Desecrating the American Flag Doesn’t Make You More Patriotic
We can’t have a national conversation semaphore
At first glance, I thought my eyes were playing tricks, so I called to my dog, Pepper, and made my way down the block. Winter had arrived for real here on the Southern Delaware/Maryland border, and I pulled up the collar of my robe against the wind.
I’d just brought her out to pee when I noticed the flag. The wind pulled my neighbor’s American Flag tight, as if to give me a better look and save me a couple of steps on my trip. It was flying upside down.
I thought at it was a mistake, and half-chuckled, thinking some overenthusiastic adolescent demanded he be allowed to raise the flag and got it wrong in his haste.
In fact, four years ago I would have known it was a mistake and left a note (it was too late to knock). I only got to live in that world for a few seconds before it occurred to me that it wasn’t a mistake, but rather a statement.
A Google search confirmed a spate of inverted flags, and even a few tiffs between neighbors over them. There were clarifications by town or HOA officials letting people know that, while it was a dick move, it was not, in fact, illegal to fly the American Flag upside down.
