A grand old flag: Flag Day
Today is Flag Day, apparently. A day that, to this bamboozled immigrant, appears to combine America’s love of fetishizing national symbols with their habit of creating days that feel like there should be a public holiday, but that invariably aren’t.
It’s not a particularly contentious observation, more an understatement if anything, to note that for the most part Americans are fond of their flag. They have even - like motorheads with their cars, or frat boys with their junk - christened it with a pet name. In this case, Old Glory. The best advice I can give any bamboozled or clueless immigrants is to leave well alone when it comes to commenting on Old Glory*. I discovered this at first hand when a man got irritated with me on just this issue when I described OG as ”just a flag”. This man told me I better shut up as, in his words, he “bled red, white and blue.” I could only assume that he was suffering from a rare and nasty – though colourful – form of septicemia , so I graciously let the point rest.
Fathoming Americans and their flag is difficult for someone who comes from a country such as the United Kingdom that doesn’t invest such emotion behind its flag. Perhaps that’s partly a consequence of being a post-Empire nation, or perhaps it is because we don’t pledge allegiance to our flag, nor do we fly it with the frequency Americans do. The ubiquity of the stars and stripes is one of the most noticeable things when first visiting the US. We could see this as being a good thing. A society constantly and proudly reaffirming pride in its national identity. Equally, I could be mischievous and European (pretty much my default mode) and suggest it’s part of a larger collective neuroses which seeks to constantly vindicate its American identity. I’ll leave both thoughts hanging there, like an unpleasant odour.
By contrast, there is technically no national flag of the UK. At least, no national flag enshrined by law, the Union Flag is there purely through precedent. Now it’s not that I don’t like the Union Flag, or the flag of St George for that matter. The Union Flag in particular is, I think, a great bit of design, as far as flags go. It looks great on a parachute, as we discovered with Roger Moore in “The Spy Who Loved Me” and it looked pretty darn awesome on Pete Townsend’s guitar, but I would feel odd if I had to pledge allegiance to it* because it’s just a square of cloth, it’s just a flag.
But here in the US, my “it’s just a flag” attitude towards the Union Flag seems unpatriotic, callous even, to those, such as the septicemia sufferer, whose hearts swell when they see Old Glory fluttering in the breeze on the forecourt of their local Chevron.
You want to burn or desecrate the Union Flag? Go ahead. I’ll find it a pathetic exercise in attention seeking, I’ll think you’re a bit of a twunt, but I won’t feel violated, nor will I be enraged by the act. Now considering the success of British tabloids such as the Daily Mail, I wouldn’t for a moment suggest that everyone British would have the same, slightly nonplussed feelings as I do on this topic, but neither do I feel that those who’d be outraged by such an act of flag burning would be outraged in the same way their American counterpart would be. Desecrate Old Glory, and in act of patriotic transubstantiation, you’re no longer burning cloth, but America itself, or, at least, its ideas and values.
*Good advice I’m obviously not heeding with this post.
**Obviously I’m referring to the flag itself, rather than Pete Townsend’s guitar or Roger Moore’s parachute, both of which I may be amenable to pledging my allegiance to.
As an American expat and one born on flag day, thanks for a great post. Extremely accurate and balanced. I know it must seem odd to others that we pledge allegiance (!) to our flag, but it is emblematic of our country. Similarly, when we work for the federal government or are in the military, we do a verbal (and written) pledge to support and defend the Constitution. In your national anthem you sing to the Queen; we sing to, you guessed it, the flag. Those words encapsulate our belief that the flag represents our country. It may seem jingoistic or odd to others who aren’t raised in their cultures to do so; we find it a bit strange how nonchalant others are about their flags. (The Dutch fly their red, white and blue flags only on national holidays; the orange flags are put out for national sporting events.) That’s the beauty of living abroad, and seeing things from a fresh perspective. Thanks
linda@adventuresinexpatland.com
June 14, 2011 at 10:40 pm
Well, happy belated birthday!
awindram
June 15, 2011 at 12:23 pm
Hi, there
Have you not been posting for a while? Or did WP HQ deem that I wasn’t allowed to get your posts anymore (as I just found out happened with my subscription to Invisible Mikey)? I’ll have to check.
Anyways, your blog looks great – you’ve given it a makeover since I last saw it.
I think American patriotism is one of the hardest things to gauge when interacting with Americans. We’re so constitutionally cynical; I can see how our attitude to our country and square of cloth, sorry, flag, can seem puzzling to those not from Blighty (especially Americans). God save the Queen! Or something.
(Would you remember Alf Garnett in Till Death Do Us Part? Even all those years ago his patriotism was held up for ridicule and played for laughs.)
Deborah
June 14, 2011 at 11:31 pm
Great to see you again. I’ve not been posting as much as I could do, but there’s still been a couple of posts each month. Have missed your expertise. The wife just noticed an embarrasing amenable/ammendable mistake that I made in the post.
Alf Garnett is an interesting one to consider. There was a very successful US remake called All In The Family. I may have watch both of them to see if the American Alf Garnett (Archie Bunker) was ridiculed for his patriotism to the extent that Garnett was.
awindram
June 15, 2011 at 12:19 pm
I never questioned it growing up in the States–why should I when it felt so good to be a part of something so wonderful? Even when politicians went bad, even when different factions rose and fell, you woke the next day and the flag was still there (like in the song). The flag represented the ideals, its symbols reminded us of how hard we worked to get where we are today, etc etc etc…
It’s only when living over seas and seeing how others do or don’t use their flag that I started to really think about it: I put a St George’s cross on our door during some sports event and was told I’d ‘better be careful or people would get the wrong idea’–which prompted me to hang more flags because I figured anyone who knew me knew I wasn’t BNP and anyone with a brain knew England were playing something that day and would probably conclude that the flags were there for that reason and anyone without a brain would probably just approve.
And when going home I now see all the Stars and Stripes (isn’t Old Glory a specific, old flag? I’m not sure, I might be completely wrong, see how the years abroad have rotted my patriotic memory?) everywhere when I didn’t when I lived there. they were just part of the landscape. Forests and copses and lone pines of flags all over the place. I remember driving along an interstate near Minneapolis and being amazed at the seemingly endless line of really huge oversized flags along the forecourt of a car dealership. I was wondering at the logistics of getting them up there. It was pretty, I must admit. But a little monotonous.
And I remember when my Italian friend moved with her family to Michigan, their first time living in the States, and she emailed me to say ‘why do the children have to say a pledge to the flag every morning before class?’ I wasn’t quite sure how to reply. It’s hard to explain old habits. I eventually found something to email back.
Or when we were in Texas and when we went to a Rodeo and later to a NASCAR race (yeehaw!) and both times the national anthem was sung my English husband neither put his hand on his heart nor sang and I saw people giving him dirty looks so I had to turn to them afterwards and say ‘He’s English, he doesn’t know the words,’ and they said ‘Oh! Okay!’ and were friendly again and started asking him about England. I thought they were going to beat us up or kick us out at the least. No doubt there were a few colourful septisemiacs (?!) in those crowds.
All those things are good for me because they make me question. A faith that can’t be defended is worthless, right? I still love that the flag is the symbol of the US (not a person or a crown–even though I have nothing against the British Royals before someone tries to pick me up on that), and I can understand the propaganda that goes into the patriotism is probably the thing that prevents us from more Civil Wars, but I am sure that there is no small amount of a need for many people to ‘seek to constantly vindicate its American identity’ as you say–mischievous comment or not, it is a very accurate statement.
Michelle | The American Resident
June 15, 2011 at 4:40 am
My understanding was that while Old Glory can refer specifically to William Driver’s flag (which the Old Glory, the definitive article so to speak) the name is also commonly used for any Stars and Stripes.
Interesting that you mention Civil Wars. One article I looked at when quickly doing this post suggested that the “cult of the flag” really became a lot stronger after the Civil War.
Fair point on the Royal Family, by the way. The crown and its holder does became symbolic, and it’s not something I’m comfortable with. Not sure which is sillier though, investing symbolic, national pride onto an 84 year old woman or onto a piece of cloth?
awindram
June 15, 2011 at 12:42 pm
When I first moved here I found it weird that 5 year old children were obliged to pledge allegiance to the flag every morning in school. Almost cult-like. Now, it seems quite normal and I am pleased that my son is having the chance to experience this very different culture. Yesterday on flag day he came home from school with a whole leaflet on ‘how to care for your American flag’. I think he’ll find it odd back in London that we hardly ever refer to our national flag at all……
nappyvalleygirl
June 15, 2011 at 4:51 am
Just yesterday I was browsing children’s books in a bookshop looking for either a book of nursery rhymes or one of lullabies. They had neither. What they did have was a large stack of books called Our American Flag. Moreover, I just looked it up on Amazon and there appear to be 21 different children’s books on the subject…
scepticalexpat
June 17, 2011 at 4:16 pm
Thank you, awindram, for this post.
I have moved some months ago from Europe to the US with my American husband. Like many Europeans I was puzzled by the special attitude Americans have towards their flag. I can understand an idea of a flag being a symbol of a country and its values and a spacial role it therefore plays. My problem is rather with the extent to which the attitude to the flag is taken to in this country. Namely, I think it is disproportionate and is on the border of reasonable. It is fine to teach children to respect the flag of their country. But in my view, making children take allegiance to the flag every morning (emphasis) seems unnatural, exaggerated and very much like… propaganda and a brain-washing of pure sort. I hate writing this, but this is what comes to my mind when I think about it. Even in former Eastern communist countries they did not have this kind of practices. Nor I am aware of English children singing “God save the Queen” every morning…
Allegiance to the flag every morning is, in my view, is a practice which eventually is not particularly conducive for letting youth think for themselves. I just do not see how children raised this way can ever question that anything may be wrong with this country and ever doubt authority. Europeans (at least those I know) often note how patriotic Americans are. With education like this, no wonder. But there is a healthy patriotism and there is a patriotism which is over-the-top, a kind of exclusive type of patriotism, which I think these kind of practices trigger.
Finally, I find it sad that parents, those for them it was first unusual, get used to it and see it as something usual. Some things are not comfortable to confront, but we lose something if we do not.
Katie
July 20, 2011 at 8:33 pm