11/29/20
Across the country, in their cautious euphoria after the election, foes of Trump have been embracing the flag in similar ways: unfurling it in front of their homes, waving it in the streets, or simply looking at it differently. The day Biden gave his victory speech, Nancy La Vigne, executive director of the Council on Criminal Justice’s Task Force on Policing, took out the flag she always flies on holidays and hung it outside her home in liberal Bethesda, Maryland. La Vigne meant the act as “an expression of pride in how the system of democracy actually works.” But as the hours went by and she noticed more and more flags around her neighborhood, she realized she was seeing something broader: A spontaneous reclaiming of a symbol that, in the Trump years, had come to represent only one side. Trump, with his talent for political theater and his penchant for stoking deep partisan rifts, has managed to take the divide further than ever. His supporters brandished the flag alongside Trump slogans on car bumpers and in Twitter and TikTok handles. Members of the far-right Proud Boys staged antagonistic rallies where they’d wave American flags as a statement of division. Trump acted out his own embrace of the flag in a way that was both knowing and grotesque. When he finished his speech at the 2020 CPAC convention last February, Trump famously strutted up to a flag onstage, hugged it, kissed it, and mouthed, “I love you, baby.”
Mary Murray, for one, isn’t ready to put her flag up yet. Murray took her own flag down a year into the Trump administration, after she saw news stories about migrant children separated from their parents on the southern border. A year or so ago, when Trump did something new to agitate her, she put the flag back up for a couple of months—but flew it upside down. Now, as she watches the post-election news—Trump’s ongoing legal battles and transition intransigence—Murray’s anger hasn’t faded. “I think there’s always going to be Donald Trumpism out there,” she says. “I’m praying that they’ll grow tired and weary and not continue this crap. He is poison, and he has poisoned the American flag.” As for her own flag, she’s waiting for the nation’s fiercest partisan to depart. “I’m not going to put it back up,” she says, “until that leech is out of office, or in jail.”
www.politico.com
