Flag Waving

For 9/11 I saw this newsgroup post by Elizabeth Moon and thought I would duplicate it here.

"When I was a kid, we put up a flag on the front steps (it had a pipe
railing, very handy for tying small flagstaffs to) every 4th of July.
Down at the hardware store, two big flags on stout poles--way too heavy
for me to lift--were set up with the staff butts in holes in the
sidewalk, just like all the other merchants on Main Street, so the 4th
of July made the street bright with red, white, and blue. My hometown
wasn't as big on celebrating Memorial Day, though the cemeteries had
flags that day. The downtown flags also came out for Veteran's Day.
Our classroom had a flag in the corner and we recited the Pledge of
Allegiance. I know some people had a bad reaction to that, but I
didn't. One of the posters behind my bedroom door was a flag poster,
with the red stripes in something 'fuzzy' which was fun to run my
fingers over. The pledge was on the bottom of the poster.

"Viet Nam made the flag problematic, like a lot of other things. I felt
alienated from flag-burners *and* flag-wavers (too many flag-wavers were
cleverly avoiding actual danger while sending other peoples' kids into
battle...) Wearing a flag pin, or displaying the flag, made you the
target of unwanted propaganda from both sides. I did for awhile, when I
first got out of the service, wear a flag pin on days when the campus
radicals were likely to do something stupid, just to annoy them (they
didn't notice---on those days they were too het up about their plans),
but then the equally disgusting little twerps of the far right would
start oozing at me, and...I quit doing it.

"I had nothing agains the flag. I like our flag, on aesthetic as well as
political grounds. I get the lump on the throat thing when I see it
waving in the breeze; I get a twist in the gut and a red haze over the
eyes when I see it abused or badly displayed (there's some "patriotic"
group around here who, if I can ever locate them, will get an earful.
They put out little plastic flags on very short sticks--sticking them in
the ground along the roadside on certain days, so that they get blown
about by traffic, dirtied, even fall over. And of course they leave
them out at night, and show *no* real respect...grrrrrr.) I get an
equal twist in the gut and red haze when the armchair warriors wrap
themselves in the flag and pretend to be real heroes.

"But...despite years of conflicted feelings about it, and despite knowing
that some people think any display of the flag is fake patriotism, I
wanted to fly the flag today. I've been wanting to for some time. I
finally bought a little one (little bitty one) at an airport gift shop,
and stuck it in the bookcase over my desk. And yesterday the desire
grew too acute to ignore. I wanted to put up a flag or flags, and not
just here where we're on a dead end and no one would see them--out in
the field where it would be seen from the highway.

"We went over and found my mother's house flag and the little porch flag
(though not the ones I put up as a child, because those were 48 star
flags). I put up the little one on our front porch. Unless someone
drives up to our house, they won't see it, but so what. I know it's
there. I can see it. We took the big one out in the field. We were
going to use the post of one of the several signs which were up in the
field near the highway when we bought it (a Chamber of Commerce sign,
and a sign put up by the high school's FFA, and the bank's sign...) but
as we walked out we noticed that the ideal post was the corner post of
the construction company. It's farther from the road, but with a clear
line of sight (unlike the roadside signs, which are now blocked by some
trees on the roadside, and because of the curve the time-of-sight would
be momentary.) One of their employees was out in the equipment yard,
so we asked if it would be OK and he said sure. (We had agreed that the
likelihood of their saying no was somewhere below zero, but still it's
polite to ask.) So we put the flag up. And it's waving gently in the
breeze, its colors bright in the sun, and I don't give a flip what
anything thinks of the quality or not of my patriotism.

"I'm not a right-wing extremist and I'm not a left-wing extremist and
it's my flag and I'll fly it any time I damn well please. Make no
assumptions, except that I want to see that flag flying."

- Elizabeth Moon Sept. 11, 2002 10:31 A.M.

Even her quick posts are purty.