Old, Hungry Glory

EVENT

The following is from an email exchange between Elisabeth and myself.
We've both revised slightly.
Gemma also commented at the end, and with her permission, I include this as an extension of the original conversation.

By the way, read Andrew Heller's take on Army Spc. Jeremy Sivits' hometown welcome.

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Elisabeth writes:

Returning, I am shocked constantly by two things: the amount of space, which is understandable, and the amount of flags, which is not so easily understood.

There are flags everywhere. In parking lots. On street corners. In buildings' courtyards. At the beach there are flags every 20 yards on the walkway. Houses exhibit flags. Factories have flags. On the side of a shop building I just passed there was a huge sign with a painting of a flag, maybe 20 feet long:

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AMERICA

FIGHT BACK!

TAKE NO PRISONERS
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Am I misinterpreting or is that majorly bloodthirsty?

I cannot remember the last time or place in which I saw a British flag and I've been living there for years. When I was in Italy the only places I saw Italian flags were on graphic logos for dopey touristy pizza places. I did not see any flags when I visited
Germany. I have spoken with Germans who recoil at the thought of exhibiting flags. They explain that the very thought of patriotism to most Germans is unheard of. One German friend told me he would never be caught dead saying "I'm proud to be German." This is more than likely a result of hereditary guilt of some sort or another...
But Britain has little to feel collectively guilty about. (Well, there is much one could feel guilty about, but it's not famously bad stuff like the Holocaust).

What is it that makes Americans so patriotic?

It isn't that Brits or Germans are not happy to be British or German, or don't like their countries.

There isn't a single answer on this really, and I'll have to read more about it, I think, to gain any clearer thinking about the phenomenon.

I have to admit that I feel vaguely like a secret enemy of the nation, infiltrating this vast array of locked arms, set jaws, etc. I'm scared to say anything. I made a remark on how many flags there were at the beach to my sister's boyfriend, and when we returned to the car I noticed the American flag sticker on the window of his car. The car trip back home - 10 minutes - was just one lonesome discovery after another. Glumly looking out the window from the backseat, oh look, the fire hydrants are painted red white and blue.

This makes me glum because I feel like this amount of patriotism has got to be unhealthy. It must affect everything. It must make everyone's heads big. Mustn't it? Do you have any musings on this flag phenomenon?

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Connor responds:

I do, but they contradict each other.

On the one hand, I went to a White Sox game yesterday, I almost teared up a little during the singing of the anthem... 22,000 people, young, old, big, small, black, white, and brown, all singing one song... a song that, one would hope, stands for more than just a geographical space.

But then, that was the same sort of patriotism I felt when I was protesting the war in Iraq... thousands of us, young, old, big, small, black, white, and brown, all in one place for one purpose... with more in common than a geographical space.

Two defining moments of patriotism I identify with. And identify with unequivocally.



On the other hand, one thing that pisses me off consistently, day after day, morning after morning are the ginormous words printed on the side of Canal Street Storage.

DEC 7 1947 (Flag) America will NOT forget! (Flag) SEPT 11 2001.

Mind you this building is the size of a factory.

It pisses me off firstoff because regardless of the intent, after awhile, it begins to sound like an order: "We will remember because I have it written in twenty foot high letters that you have to see twice a day, five days a week.

It pisses me off secondly because there's no way to respond, unless of course you post an appropriately oppositional message across the tracks, get sancioned by the city of Chicago, barricaded in by the CPD and probably beaten by the 11th Ward Democrats. Agreement is assumed.

It pisses me off thirdly because the last people who need to be told this are the commuters on Chicago's Orange Line. We know. We remember. You don't have to remind us day after day after day. And besides, I think from individuals to nations, we're wonderful at remembering the wrongs done to us, and horrible at recognizing, much less remembering the wrongs we have doen to others.

Now I suspect this "mural" was probably painted by Canal Street Storage shortly after 9/11 with a patriotic spirit and good intentions. For all I know the designers and creators are reasonable and circumspect, and may despise our policies of late as much as I do.
Still, the mural has gradually apalled me with evething it implies and everything it suggests. As you observed, a "vast array of locked arms, set jaws."


I think patriotism, or hell, nationalism, is a big deal here right now.
Conservatives still level charges of being unpatriotic at dessenters, although their rhetoric has softened minutely since Iraq fell to shit.
Given the unpopularity of the U.S. abroad right now, Americans have had to either rally (to hide) behind the flag or take up a very compromising position on the other side.
And there's still 911 Residual.

But I do think American patriotism has long been a bigger deal than for many other nations, and I think a lot of that has to do with the locality of success and the distance of failure. We've been able to bask in our triumphs while not even acknowledging our huge and/or obvious failures. That's a luxury that equivalently powerful industrial nations with a long history (the U.K., France, Germany, Italy) do not have.
Eastern Europe or the developing world might be a different story, though I think patriotism is different there as well.

But I agree that excessive flag waving happens.

It is big headed...

and obnoxious...

and definitely unhealthy.

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Gemma comments

It's interesting to think about . . . I heard something on NPR about a year ago about Orwell's distinction between patriotism and nationalism. D'apres lui, patriotism is a positive thing--what you felt at the march, at the national anthem, what it used to feel when communities/neighborhoods just got together at the Fourth of July. It exists in itself, and is not associated with anything but itself, with these almost-arbirtrary people you happen to be connected to. And I felt that in NYC for the week and a half after September 11 that I was there, particularly in Tribeca: we were connected to each other by the force of this event, and that had, while not its own beauty per se, its own significance. Nationalism, on the other hand, is a process of comparison, a dick thing, a cold war, a butter battle, and that's what I think most flag-waving in America is right now. Patriotism is patrio, the fatherland--it's about familial associations. Nationalism is a matter of proving yourself to be something in order to show up someone else.

And I think those distinctions apply on many smaller scales. Remind me to have this conversation with you about the social life of ScavHunt.