'Time For My Flag to Go Up': How Anti-Trumpers Are Reclaiming the American Flag

[Demovictory9]

‘Time For My Flag to Go Up’: How Anti-Trumpers Are Reclaiming the American Flag
Over the past four years, the flag has been recast as a kind of MAGA shorthand. Now, Trump foes are ready to take the symbol back.

Biden supporters celebrate the declared presidential election result, Nov. 7, 2020, in Philadelphia.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/11/29/politics-capture-the-us-flag-trump-maga-symbol-440374

presidential election result, Nov. 7, 2020, in Philadelphia. | M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO

By JOANNA WEISS

11/29/2020 07:00 AM EST

Joanna Weiss is a writer in Boston and editor of Experience magazine, published by Northeastern University.

About a month before the election, Curtis Woodall logged on to Amazon and ordered an American flag. The 72-year-old Vietnam War veteran and retired infantry soldier had taken down his old flag about a year into the Trump administration. “It hurt. It did,” Woodall said. But he didn’t want anyone in his neighborhood outside Columbia, South Carolina, to associate him with President Donald Trump’s racial rhetoric or anti-immigrant policies. He grew angry when he saw American flags on pickup trucks around town. “They’ve always got a Trump flag and the American flag,” he said. “And I said, ‘That’s bull. That is desecrating the flag that I served over 20 years with.’”

Now, at last, it looked like Trump might lose, so Woodall set his new flag on the dining room table and waited. When the election was called for Joe Biden, “I said, ‘Time for my flag to go up,’” Woodall told me by phone, a couple of weeks later. He sent me a photo of the flag, still hanging beside his garage, his own Dodge Ram pickup in the foreground.

Across the country, in their cautious euphoria after the election, foes of Trump have been embracing the flag in similar ways: unfurling it in front of their homes, waving it in the streets, or simply looking at it differently. The day Biden gave his victory speech, Nancy La Vigne, executive director of the Council on Criminal Justice’s Task Force on Policing, took out the flag she always flies on holidays and hung it outside her home in liberal Bethesda, Maryland. La Vigne meant the act as “an expression of pride in how the system of democracy actually works.” But as the hours went by and she noticed more and more flags around her neighborhood, she realized she was seeing something broader: A spontaneous reclaiming of a symbol that, in the Trump years, had come to represent only one side.
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By that time, for many people on both sides of the political chasm, the flag had been recast as a kind of shorthand, an extension of the MAGA hat—sending an instant message of which side you were on, or inspiring stereotypes that pulled the country even further apart. “When I saw somebody with a flag bumper sticker or a T-shirt with a big flag on it, I immediately thought … it’s a Trump nut job. A crazy person,” said California screenwriter Ed Kamen, who tweeted a similar sentiment when the election was called for Biden. Now that Trump seemed repudiated, through the mechanics of democracy, the flag suddenly meant something different to him. “My attitude’s changed about it now,” Kamen, an independent, told me weeks after the election. “I am proud of my country. I love my flag. I love my country. And it’s nice to see the flag again representing the country as a whole, instead of one section of it.”


**** long article continues at the link**

[Cha]

1. TY.. WE are the Patriots.. It's our Flag.

trump bows to dictators & is Putin's Puppet.

he can Wrap himself in the flag all he wants but he's been selling America OUT.. trump got Impeached for Treason.. he's responsible for mass negligent homicide of Americans! he did Nothing about Putin's Bounty on American & English Soldiers.. he Abused our long standing Allies.

trump is a Traitor. & now he's guilty of Sedition.

[empedocles]

4. We have a trumper 'friend' who is invested in an American flag at least

8 feet across, complete with flagpole.

He may be pissed as 'the winds of change' continue to blow the other way.

[Cha]

7. I think they're pretend

patriots. They place trump over country.. they don't care how many he kills by Lying about COVID.. calling it a "democrat hoax for 70 days" & continually mocking masks.. spreading the trump Virus.

Thank Goodness the Winds of Change are Blowing for Democracy now.. Not Fascism like the last 4 years.

[dware]

19. Mahalo Cha.

Winds of Change.

[Blue Owl]

2. They have their shitty tRump flags they can molest

Old Glory's got chunks of tRump in its stool...

[TheBlackAdder]

21. Two of my daughters are gay. We say if the LGBTQ community co-opts Gadsden the RWers won't fly them.

[Fyrefox]

3. It's been said that...

Patriotism and religion (of the false varieties) are the last refuge of a scoundrel. Trump and his running dogs have tried to identify with the American flag for years, as have far right Republicans in general. Especially through Pence and the notorious Bible-holding photo-op stunt, Trump has tried to claim Christianity as well. Both are false allegiances, an illusory projection, just as Trump has been a sham president. For the past four years, I also have seen the American flag desecrated on the back of pickups flaunting Trump flags as well. It turned my stomach, and soured my appreciation of open flag displays as a MAGA shorthand...

...but on Inauguration Day in January, I will also fly a flag on my house as a symbol that we have taken our country back, and are installing a real president in which we may again take pride!

[Smackdown2019]

5. I had my flag down during trumps

My American flag has been down since 2016, Biden flies on the flag pole now.

Planning of building another flag pole next to it, to higher and the American Flag on it, leaving the Biden on the other.

It is sickening to see how American flags have trump head on it, or be half American and Rebel flag.

Each time I see such an insult, it's a good thing I dont carry a cigarette lighter.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

6. I'm still waiting until January 20th to flip my flag avatar

So long as the Madman holds the reigns of power, things still are not yet normal.

[backroadblast]

8. no reclaiming needed, trumpers never had old glory!

they do have quite a collection of anti patriotic flags though, the defiled stars and stripes with a blue stripe, the kidnapped gadsen flag, the stars and stripes with a fat orange face on it, the POS campaign 2020 flag, the confed. battle flag of Nova, and a stupid red hat.

in short, these guys are anti american morons that NEVER had the stars and stripes..that's our flag.

[Deb]

9. Military sacrifices and love of Country will not be denied. Flaunt it if you got it.

Dec 7th is Pearl Harbor Day.

So happy to hear folks are comfortable displaying it again, made my day.

[dware]

20. I have far more, IMHO right to fly the Stars and Stripes than these asswipes,

I served for 35 years, what the fuck did Pissolini do?
He stated that avoiding STD's was his Vietnam, while hundreds of thousands of us actually did serve in Vietnam.

Him and his cult ought to be ashamed of flying Old Glory.

[NurseJackie]

10. Not ready to do that. I won't even buy Splenda at Costco...

... because of their new American-flag logo emblazoned on every package. I'm sure they don't care a single iota. But it makes me feel better that I don't have to cringe every time I sweeten my coffee or tea. The "store brand" of yellow-packet sweetener is just fine.

I've never been a flag-worshiper anyway. I don't fully understand it. And don't even get me started on the Pledge-of-Allegiance.

[Mr.Bill]

23. I feel pretty much the same way.

I mean, I don't exactly run around burning flags or anything like that, I just don't understand how people get so wound up about a flag or a 244 year old song. It's been really hard on my wife the last four years because she shares a birthday with Trump. June 14th, flag day. It will be nice for her to fly it this year. We haven't for the last four years. I will fly it on innauguration day.

[DeminPennswoods]

11. Did the same thing

I've usually only putting my flag out on Memorial Day and 4th of July, but as soon as Biden won, I put mine out. A friend did, too.

[concretebluetwo]

12. my circle on FB

My circle on FB started doing this a few days ago. Post a pic of the flag and "Taking this back" or "I'll take that, thank you."'
On edit: I strongly encourage doing this everywhere.

[calimary]

13. Yep. It's MY flag, TOO.

[MiniMe]

14. My flag has been down since 1/20/17. It is time for my flag to go back up

It will go up on 1/20/21.

[MontanaMama]

15. Glad to see this.

I’ve never been much of a flag waver but seemed like the MAGAts hijacked the American flag 4 years ago. When Biden won, our little blue street erupted in American flags...it was beautiful.

[Johnny2X2X]

16. Good to see this

I was a boy scout, I was taught the flag code and how to properly display and store the American Flag. Seeing it made into pins, T-shirts, underwear, and otherwise desecrated has always bothered me. Not because I think that protest of the flag by destroying it is wrong at all, but because these clowns claim to respect the flag while not knowing how to treat it with respect.

If you leave your American Flag flying at night, you need to keep it illuminated, that's standard flag code, if you don't have lights pointing at it, take it down and properly store it every night.

Now Trump and Trumpism has taken it to another level, his cult members fly the Trump flag, they actually hate what the American Flag stands for even though they still fly it. Flying a Trump flag means you hate your country, simple as that.

[Mr.Bill]

24. I had the same experience as a Boy Scout,

and I feel the same way as you do. It also pisses me off a bit when I see modifications of the flag, like the black and white ones with the blue stripe. It's okay for any cause to have a flag, just don't make it an abomination of the US flag. Most of the wingnuts would lose their fucking minds if the gay pride flag was an American flag with multi colored stripes.

[Bluesaph]

17. Same thing happened to me!

Day after the election I bought a flag. My husband promptly put it up! My sister said her flag hadn’t been up in four years and that morning, November 4th, it went back up. My daughter ordered hers on Amazon November 4th! It’s a thing!!

[roamer65]

18. If I put out a flag, it would be a Michigan state flag.

I am a Michigander before I am an American.

[maxsolomon]

22. when I've hung a flag, my neighbors got asked if i was a Republican

it's that kind of neighborhood - loathe to be ostentatiously patriotic. that was in the Obama era.

on the 4th this year, I flew it upside down. no thinking i'm GOP with that one.

when the election got called, i flew it right side up. my flag too.

[Mr.Bill]

25. I've actually considered

hanging mine upside down on the morning of the innauguration then flippimg it right after Biden is sworn in.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

26. For best results, don't fly it along with

the battle flag of those who seceded from the union and fought a bloody battle cuz they were mad they might not get to purchase any more human beings.