Letter to the Editor - The Millerton News - 7-20-23

Old Glory as backdrop?

The red, white and blue Fourth of July has had its 2023 happening — a plethora of buntings, banners, parades, paper plates, cups and napkins for traditional hot dogs and burgers.  The nation is mostly “off duty” for one of the grandest holidays of the year — one of the few still celebrated on its actual date — not moved conveniently to a close Monday. 

The Stars and Stripes, Old Glory, is resplendently front and center on the Fourth — the proudly hailed, dear symbol of the nation:  democracy, freedom, dignity. We can see our flag gallantly streaming at graduations, sporting events, school and government buildings, by troops in parade and in battle. Thirteen alternating red and white stripes — one for each of the original states with a blue field of 5 pointed stars reflecting the number of current states — a new state getting its star added to that blue field of unity on July 4th the year they receive statehood. Commissioned in 1775 to accompany the Declaration of Independence and Washington’s troops into battle, the flag has had few design revisions mainly to accommodate growth - an expanded land of the free. 

Of late, however, the broad stripes and bright stars of the nation’s revered flag has become a distractive backdrop for candidates whose rhetoric belies this symbol of freedom.  Candidates, standing in front of a mob of flags, recount political and personal falsehoods, deliver threats to U.S. agents, judiciary, election workers, and trash regard for the peoples of the U.S. — the diversity of race, religion, opinion, self-choice. 

The nation founded on separation of state and religion, built on collaborative efforts in times of peace and war, and forthrightly seeking liberty with the pursuit of happiness for all is under siege by politicians dressing their podiums with the flag — a bevy of flags — as false conveyance of their trustworthiness, stability and patriotism. 

The White House was abused in 2020 when it was commandeered as campaign headquarters for the Republican presidential candidate with hoopla, raucous events, large inside and outside promotional banners and staged televised coverage. The Capitol was defiled on January 6, 2021, by marauders, seditionists, a violent mob staging a coup seeking to harm members of Congress, hang the VP, disrupt an election. Recently banned from being flown in companionship with the failed Confederate flag at state and local government buildings, official events, Stars and Stripes is now purloined to buffer extremes, to look democratic, to mock tradition by want-to-be’s. We have a First Amendment — freedom of expression. We have a vote, power of the people.

“Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you got til its gone? They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”   

— Joni Mitchell

Kathy Herald-Marlowe

Sharon