The Tweeter in Chief has proclaimed that he thinks burning an American flag should have consequences.
“Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag - if they do, there must be consequences - perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!”
Never mind that the Supreme Court has ruled on this.
A 1989 Supreme Court decision, Texas v. Johnson, said burning the flag is a protest protected by the First Amendment. Among those voting with the court majority in that case was the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February, and whom Trump has repeatedly cited as a model for the kind of justice he would appoint to the nation's highest court….
Tempting as it might be to challenge Trump with some flag burning,
Trump is trying to distract everyone away from the awful things going on in plain sight, like his ethical problems, his conflicts of interest, the swamp dwellers he’s appointing to high office, destroying Medicare/Obamacare, his voting loss to Hillary Clinton, the role of his family… You name it. He’d love nothing more than for people to burn flags so that would become the headlines and the soundbites eating up news coverage. Time spent responding to his tweets is time not spent dealing with substance. The media is too easily distracted as it is.
Right now, the GOP Strong Leader Cult is busy reinforcing the meme that they’re going to make America great again — and if you’re not with them, you’re going to be screwed. They’d like nothing more than images painting us as America-hating liberals, while they wrap themselves in the flag. (Mike Pence will be carrying the cross.)
We should not shy away from embracing the Stars and Stripes. It’s our flag too after all, and damned if we should let them make it theirs exclusively. If we’re going to work on our brand, let’s make sure we’re flying our flags high.
If things proceed as seems inevitable, there will be crowds and demonstrations over the next four years. Heavily armed police confronting orderly crowds waving the flag is not an image that will sit well with image-conscious authority or audiences watching at home. It’s a small thing, but those matter, just like those red baseball caps. We already have seen that the right wing media will seize on anything that looks bad (or they can make look bad) and exaggerate it into criminal violence. We should try to not make it easy for them.
Would it make sense to start wearing American flag pins as a subtle protest? Consider it a statement that America is something bigger than any one man or any one political party. Trumpers can hardly object to it after all, and if they start wearing them as a counter protest, all the better. We can walk among them unsuspected. Some kind of visible patriotic symbol might be useful. Ideas?
There’s real danger that Democrats are going to be delegitimized out of existence if the Republicans have their way. They’re going to be on the offensive (as well as being offensive) in the coming months. Sean Hannity is still determined to see Hillary Clinton, convicted, thrown in jail — and ultimate insult — pardoned by Trump IF she grovels enough. There’s nothing too petty for them to do. Those red baseball caps are the new brown shirts. They aren’t happy just to win — they need to humiliate us as well.
This is the triumph they’ve been working towards for years, but they still need an enemy they can blame everything on. A reminder that we’re here, we’re American too and we’re not going away would seem in order.
If anyone really wants to have a flag burning, here’s the right way to do it. Announce it ahead of time, pick a suitable location, and burn flags — but not just any flags. Old, tattered, worn out flags. Burning is the proper way to dispose of them so they can’t be used for a lesser purpose. Make a ceremony of it. A headline “Protesters gather to burn American flags” will get some attention.
This would be a way to work against expectations. You could make a point that “If you feel your flag has been stained, degraded, or otherwise discredited, here’s what you can do as a first step towards replacing it.” (A lot of people might feel that way about the flag in the coming months.) You might combine it with other activities, such as registering people to vote, getting petition signatures, organizing a mass mailing of postcards to an elected official, a picnic or other community recruiting event for your local political organization…
A patriotic show is pretty rich, coming from a billionaire who boasts of not paying taxes. (Show is the operative word here.) Here’s an exercise for anyone who can stomach going to the inauguration. Let’s get a count of how many Confederate battle flags turn up in the crowd on the mall. You know they’ll be there, if only to taunt Obama and the rest of us. Here’s a little Rorschach Test: think this would get Trump supporter’s knickers in a twist?