Nashville — We bought a home from a military veteran who raised the flag on every official patriotic occasion. It was hanging from a flag mount embedded in the bark of a maple tree, and for the first few years at home, at least on July 4, we followed.
At that time, our neighborhood always held a block party on the 4th. The children decorated their bicycles and dogs and generously strolled down the street called the parade. My parents vaguely oversaw mandatory games such as three-legged races and egg-throwing, but most of the time I was chatting in the shade until it was time to bring them with me.
There was no mention of politics. If I knew the affiliation of the party of the neighbor, it meant that we were friends, and the friends at the time gave each other the grace to assume that good wins on both sides. Even if we didn’t agree on which aspects of vast and messy democracy deserve pride, we were all proud to be Americans.
Traditionally, Caucasian Southerners are not big on the flag. The crash of Vicksburg occurred on July 4, 1863. The Civil War battle, in which the Union Army was defeated on Union’s founding anniversary, meant that many Southerners regarded July 4 as Independence Day. For decades.
Today, the American flag was adopted by a very cohort who rejected it very roundly when I was a kid. Last week, as I drove through the Tennessee countryside, I saw the American flag hanging from a bucket of cherry pickers parked by the side of the road. A flag was waving on a tent for sale of fireworks. The flag was even bigger than the tent.
Driving in the red state, the American flag flying over the truck stop, hanging from a construction crane, stretched on the windshield behind the car, adorned with clothing, and of course, in front You can see it waving from the pouch. July 4th. “The huge amount of American flag tools that appear to be owned by whites bothers me.” Times columnist Tressy McMillan Cotton tweeted Last month “I think it’s a kind of flow to them, and they haven’t bought all of it? I don’t know.”
I’m sure white people are buying something like this.
But not all of us. Old Glory has become such a powerful feature of Trump’s rally that many liberals reject it very little and do not want to accept the symbol of the worldview in which we found Anathema. “Today, raising the flag behind a pickup truck or over the lawn is increasingly seen as a clue to the political parties of people in deeply divided countries, although imperfect,” said Sarah Maslin Nil. I wrote in the Times last year. ..
My husband and I stopped raising our flag many years before being attacked by the MAGA crowd. Our old maple tree grew around a mountain of flags over the years and eventually completely wrapped it up.
There are many reasons to doubt the feasibility of an American experiment. I was born in the southern part of the country, isolated during the Vietnam War. When I was a kid, I watched a Watergate hearing on TV. I saw my government launch a provocative ground invasion into another country and wage a secret drone war in another country. I cried when I trapped my baby in a border cage.
The majority of Americans did not want the court to overturn Roe. They don’t want to be surrounded by guns. They are deeply concerned about climate change. With these Supreme Court decisions, land law no longer reflects the will of the people who live here.
I am terribly suffering from this reality. I have bet my entire worldview on the belief that people are almost good, even if they don’t agree with each other, but I’m fighting a fierce civil war right now. Hate Everyone That decision, big or small, has led to this political moment.
When Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. told us that the arc of the moral universe was bending towards justice, he asked the Americans to suspect he might have been overly hopeful. Will always remember that there was a reason for despair. And this barbaric, unstoppable hope (millions of people want to record countless painstaking tasks) somehow creates a previously unthinkable victory. I always remember when I was able to do it.
In 2015, my family and I were outside the Supreme Court in a crowd of advocates of marriage equality awaiting the Obergefell v. Hodge decision. Hodges case. (I’m writing more about this experience here.) The best scenario everyone around us agrees is to allow marriages made in states where same-sex marriage is legal. It was a requesting decision. Recognizing marriage as a constitutional right, we will never forget the unwavering joy that exploded as the judgment went further.
I will never forget what happened next. A crowd of delights began to sing the national anthem.
I am uplifted just because advocates of marriage equality continue to seek change in the constant threat of violence, and often in reality, despite decades of setbacks. I have returned to the experience many times. I think of the song, in its first profound and unexpected flash of joy, what came to my mind was the promise that the country still holds.
Winning justice is not so unbearably difficult, and the final justice should never be endangered again. But this is the country we live in. The battle for freedom will never end. And God help me, I am not the one to give up. This is also my country and I will not give it up to the minority of the voices of undemocratic tyranny.
So this weekend, July 4, my husband and I raised the American flag again for the first time in a few years. Right next to the front door, it does not symbolize MAGA’s lies or MAGA’s tyranny. We proudly fly it in honor of our fellow Americans who are fighting for justice of all kinds.
However, we also raised another flag on the other side of the front door to clarify which America we believe in. When the American flag blows in the wind at our house, a rainbow-colored flag will swirl next to it.