The American flag is a symbol of racism and hatred, a reminder that America is a force of evil in the world — that is, until a Democrat is elected to the presidency. Then it all changes.
This is the premise of a piece in Politico, which talks about how “anti-Trumpers are reclaiming the American flag.” We are told that a California screenwriter saw American flag bumper stickers as indicative of a “Trump nut job.” The leader of some criminal justice task force says she saw a picture of the American flag beside Nazi and Confederate flags.
Yes, the entire piece is that sad.
It’s not just a few anecdotes, either. This embarrassing outlook is core to identifying with the Democratic Party. Democrats historically have a lower amount of pride in the United States, and when a Republican is in office, that number craters. Gallup found in 2019 that Democrats’ “extreme pride” in the country was 22%, the lowest they had measured in 19 years. In contrast, Republicans under Barack Obama’s presidency never fell below 68%.
For Republicans, pride in being an American is rooted in the best parts of the country: liberty, justice, the truth that no matter your background, you can commit to upholding the U.S. Constitution and chasing the American dream. For Democrats, the country is only as good as the party identification of whatever corrupt politician occupies the White House.
It’s not Donald Trump’s embrace of the American flag that is to blame for the polarization of our most prominent American symbol. It is Democrats, fair-weather fans who sprint away from the flag the moment a Republican is sworn in as president. The ardent defense of Colin Kaepernick, who explicitly stated he was protesting the American flag, showed that exact impulse.
The idea that the president should have an outsize influence on the country has invaded both parties, but it is central to the Democratic agenda of centralizing power in the bloated bureaucracy of the executive branch. That some Democrats think that only now they can display their American flags says more about them than it does about America.
So, welcome, to all those Democrats finally able to summon the pride in their country the rest of us have always had. Perhaps now, with Biden’s win, you can see why the oppressed in other places, such as the Hong Kong protesters, wave the American flag in the face of Chinese oppression, craving the same freedom that we exercised on Election Day.
