I've never quite gotten the flag, and growing up, I thought that was part of the point. Didn't everyone else sit through history class and learn how country after country had followed jingoistic rhetoric, crass manipulative symbolism and other tricks of the trade to go get slaughtered? I once read the final chapter to "Johnny Got His Gun" on air - at one point, that was required reading, no?

Civil War - they took picnic baskets out to Virginia to watch the fighting and came back in panic and horror. World War I - it'll be over in a few months, boys will be proud - except for the several million bodies left in trenches over the next 3 years. Gulf War 2 - they'll greet us with flowers, it'll pay for itself, over in a few months (except our 2nd longest official war, side by side with Afghanistan). And the other sides in all these conflicts said much the same thing.

The flag doesn't honor the troops so much as invests us in the system - only partly about military, but fealty to the local feudal lord and his waving standard was only partly about defending the castle in times of attack, and much about observing his rights to part of the crops, ownership of the land, occasionally taking up the "First Night" option with fresh brides, and so on.

Sure there are times in military and other settings where the flag will bring lumps to my throat - raising it at Iwo Jima, an occasional outstanding performance at the Olympics (too many by the US to feel special), flag on the moon.

But the flag serves us, not the other way around. It's an ornament that fits the occasion, a garnish, a candle on a birthday cake.

A tattered up Union Jack sewn into clothes also became an emblem of the punk movement, the Sex Pistols, Vivienne Westwood, concerts at Wembley... and The Queen! (we mean it, man)

Similarly, our 4th of July is just another place to wave the flag - baseball, hot dogs, souped up cars, the Thanksgiving Parade...

The flag does not belong to the military. Appreciative as I may be of American soldiers (moreso in our non-frivolous war efforts, sympathetic in our wasteful exploits), we are not an extension of the military by being an American civilian. If I wave a flag or put it on a bumper or book or jacket, it's my right to decide what the flag means in my context - I have not signed on to a single "support the troops" or "America right or wrong" definition, however much the Sarah Palin or Spiro Agnew words still ripple through our subconscious.

America and its flag are symbols of both great achievements and great atrocities. I can appreciate George C. Marshall and the creative inventions of immigrant Nikola Tesla and the self-made rags-to-riches media empire of Oprah Winfrey and the harsh realities & perceived necessities of Oppenheimer's bomb, at the same time as I curse Andrew Jackson and the persecutions of McCarthy and the post-9/11 Bush-led meltdown of ethics and self-respect and common sense. And the much larger bubble in-between, the enterprising but ethically challenged Ray Kroch who created the McDonalds empire on a broken contract, or Westinghouse who used Tesla's generosity and then abandoned him, or Steve Jobs who borrowed heavily from others while playing hardball with anyone he perceived as a threat, but still building the richest company in the world with a great deal of customer devotion for quality (and a crass devotion to avoiding paying taxes).

There's the flag in our continued domination of Latin America, and the flag in our support (sometimes tenuous) of the UN, and there's the historical contradiction of our flag that once sought to dominate Mexico, stealing 1/3 of its territory, the immigrant-welcoming symbolism of the Statue of Liberty (gifted by the Freedom Fries-loving French) and our current build-a-wall/fence/wider river stance that now looks to set boundaries on what was once revered in the cowboy's open range with room to grow and opportunity for all - Don't Fence Me In.

I also see in this flag an ideal of the crusaders - the Martin Luther King who upheld the idea of an all-serving ethic despite attempts to co-opt the flag for whites-only, the Jonas Salks and many like him who worked countless years trying to come up with cures or looking after the disabled and diseased and dying to provide comfort, or union workers who fought to end sweatshops and child labor and bring a working wage to common folk despite the many documented cases of corruption within their midst, JFK's Peace Corps which codified an effort and sentiment to help others outside our borders.

The flag belongs as much to the hippie protester trying to stop the Vietnam War as it does to the soldiers shipped off their willingly or unwillingly.

If there's an actual symbolism in the US flag, it's in the contrast between red and white stripes with the occasional bright points of stars - the stripes alternating the bloody interventions that have taken up 9/10th of our history, alternated with our peaceful efforts and attempts to create a humanitarian ethic. They don't blend in the flag - it's a violent mood swing from one to the other, 12 times a pivot in an imperfect scale that we can't get right, that never resolves.

We've had long drawn out fights here about the Confederate flag for which I see both (or more?) sides. Despite its mostly non-malicious fashion and cultural usage especially in the 70's, still, in the end, people in 2016 are hurt by its larger historical and current use in more hateful and abusive ways, and our behavior & understanding adapt in the same way as we kiss goodbye to the days of speeding down the highway in the back of pickups and riding without seat belts - all good fun until someone puts an eye out or ends up in the morgue.

So here we have another American dispute about the flag, how not standing for a jingoist 1812 anthem is worse than sending soldiers out to get maimed and killed in a poorly planned adventure in the Midast, how "support the troops" as an ever-present obligation that's more important than supporting the common black citizen who year after fucking year is still suffering the same indignities, brutalities and lack of opportunity that plagued them ever since they were supposedly freed in 1865, that a sporting event is the place to exhibit national pride along with corporate subservience to the companies whose names emblazon the stadiums along with the military contractors who've brought weapons and drones intended for the Mideast into our local communities as paramilitary supplies for police who now can't separate policing from soldiering, with calamitous results.

We've been trying to tell the good story since Dickens wrote his Christmas Carol, and in movies like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Miracle on 34th Street - the triumph of good will over crass business & militaristic efforts. But somehow we never take it to heart - we still like our in-your-face, smashball, Saving Private Ryan over Albert Schweitzer. Once long ago, baseball was the next horizon, with Jackie Robinson extending post-WWII integration of soldiers into our team sports, and Curt Flood breaking the exploitive indebted-for-life system that plagued both sports and the movie industry. But now we're back to Calvin Coolidge's ideal - "the business of America is business" - don't make waves, maintain the corporate team's bottom line.

Kate Upton is a symbol of jiggly wholesome girl-next-door attraction who has reaped great benefits from just being cute and photogenic. Kid Rock is at times a great musician and a weird hybrid amalgam of Detroit Rock City-Southern rebelliousness tied to establishment conservative-branded "patriotism" and a stubborn tonedeaf ear and insulting attitude to those he deliberately affronts. Neither has much invested in the military side of things, nor in the travails of black folks in the street and prisons (though Kid's black drummer Stefanie Eulinberg is another tribute to his contradictory nature). 

But here we are, discussing kneeling vs. standing, as if kneeling itself isn't a contrast in itself - a sign of obeisance as well as of the current outrage, that of non-participation. But with all the bad boys of sports, the at-one-time rebellious long-haired Oakland A's, the dog-fighting Michael Vick, the steroids-taking Canseco, the often arrested and profligate boxers like Spinks & Tyson, fighting Ty Cobb/drunken Babe Ruth, et al.

Why do we particularly care, and why isn't doing what's important vs. that which is purely symbolic the thing on people's minds? All through the 60's, "hurt feelings" often took precedence over beaten bodies and beaten wills and still chained-up opportunity. We managed to make some progress as the rise of the black middle class testifies to, but still have huge recalcitrant problems as our incarceration rates and police brutality show (with bigger problems of everyday discrimination and non-acceptance that aren't so easy to demonstrate and fight against).

If a flag is a symbol and kneeling is a symbol, which one has priority, especially on the symbolic pseudo-militaristic turf of a sports stadium? While I don't take sports particularly serious, apparently lots of people do - and where else should one protest to change the minds and attitudes of millions? Why is it that a country built on the principle of rebellion and self-determination is so often antagonistic to any sign of rebelliousness and individuality? Where does our myth-making actually meet reality? It reminds me of a square-dance, where you don't quite meet your partner and resolve in embrace, but instead spin each other around without ever getting anywhere. Welcome to America's 21st Century do-se-do - and The Flag!