Post 176 - September 3, 2020

Day 176…

These days, when I see the American flag flying somewhere, I think… uh oh.

The red white and blue arrangement of stars and stripes has long been a symbol of freedom and hope from its initial design all the way down through the years to the one that we have now. In three short years, however, this Administration has managed to imbue it with a fascist sense of nationalism that is starting to make me recoil from it.

In 1776, at the request of General George Washington, Betsy Ross sewed the first flag. Thirteen alternating red and white stripes along with a rectangular field of blue in the upper left-hand corner containing a circle of thirteen stars.

That’s the story. There is no definitive proof that it is what actually happened although there doesn’t seem to be any particular reason to discount it, either.

During her lifetime, nobody was aware of her story. It wasn’t until 1870, nearly a hundred years later that her Grandson William Canby told the story to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

According to Canby, Ms. Ross often told the story of General Washington, who, along with Robert Morris who was a financier of the Revolutionary War and Colonel George Ross, a relative of hers, paid her a visit and showed her a sketch of what they were looking for.

She agreed to make it for them. She claimed it was her idea to arrange the stars in a circle and to make them five-pointed rather than six-pointed.

Her grandson’s story, which was supported by her daughter, niece and granddaughter, appeared in Harper’s New Monthly magazine in 1873 and thereafter passed into accepted national lore.

There is a receipt of monies paid to her in 1777 by the Pennsylvania State Navy Board for making “ships colors” so we know that she made flags. She reportedly worshiped at the same church as General Washington, so it is likely that they were acquainted. There is a story that she had already sewn some buttons for him.

According to legend, Washington felt that the red represented the British, the white represented our secession and the stars represented the stars in the sky. In 1782, Congress chose the same colors for the Great Seal of the United States for the following reasons: red for valor and hardiness, white for purity and innocence and blue for perseverance and justice.

No flag exists that is known to be the first one that she created. The rented house in which she supposedly lived in Philadelphia is now a Historic site, but it isn’t even really completely clear which house it was that she actually lived in.

In 1831, a shipmaster from Salem, Massachusetts named William Driver was about to set sail when friends presented him with a flag to fly on his ship’s mast. As the by now 24-starred flag unfurled he called it, “Old Glory!” giving it the nickname that we still use today. He kept the flag throughout the Civil War and it ultimately ended up flying over the Capitol in Tennessee.

Francis Scott Key wrote a poem called Defense of Fort M’Henry inspired by a large flag flying over the fort in 1814 during the war of 1812. From that, in 1931, came what we now know as our country’s anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner.

Francis Scott Key (I’ve clearly gone down a research rabbit hole here) was, at the time, one of the richest men in America. He was born in 1779 to a very wealthy slave-owning family in Maryland. He spent much of his life doing everything he could to shore up the institution of slavery. He referred to it as our “peculiar institution”. He helped to shape the US Supreme Court which, in his day, was very strongly pro-slavery.

When he was in his 50’s, he became an advisor to President Andrew Jackson, himself also a rabidly pro-slavery man. Jackson appointed Key the US District Attorney for Washington D.C. Under him, abolitionists were persecuted to the fullest extent of the law and any infraction against the racial and slavery laws was harshly punished.

Francis Scott Key convinced President Jackson to name Roger Taney to his cabinet. Taney then became Chief Justice of the United States.

Roger Taney is known to history as being the author of the 1857 Dredd Scott Supreme Court decision. The decision stated that all Black people, whether slaves or no, would never be entitled to any of the rights enjoyed by White people. That decision is considered to be one of the catalysts for the Civil War.

Taney, incidentally, was Francis Scott Key’s brother-in-law.

Under President Jackson, racially motivated mob violence erupted in many places. Andrew Jackson’s response was not dissimilar to our current President’s - he sent in troops. In many ways, the two men are cut from the same bolt of cloth.

In 1835, what is called the Snow Riot erupted in the nation’s capital. It was instigated by White Navy Yard workers who resented Black men taking what they considered to be their jobs.

The event that triggered the riot and lynchings was when a drunk slave named Arthur Bowen entered his mistress’s bedroom with an axe. That was the extent of it - nothing further happened. Bowen was taken into custody and put on trial by Francis Scott Key. Bowen was found innocent and released. The embarrassment from losing the case effectively ended Key’s political career but it inflamed the White working men.

There is a third verse to the Star-Spangled Banner that Key wrote that we don’t sing any more.

No refuge could save the hireling & slave/

From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave:/

And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave/

O’er the land of the free & the home of the brave.

While we don’t sing it anymore, it still echoes through whatever hall the anthem is sung in.

Back in March and early April, before the stock market opened back up, a giant flag covered the front of the New York Stock Exchange. At the time it seemed an emblem of hope. When the market eventually reopened, the flag came down.

Yesterday, I walked onto Wall Street and saw that the flag was back up. My stomach dropped.

It wasn’t something that I thought about, it was just my immediate visceral response to seeing it. Instead of it seeming like a symbol of hope, it now seems somewhat like a rallying cry in support of fascistic nationalism. I hate that that is the feeling it inspired in me.

The Fearless Girl statue sands defiantly across the street, hands on hips, facing the enormous flag and completely dwarfed by it. Nonetheless, she doesn’t give an inch. THAT made me feel good.

Apparently, according to a former politician Chuck Callesto, Junior Republican Senator, Rand Paul from Kentucky has called for the subpoena of all records from the Anifa organization.

There is no such organization.

Antifa stands for ANTI-FASCIST. It isn’t organized in any way. It is a movement. It has no headquarters. It has no leaders. It has no printed stationary.

Every single American who fought in World War II was Antifa. They fought against fascists just like the current people in the movement.

The fascists during World War II were the Nazis. The leader of the Antifa movement at the time was General Dwight David Eisenhower. Antifa headquarters was the Pentagon in Washington D.C.

That this current GOP led Administration is demonizing the fight against fascism tells you everything that you need to know about what their aims are. Their co-opting of the flag to use in the same way that Adolph Hitler and his National Socialist German Worker’s Party used the swastika to incite intense nationalism and paranoia is criminal.

Our country is 244 years old. The Star-Spangled Banner has only been our national anthem for about 90 of those years. It is probably time to change it. The man who wrote it was not somebody who we should at all be lionizing. It’s ridiculously hard to sing it anyway.

The US flag, however, stands for something and it is not what the lying man who is currently occupying the White House thinks it is.

We deserve to get it back.

And we will.

All we need to do to get it back, is to vote.