Unfurling Flags

In another life time, I stopped a young man in the hall of a school because he had a badge sewn on his backpack that was a depiction of a cross in a circle with a line through it.  Being a Catholic school I figured the young man was taking a stance against Christianity and stopped him to ask him about it.  He pulled out of that back pack an essay defending the symbol, taken from a band called Bad Religion.  He explained to me that he was not against "Christianity" but all religion.  I  admired his attempt at defending such a bad use of symbol but if you are going to protest all religion, you better find a symbol that encapsulates them all. 

This, of course, brings us to Britney Spears.

You may remember Ms. Spears performed at the MTV music awards in 2001 as a 19 year old in a loin cloth, with a yellow snake around her neck.  It may be possible that Ms. Spears did not know she was playing Eve, the temptress, the reason for our expulsion from the garden. We understood even if she did not. It is not an article of faith.  It's just that we, as a Western culture, have come to associate snakes with temptation.

Both our young man and Ms. Spears were run over by symbols.  One fails to see the meaning or significance of them and the other muddles meaning with an inexact use of them. Symbols are powerful things and when you play with them, you're playing with fire (see, I just did).  You don't get to change the meanings of symbols to suit your personal agenda or to sell more records. When it comes to symbols, you don't get to make up your own rules.

Now to our convoys.  

There is a small group of people using our flag as a symbol for their desire for freedom. Their definition of freedom does not match mine, or the majority for that matter but that is alright.  Reasonable people can disagree. The problem is the way they have used our symbol.  This is one of the things that has raised our ire, more ire than I think they counted on. They have used the flag as a cape, as car ornament and in some cases, as a towel to cover themselves as they get out of a hot tub. They've sewn it together with American flags, decorated it with swastikas, trying to warp it into a symbol of their movement. 

Ultimately they are using the flag as a cover to hide imprecise thinking.  The flag, coupled with a shout of "freedom" looks like thought and freedom of speech but (as Northrop Frye would say) it is nothing more than a bark of a dog. We want them to stop. Perhaps yell at them or  give them the finger but at the same time we don't want to dishonor the flag that they are dishonoring. If  we give the finger, are we giving it to veterans? To Terry Fox? To new citizens who have come to embrace it?  In that moment of struggle, that moment of hesitancy, they zoom by, perhaps feeling that they have our support.  

They do not. 

A flag, our flag, is a symbol for all of us.  We place our collective ideas about country in it and it is big enough to hold many and sometimes opposing ideas within it.  But it can't be used as a bath mat or car wrap.  When you do that, you are not making the political statement you think you are making. You are co-opting our symbol to defend an idea you cannot defend with reason.

The good news is that the majority of people know how symbols work and the power they hold. The better news is that a poorly constructed argument, a poorly thought out premise will disappear in a strong breeze, the same breeze that will unfurl a flag.