Flags, small America ones.
Posted on | October 26, 2008 |
I noticed the small sewn flag on the television screen. Even though not one person watches the television screens at Blazing Saddles, they play at every location all day. There may even be a sing on the DVD player reminding the manager of the Hotel location to not turn it off at night because some passerby might see it through the door.
In a moment of boredom, I paused on the screen. On the left side our hats that I despise is an American Flag, maybe the size of my thumb. Jeff may be a fascist for making me wear such a stupid hat, expecting me to act like a robot and think like a dog, but he is patriot enough to make every employee wear an American flag. So, all week I have looked up when I notice the shots where the flags are visible.
This evening reading American Vertigo by Bernand-Henri Lévy, I found this passage. It’s his first observation of America. The first chapter sets up the philosophical construct of the book, and in the second he begins writing on the road. He is retracing the path of Alex Tocqueville. Lévy is probing the American character and her geography. He wants to understand the people who live here and the processes that make up our nation. He starts in Rhode Island. His second paragraph is:
And then, precisely, the flags: a riot of American flags: at crossroads, on building fronts, on car hoods, on pay phones, on the furniture displayed in the windows along Thames Street, on the boats tied to the dock and on the moorings with no boats, on beach umbrellas, on parasols, on bicycle saddlebags––everywhere, in every form, flapping in the wind or on stickers, an epidemic of flags that has spread throughout the city.
I immediately thought of another writer who discussed flags. This time in a poem, Reinaldo Arenas wrote: Banderas, banderas, miles de banderas . . . in a poem about the Cuban revolutionaries taking control of Havana, the capital, in 1959. Then, from an Al Jazeera documentary, the image of the American soldier wrapping an American flag around the face of Saddam Hussein’s statue in central Baghdad. How that one symbol could represent all this countries ideals is beyond me.
As a recent observer of this country and her politics, it feels as though it is being wrenched in all different directions. I think this administration has soiled its soul. Her financial markets are crumbling and there are already homeless sleeping outside my window tonight. I live in an upscale part of San Francisco, one of the richest cities in the world.
What is it that binds us all underneath this banner? If it is the ideals of community governance and civility, we have lost our way. We cannot pretend to have a government of the people when we have no social justice. When poverty scars our cities and rich men are caught by the big arms of the US Treasury, we find that our government believes in socialism for the wealthy, but not the poor. Barak Obama says in his stump speeches that it should include the middle classes. I pray that he believes the poorest among us deserve the same.
My coworkers are from El Salvador, Brazil, Russia, Italy and different parts of the United States. Yet, we all wear the American flag. Many of their faces light up when I talk about the US and if they stay or return. Their smile conveys an astonishing enthusiasm for my country. I want to yearn for its greatness, and not bemoan its crimes and failures.
Obama captures the narrative of American Progress and the civility of its reason for existence. His scholarly and mild-tone approach may be just what we need to heal as a nation. I fear the extremities of nation-building, the totalitarianism of the right and the barbarism of excess that, to use Lévy, our “childlike arch-demagogue” president engenders to our embarassment.
But, the reality is we have these borders across great distances. We have a common code which conducts us. It is up to us to ensure our code does not require or allow for the use of brutality, murder, mega-prisons and war for its effective enforcement. If the American experiment resumes after the last eight years (if not longer) of slipping behind the rest of the world, we may figure out some of the answers to the problems threatening us.
Our economy is grinding itself bloody and it needs to stop killing the environment in any case. Now is the most opportune moment to retool it to be green.
Our foreign policy of counter-insurgency, counter-guerrilla, covert CIA, control the world has been stripped bare and now stands naked to the world in Iraq. Its moral perversity is on display. Many Americans feel ashamed. Others, especially those profiting, feel the bitterness of not “winning.” Now is a perfect time to move past the cold-war mentality, past the NATO-military mentality. When our pocketbooks are light, we may begin to think about saving some of the money for ourselves that we gave to rend Iraq.
I wouldn’t mind wearing an American Flag if it meant I did not feel watched and threatened by my government. If I did not suspect the suffering of millions in Iraq. If I did not comprehend the size of the military budget. If my tax dollar went to a collective pot that kept the shivering man off the doorstep two doors down.
Comments
Leave a Reply