm not knuckling down like a weakling and giving up the flag. Fuck that - it's selling out.
Attilatheblond
(8,877 posts) 
samplegirl
(13,984 posts)let these sorry ass Maga's think they own the flag or our country!
I'm a proud American supporting my country inspite of what has been done to all of us.
You can't put anything on your car because the son of a bitches will key it or ruin your car.
jaxexpat
(7,794 posts)American flags belong at national government installations, in fair weather, during daytime hours only. Everywhere else they fly is gratuitous patriotocrisy. Clothing or ornamentation made from them is beyond the pale. Flying them at night or in the rain, upside down or modified to support a political grievance is unacceptable. The huge one's flown at car dealerships and tool rentals here in the south, that's a cultural desert on display.
I've known many veterans of WWII, Korea and Vietnam. Front line people have shared their experiences of war with me in their last years. From Burma to the Ardennes each had amazing tales which for them were real-life-anecdotes, but they'd never shared them with their families. I'm a good listener, I guess. Not a single one that I know ever flew a flag at their home for any reason. They had not gone into harm's way for a flag, and they never failed to salute the flag in a parade display before a column of marchers. Their recollection of the American flag was as the banner around which they banded, a symbol of succor and weary comradery. To them, the casual display of the flag was demeaning to their appreciation of its cost. For my part, it is their opinions about the flag which I hold to be the most legitimate.
A country that does harm is not a good country.
Jilly_in_VA
(14,371 posts)I wanted to get a Ukrainian flag to fly beneath ours, but earlier they were in short supply and since then I haven't done anything about it.
I have a neighbor who occasionally raises his Holy Roman Empire flag when he gets annoyed at his MAGA neighbor across the road raising a Confederate one. It cracks me up every time but I don't think the neighbor gets it.
William769
(59,147 posts)
chouchou
(3,144 posts)..there's millions of kind, informed Americans that truly want a loving, intelligent, happy country.
This forum is just a small slice of that. I'd tell the gentleman to keep trying.
It's a hard road to face the ignorant hateful populace but, you know that it's worth it in the end. 
Attilatheblond
(8,877 posts)And flew it during the heat of the campaign. We live in a pretty red county, but the DEMs here are loud and active. I WILL NOT GIVE UP OUR FLAG, allowing it to be flown only by traitors and autocrat voting hypocrites!
Yes, this nation has some pretty bad patches of history, but all peoples do. The work to keep a course corrected is ongoing; I am old enough to have figured that out and accept that reality. But our nation is our people and the majority are still pretty decent, if some are somewhat under-involved. I am old enough to know many are pretty busy just trying to earn enough to keep a roof over their families and food on their tables; I will cut them some slack for not spending as much time acting politically like many of us geezers have time to do.
It is MY FLAG. It is MY NATION, and I will not surrender it to those who mock the service of others and delude themselves into thinking voting for an autocratic criminal bestows them with some sort of patriot glitter.
It is MY FLAG, flag of the father and uncles who fought, and never quite got over the trauma of being part of the massive effort to defeat Hitler. It is MY FLAG, flag of the woman who took off their aprons, and tied back their hair to keep the factories running and the food growing.
It is MY FLAG, the flag of generations before me, most coming from other shores to live under that banner. My flag has changed over the years, as my country has. And my country has taken dark turns many times, but if enough of us care, we will right the current course again. Biden and his team are doing a fine job and that is why the autocrats are pulling out the stops in a concerted effort to turn him out of office. So, now the fight is OURS, in our time, and we will fight in the ways we must. We will do it under the banner that is OUR FLAG!
emulatorloo
(46,155 posts)
JustAnotherGen
(38,054 posts)He thinks since I'm an elected we should have one up today.
proud patriot
(102,513 posts)I feel that makes one more patriotic to mourn the bad and speak out about it.
waving a flag or not doesn't make anyone more or less a patriot IMO
kairos12
(13,590 posts)And I'm a vet. A disgusted one.
PatrickforB
(15,425 posts)I had an Obama/Biden bumper sticker on my car in '09 and was driving home from work. I live in a blue state but my county tends to vote red.
Some guy in a giant RAM truck almost drove me off the road and yelled out his window as he drove past, "How is that hopey-changey thing working for you?"
He had two giant 'Murikan flags on his truck and I can remember stopping to recover as I watched the hate-filled AM-radio propagandized person recede in the distance, dark smoke coming out of his exhaust.
That night I scraped off my bumper sticker. And we don't fly any flags at the house, either.
Do you ever wonder WHO wants us to be divided like we are, HATE each other, MISTRUST each other?
Hint: It is not the GOP - they are just shills.
Nope - it is libertarian billionaires like the Koch brothers and the Mercers. They want us to hate each other and have purposely removed all civility from our society because they want their GOP shills to give them more and more and more and more money at the rest of our expense. Remember the useful idiot Grover Norquist? He wanted to starve the gummint for funds until it 'was so small it could be strangled in the bathtub.' Remember?
These billionaire parasites are a cancer on our country. There is nothing good about them. They have giant super-sized egos, are narcissistic, and believe that for them to win, we all have to lose. They don't seem to have even a modicum of capacity to empathize with anyone else and would cheerfully let you and me die out in the parking lot of a hospital if we could not PAY for healthcare services. As long as they don't get taxed.
They want to steal our Social Security trust fund and give it to Wall Street and eliminate the ACA and Medicare. They want to gut regulations and drill baby drill.
They have published a conservative manifesto called the 2025 Project that is 900 pages long and does a deep dive into pretty much ALL federal policy. You think they are kidding about fucking us all over? Read it. It SUCKS and if these fucks win we won't have a republic any more and democracy as we know it will be GONE. No shit.
These people are fucking TRAITORS who don't give a shit whether any of us, ANY OF US, live or die. They just want MORE money and MORE power. And the fucking worthless corporate media ISN'T REPORTING ON THIS BECAUSE THEIR EXECUTIVES HAVE NO FIDUCIARY RESPONSIBILITY FOR TRUTH IN NEWS. NONE.
If you think I'm kidding, open the link below and read as much as you can before you puke at these traitorous fucks.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24088042-project-2025s-mandate-for-leadership-the-conservative-promise
raging moderate
(4,624 posts)He felt that the President should be taking orders from the "true leaders" of the country: its oligarchs.
misanthrope
(9,495 posts)the bigotry and racism embedded so deeply in portions of our nation and culture. I wish I could say I had been proven wrong but the vehemence I saw on all the angry white faces surrounding me when I covered a 2009 TEA Party rally only showed the reality.
TexasDem69
(2,317 posts)But don’t be a coward about who you support. Because that’s all this is.
mercuryblues
(16,413 posts)Even before it became the 9/11 fashion statement. No F'n MAGAt is ever going to take that away from me.
Bluethroughu
(7,215 posts)We can do this together.
This is our Country, and they'll have to pull it from our cold dead hands.
My family has been fighting the fight against fascists since before Civil War.
I'm a lover not a fighter, but watch the F... out if I have no other choice.
neverforget
(9,513 posts)There are a bunch of Trumpers around me and they fly the Flag all the time, usually with the Trump flag. Fuck that. I'm sick of these a-holes thinking they own the Flag.
The Canadian Flag is to be flown on July 1 for Canada Day and celebrate my wife's dual citizenship. The Luxembourg Flag will be flown on June 23 to celebrate National Day and my daughter's and my dual citizenship which we should have by the end of the year.
TexasDem69
(2,317 posts)And nothing else? Flying the flag of some other country isn’t proving anything.
neverforget
(9,513 posts)I'm also going to fly the Canadian flag and Luxembourg flag. Does that bother you somehow?
maspaha
(745 posts)Just like we have for many years. We’re a proud US-Canadian dual citizenship home. And we’ll continue the tradition even after moving back to Canada. Both the US and Canada are nations of immigrants.
Besides, flying both flags annoys the MAGAts living in my bright red town in Arizona 🤭
GenThePerservering
(3,379 posts)[link:[url=https://ibb.co/vmxZNky][img]
[/img][/url]|
B.See
(8,502 posts)We just never did. But then again, we don't buy/wear it flaunt name brands on clothes or wear logos, or sport bumper stickers or none of that.
I have two pairs of tennis shoes, the good ones and the truck thru the muck in the backyard pair, and neither of them cost more than 50 bucks brand new. Never was into that kind of thing.
I do have an American flag though.
It's hanging on my wall, encased in a triangle shaped box. The flag that once draped my dad's coffin (a career soldier) and over which American servicemen fired volleys and played taps. And I know fully all that it means.
So yes, though I understand the frustration, disappointment and anger of the article posted by the op and others herein,
I also share the sentiment expressed by those here who are furious over the right's co-opting of OUR flag as a symbol of their hate, intolerance, bigotry and malice.
And the refusal expressed herein to let fascists and those seeking to put an end to our democracy STEAL it for those purposes.
Those who'd seek to replace it with a dictatorship, who'd threaten to destroy us if they are not successful are, imo, neither Patriots nor Americans.
oldsoftie
(13,538 posts)The COUNTRY isnt cruel & stupid, some of its PEOPLE are.
They dont get to take control of OUR flag. If anything people like US should be MORE willing to fly it. Take it back. Because yes, I'm a better American than those who worship Trump.
Oopsie Daisy
(6,670 posts)
Emile
(42,289 posts)the outrage from the right would be nonstop.
I rarely fly our flag anymore, but when I do I fly it correctly.
Demsrule86
(71,542 posts)I think of my Grandpa who had my Dad late in life enlisting at 17 in the Army in 1917. He was gassed and had health issues all his life. I think of my Dad and Mom who met at Great Lakes where I was born. They were in the Navy. My brother and Sister were Marines. My husband who is a first-generation American of Irish descent is named after a pilot shot down over Germany...his family are Irish immigrants. He fought fascism in the RAF. I fly the American flag the rainbow flag in honor of my Lesbian daughter and her wife. I have a Black Lives Matter sign in my yard as do others on my block. This country is worth fighting for. We are a family who fights for this country and it is worth fighting for...in the end, I believe we will win the battle.