Flags (fwd)

 - flags everwhere
 - the chemistry of flag dyes
 - haikus on flags

---------- Forwarded message ----------
To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
From: Louis Proyect
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2004 10:57:35 -0500
Subject: [Marxism] American flags

Last night as I watched coverage of the Bipartisan Commission on
terrorism chaired by Bob Kerrey, the war criminal ex-Senator who
currently runs the New School University with an iron fist, I was bowled
over by the garish, rhinestone-studded American flag on Madeleine
Albright's jacket. This was not a postage-stamp sized pin, but something
about the size of a bar of soap.

Meanwhile, John Kerry cannot be spotted without the obligatory flag on
his lapel. After September 11, liberal newsman Dan Rather began wearing
an American flag pin in his lapel. So does sportscaster Werner Wolf.

The flag is ubiquitous in NYC storefront windows in my neighborhood. The
Chinese restaurant, the CVS pharmacy, the Russian barber shop, where I
get my buzzcuts, all have them.

People in my building wear them, either on their lapel or as a pin on a
pocketbook. There is an American flag on the doorman's desk as there is
at nearly all the security guard stations at Columbia University.

All of these flags are sported for one and one reason only--to tell the
onlooker that they support the war against terrorism and that they
support the president.

The use of the flag to intimidate dissent began with Richard Nixon who
wore the pin himself, as did all of his top aides. Ever since then,
there have been repeated attempts to use the flag as an ideological
weapon.

On September 25, 1988 The Boston Globe reported on how the first George
Bush waved the flag against his opponent from Massachusetts Governor
Michael Dukakis, a contest whose themes will likely be played out this
year between his son and John Kerry:

 >>There are numerous parallels between the Bush and Nixon presidential
campaigns, as well as Nixon and Agnew's "law and order" assault on
Democratic congressional candidates in 1970.

Joe McGinniss, the author of "The Selling of the President," an account
of Nixon's media campaign in 1968, recalled that "the flag was a
consistent motif" in Nixon commercials that year. Bush's carefully
staged events, which protect him from reporters' questions, are also
similar to Republican activities in 1968, when Nixon's handlers shielded
him from the press, McGinniss said.

Republican candidates proudly wore American flag lapel pins like war
decorations that year.

After Agnew was criticized for his approach, he worked a new line into
his speeches. He said he did not question anyone's "patriotism," only
the "judgment of the radical liberals."

Bush uses the same language this year. When he assails Dukakis on the
Pledge of Allegiance, Bush adds, "I don't question his patriotism, I
question his judgment."<<

So Kerry's campaign, in seeking to avoid Dukakis's mistake, is playing
up both the flag and his patriotism, as demonstrated by his military
record. Whatever value this has in electing Kerry is secondary to the
effect it has in reinforcing the "patriotic" mood that has gripped the
nation.

After September 11th, the insufferable Todd Gitlin put a positive spin
on the proliferation of American flags:

 >>The attack stirs, in other words, patriotism - love of one's people
and desire to keep them from being hurt anymore. And then, too, the
wound is inverted, transformed into a badge of honor. It is translated
into protestation ("we didn't deserve this"), and pride ("they can't do
this to us"). Pride can go toward the quest for justice, the rage for
punishment, the pleasures of smugness. The dangers are obvious. But it
should not be hard to understand that the American flag sprouted first,
for many of us, as a badge of belonging, not a call to shed innocent
blood.<<

full: http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-2-47-105.jsp

I would challenge this interpretation on two grounds. First, we do not
need a "badge of belonging". The iconography of the flag is not meant to
draw people together. It is to *exclude* people who are not members of
the homeland. The post-September 11th period has been marked by a
growing xenophobia directed against the French, the Germans and any
nation that refuses to toe the line on the US wars of expansion. Also,
it certainly is a call to shed innocent blood. 10,000 Iraqis have been
killed since the war began. Until the American people can begin to
understand their suffering in the same terms as the WTC tragedy, no
progress will be made toward peace and reconciliation. To begin that
process, it will be necessary to reduce the role of the flag to what it
once was, an official symbol that belongs on Post Offices and other
federal buildings.

-- 

The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Chris Brady
To: marxism
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2004 11:51:00 -0800
Subject: [Marxism] Flags

"...at least here in the Bay Area, I see FAR fewer flags (actual and
decal) on cars than I did a year ago. Don't know if that's a nationwide
trend."

It may be because the stripes have all bleached out of them.  When I was
in art school we did exercises with paint, dye and ink samples, and
pigment studies.  We found that some reds are notoriously "fugitive"
--from the Latin "to fly" as in TEMPUS FUGIT (Time Flies), and related
to "refugee".  These colours DO run, counter to the famous
bumperschticker brag.  They lose intensity when exposed to the bright
light of day, i.e., The Sun, that is to UltraViolent Rays [insert eerie
Sci-Fi Theremin music here].  From their crimson hues of blood, they
dwindle into orangey madders, then faint yellow, to finally disappear.

I lived in a town in September 2001 where the local newspaper put out a
special edition addition: a full, double-wide center sheet spread of the
American Flag.  Patriotic folks taped that page to their windows at
home, at work, in classrooms, and in cars.  I think it had a slogan
underneath, "One Nation Indivisible."  Whenever I saw it I asked myself
why it made me think "One Empire Invisible." In those days I felt
inundated with The Flag.  One neighbour had flags on her car antenna, on
her car windows fore, aft and sideways, on her dress in sequins, and in
front of her house.  I dreamed that certain folks would not be
half-happy until everything everywhere was covered in the Battle Flag of
the Republic. Anyways, by the New Year most of these newsprint flags had
begun to yellow, the reds faded into ochre, and people took them down.

Other exsamples come to mind, apart from Old Glory.  The flag of Canada
as we know it now was introduced in the 1960s, if my memory serves.
When I went to Elementary School in Toronto, the janitor hoisted aloft
the Union Jack in front each a.m.  I do recall the years when the
official national flag changed from the Canadian Red Ensign to the
now-familiar red Maple Leaf avec two bars.  I guess some political
connection got the contract for the new and improved banner of
Canuckness, because the material wasn't dyed with the same colour as the
Ensign or the Jack.  Within a year, Maple Leaf flags from coast to coast
had turned to a shade of rust, much to the chagrin of Canadian
officials, and to the glee of typically sarcastic hockey fans.  To this
day, I still don't see ordinary Canadians overwhelmed with the same
exaggerated emotional attachment to their national flag as I have
witnessed in Americans over the past quarter-century.  All that passion
over a square of coloured cloth!  Don't give that BS about "what it
represents."  What about real things?  I find their hyper-patriotism
kind of scary, irrational.

My favourite story about fugitive reds comes from my time in Chile.  I
lived there for the exact time Pinochet enjoyed the hospitality of the
British Crown.  He left Chile = I arrived.  I departed = he returned.
Very convenient.  I would not like to have bumped into him, say, while
grocery shopping in the supermercado in San Antonio, or at the Feria de
Libros in the old Santiago train station.  Anyways, that was also the
time of the big election contest between the right-wing,
Pinochet-favourite Joaquin Lavín and the left-center, putative
"socialist" Ricardo Lagos.  There were other participants, notably
Gladys Marín of the Partido Comunista de Chile, but the real tussle was
between Lavín and Lagos.  Lavín was a rich guy and the mayor of the
wealthiest borough of Santiago.  Big money and Pinochetista
reactionaries supported him.  They spent a fortune on blue and yellow
signs, posters, stickers, painted-up cars and vans, and flashy nylon
jackets.  Lagos tried to come off as the sober, elder statesman.  He had
posters put up, with his slogan "Crecer con Igualdad"  --Growth with
Equality.  They were printed in the red-white-and-blue of the Chilean
flag-which looks very much like the flag of the Lone Star State.  The
word "Crecer" was in blue, and "con Igualdad" was in red.  The election
was a squeaker.  Lagos barely got in.  The sun is strong in Chile.  A
month after the election, after things had settled down, you could still
see the election posters pasted up on certain walls around town.  But
the sun had done its work.  The idealistic appeal to "Equality" had
been, shall we say, disappeared.  The last word was only "Growth".


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: DLVinvest
To: marxism
Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2004 01:40:31 EST
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Flags & Pledges

re: criminalizing iconoclastic symbol-defacing  and coercion of the "Pledge
of Allegiance" on children, I offer this modest double- haiku as an antidote to
the new-found patriotism of Todd Gitlin and in honor of the atheist guy who
argued the case to the Supreme Court:

If the flag don't stand
 for the right to burn the flag,
it stands for nothing

worth pledging an oath
of allegiance to, so you
 might as well burn it.

Douglas L. Vaughan, Jr.
Investigations
for Print, Film & Electronic Media
3140 W. 32nd Ave.
Denver CO 80211
303-455-9429

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