My wife and I are planning to burn Old Glory.
We're not radicals. We're not protesting anything, despite there being so much to protest about. Our style is not to protest. Our style is more along the lines of living our lives, quietly making decisions that are consistent with our beliefs and not so much getting high on the rush of a protest and the sense of solidarity that is manufactured by a random bunch of folks chanting slogans, screaming at counter-protestors, sniffing tear gas, and getting cracked in the face with a baton.
Nevertheless, we are going to torch the Stars and Stripes.
See, a little over five years ago, we moved into our house. One of the joys of buying an older house is all the mysterious junk left by the previous owners. Unlike friends of ours who were left a bench-top table saw, a nice set of barstools, and a complete patio grill area with an outdoor refrigerator and beautiful gas grill (which they do not appreciate and which they will not allow to be used for its foreordained purpose of charring hunks of animal flesh because they are vegetarians. Yes, life is not fair.), we were left a huge, termite-hollowed beam, a random collection of painfully cheap pots and pans, a small sieve that I use to sift various building materials, and a ratty, stained flag of the United States of America. I can't rightly say "American" flag in case some humorless pedant deliberately misconstrues and decides I'm referring to Canada's flag or Brazil's flag or Belize's flag. After all, "we're all Americans." I was actually called on this during my post-college backpacking trek through Europe. My rejoinder was predictably brusque.
So now we have a star-spangled banner that looks like it was used as a giant tea bag. The poor thing is just plain nasty. It's a shame because you can see that it once was a decent cotton flag.
My wife and I aren't exactly patriots, either by the older sense of the word or the post-Iraqi-War definition. We think the current president is essentially retarded and than his extended power base is a bunch of jingoistic goons who have trashed our country's image farther than I thought possible and who have greatly increased the probability that the blood of my son and daughter will soak into the earth of a faraway land.
Hell, I'm half New Zealander. I've got an official certificate of citizenship that is just crawling with Māori text.
Still, despite all this, I can't understand a lick of Māori, and we have a fairly healthy awareness of history and propriety. It just wouldn't feel right to dump the tired old flag into the bin with the construction debris, potato peelings, kitty litter, and poopy diapers.
That said, what the heck are you supposed to do with a nasty, old flag? We've had the thing floating around the garage for over five years. Every six to eight months, it surfaces and we tell ourselves that we need to do something about it.
If we were gung-ho Boy Scouts or members of the American Legion, we might've known offhand. But we're not. Instead, my wife and I have learned a lot in the last few days.
With a little bit of surfing around, I quickly dispelled a myth that has persisted in my brain since elementary school, a myth that I never really believed. Some freak once told me that if the flag touched the ground, it must be burned. It always sounded a bit impractical to me, but I was never motivated to verify anything. It turns out that the whole "touching the ground" thing falls under the "respecting the flag" guideline. Try not to drag your flag through the dirt. If you do happen to get some mud on it, you don't have to barbeque it, just toss it in the washing machine. Yes, it's officially OK to launder your flag.
Also, my wife received the notion from somewhere that you needed to dispose of your nasty flags on Flag Day. Actually, you can do the deed any time.
What do you need to do? Burn it, of course.
If you're uncomfortable with torching the symbol of so much history and sacrifice, you can hand over your tired flag to your local American Legion Post. Many posts accept dead flags throughout the year and then conduct a Disposal of Unserviceable Flag Ceremony on June 14, Flag Day. Thus my wife's notion.
If you decide to char your flag yourself, the Legion recommends that you do it in some out-of-the-way location, probably so you don't get the snot kicked out of you by some overly patriotic passerby.
I've always found the burning of U.S. flags by U.S. citizens a little ironic. By burning the flag, they are exercising some of the important rights that the flag symbolizes. I would hope that these folks are aware of the irony. The U.S. is far from perfect, but you can burn the flag or you can say something like "George W. Bush sucks donkey balls" without fear of governmental recrimination, at least so far. Try announcing the same thing about Kemal Attaturk in Istanbul. You might even get an extended stay in a Turkish prison.
One wonderful thing about the U.S. is that you can substitute something as sacred as the Stars and Stripes for toilet paper and get away with it. The folks who want laws passed against desecrating the flag are a little misguided. They remind me of social engineers who enact racial quotas while preaching equality or anti-gun pundits who use illegal handguns to shoot teenage trespassers or Christians who murder abortion providers. If you disagree with some long-haired hippy who is grinding the flag into the mud with their Birkenstocks, just grit your teeth and rest easy in the knowledge that you know better, that generations of people have sacrificed their lives to afford that pot-smoking, patchouli-stinking waste of carbon the privilege.
I expect that my wife and I will be conducting our own flag burning this weekend. With any luck, I'll still have eyebrows on Monday.
Pakeha