The other day I got a letter in the mail from a Christian non-profit organization that included a tiny American flag on a stick. I took it outside and planted it in a small flower patch in front of my house. The patch is no Iowa Jima, but I was proud of my little act of patriotism. No one commented on the flag except my wife, who seemed surprised that I displayed it.
In my neck of the woods here in central Pennsylvania, no one would think twice about flying an American flag. The fact that I live in Trump country may have something to do with that. Which leads me to a recent column by sportswriter and Washington Post columnist Rick Reilly. He asks: “since when does Donald Trump own the American flag?”
Here is a taste:
I’m not easily flabbergasted, but the other day my flabber got good and gasted. I was riding my beach bike, the one with the 2-by-3-foot American flag flying off the back. I fly it because I … (a) love my country and (b) love my spine, and the flapping flag means fewer cars flatten me.
So I’m pedaling along the street and the Stars and Stripes are whipping behind me, and I hear a honk. That’s when a guy on the passenger side of a white 4×4 Ram truck leans out and yells, “Yeah! Go Trump!”
Go Trump? Me? He can’t be yelling that at me. I look around for somebody in a MAGA hat or a T-shirt with Trump’s mug shot, but there’s nobody. And that’s when it hits me.
This guy thinks I’m a Trumper.
Then, a week later, it happens again, only in reverse. I’m riding when a woman leans out of her green Subaru and hollers, “F— Trump!” and flips me off. She’d seen the flag and figured the same thing as the guy in the truck.
This lady thinks I’m a Trumper.
Which brings me to a question for Friday — Flag Day: When did the American flag become another Trump property?
And if the former president doesn’t quite own it, he has definitely co-opted it. Nowadays, if you see a jacked-high pickup with four American flags, you either honk proudly or move three lanes away. There’s a house on my block with a giant Trump flag hanging from the roof. Do you ever see a Biden flag? Me neither, not once. Online, you can find dozens of American flags for sale with Donald Trump’s name or face on them. Good luck finding one with Biden’s.
Presidential candidates have always been glad to wrap themselves in the flag, of course. But with Trump, it has never looked more like a Hollywood prop. Trump doesn’t care about the flag any more than he cares about being a Republican. What he cares about is how he looks holding it.
Read the rest here.
By the way, I also have a Gadsden Flag hanging in my home office. It is hanging in a little reading nook alongside a Messiah College blanket and pictures of Mets legend Ed Kranepool and Pope John Paul II. Here it is:
