Icons: The Flag (and all its pledges)

by Shawn K. Inlow

My dad died of cancer and it was a slow thing.

As anyone knows who's experienced it, it can be a terrible, gradual withering. And during this time, we - all of us kids and family members - took turns at home with him, using hospice for end of life treatment. It was during this time that I wanted to get some things straight with the old man. Being the sixth of seven children, I had always felt crowded growing up. My old man used to get really frustrated finding me sleeping high up in the boughs of trees. I remember him telling me, seemingly on loop, that "Punky had broken her foot (or something) falling out of McKendrick's tree." In retrospect, my oldest sister, Punky, was a gymnast and she was probably trying some complex dismount. I guess I always wanted solitude.

Being one of the youngest, you came along too late to know your grandparents. I have a vague memory of my paternal grandmother, like a faded old scrapbook photo of an old-timey woman, I think her name might have been Wreath? I am not sure. But, in the picture, she was standing on the porch of a house that no longer exists out on Turnpike Avenue in a place called Paradise. I knew my maternal grandmother some. Ivy Jury was her name when I knew her and she lived in a trailer on the west side with a woman name of Grace Meckley, who was her primary caregiver. As a kid, I would walk those few blocks over there and play Chinese Checkers to help Ivy pass the time.

All this is to say that I've always felt disconnected in this world. Like I had no roots. So, as Dad was carrying his last bit of this life's load, I determined to have some discussions with him while he was still up to it. I needed to know if all those stories I'd heard were accurate. I can now swear on my father's life that these stories are true. Here's one. It was when the highway (Interstate 80) was coming through Pennsylvania that my dad got a job digging ditches. I have to think that this would have been about the time of a late 50s red scare or some point along the McCarthy Era timeline. Who knows, maybe the Soviets had launched Sputnik or what have you. Point is, I probably hadn't counted as a "mouth to feed" at this point.

Well, doesn't one day this foreman come walking up the line and he's requiring everyone on the job, one after the other, to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. And he gets to my old man, who stops digging and leans on his shovel.

Looking up at that guy from that ditch, Dad says, "I went through seven invasions for the likes of you, and you can shove your Pledge of Allegiance up your ass." As satisfying as that story is, the business end of it is that he was fired the next day for refusing to say the pledge to the flag. I feel differently about the flag than you do. Because that's part of who I am, you understand, I am not, to this day, a big one for flag waving, freedomisms or any of the various permutations or expressions of "freedom" in this here country. I don't disrespect those who do revere the flag, nor those who have served it, but I generally don't like what the flag is too-often used for. This pledge to this (our) flag was written in 1892 by a Christian Socialist name of Francis Bellamy. It didn't used to be as strident as it is today. Here's the original: "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." Says what it means, wouldn't you say? Yet, as if litigious Americans needed to clarify what we were talking about, they changed it to this slightly more bossy tone in 1924: "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." See, before... anybody could have adopted the concise, generic, Strunk & White version. But this was our by Jesus pledge and ya daren't forget it. By the time my old man was being quizzed on it from the future berm of I-80, Dwight Eisenhower had signed into law this whole "Under God" bit. As if a pinko commie combat veteran standing in a ditch would melt if he said those words. "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." I guess. To me? This pledge is plastic. It can be re-written and we can subtlely evolve its meaning during this national moment of truth or the next, but we dare not question it and it sure as hell can never be un-done once the fervor has passed. This form of patriotism wrapped in God and made into a solemn oath sticks in my craw. What does it mean if you don't say the pledge? What if you respect the pledge but don't put your hand over your heart? What's that supposed to mean? When Red Dawn happens, just whose side are you gonna be on, buster?

I think there is a difference between patriotism that shows and patriotism that goes. The men in my father's cohort didn't have much choice, you know? And if you listen to my old man tell it, the U.S. Navy tried much harder to kill him than the Japanese. Furthermore, WWII, "the good war," gave this country something to do with all of its poor people. When Dad was coming up out in Paradise, he told me, "There was no money. Nobody had money. And if you didn't have a garden, you didn't eat." The war, though it was the singular experience that molded his life, left him shattered and with a four pack a day habit and he was lucky. Even after the war, he had to scrape for a decent living. He fought for years with the military over long-term, chronic injuries he'd suffered in war and he got bupkus. Pledge this, motherfucker. Freedom. Was that what this was all about? Christ, we all parade around shouting about America and The Constitution like we wrote the damn thing. Fact is, few of us understand it and what a radical document it is. And the freedoms that are exclaimed in that document are becoming more like questions today. I think we are not as free as we'd like to think we are. Look around. Would you be at your current job if your health-care didn't make it compulsory? Of course not! And until this country de-couples health-care from employment, whatever oaths you take about freedom are meaningless. Until that day comes, you're not free at all: You're a wage slave. A deluded, flag-waving wage slave. Month to month now. Easy does it. Try not to get sick. And yet here we are singing the songs, and pledging our allegiance and we just don't think about it. Imagine the different kind of expressions our freedom might take on if our tax dollars actually paid for something (let's say health care, for shits and giggles) that we could actually use. I can remember as a young kid some of the conversations I heard among the grown ups about the shameful use of the flag. It was the 1960s, man, and hot chicks were putting the flag across the seat of (what came to be known as) their Daisy Dukes. 'Merica! Right on! We were still pretty close to some hot and controversial wars and our World War II dads were right there, slowly coming around to the meaning of freedom vis-a-vis terms like "national interest" and "police action." Vietnam clearly showed us that our country endeavored in war for geopolitical power and monetary profit. It can be argued that it was ever so. But the 60s era blew a gaping hole in the American ship of war. Something had to change.

So they did away with the draft. No longer could a sentient society call bullshit on war and stop it through lack of participation. Rather, those who fought the war signed up for it. They signed a contract. They got ever increasing signing bonuses and a fatter and fatter G.I. bill so that if they survived they could then afford an ever increasingly expensive education. The way I think of it, the only way they could make this shitty deal stand up was with propaganda. You know... advertising. Over my lifetime, the military has gone from something you got drafted to do, to something you needed to sign up for. So waving that flag, and pushing that patriotism became really important. You think they could have made "Top Gun" if it didn't make fighter pilots look cool? When Jimmy Carter (the only President in my lifetime not to have fired a shot in war) gave way to Ronald Reagan, the red, white and blue snow-job was on and we've been buried in an avalanche of it ever since.

Now? Nearly 40 years later? We are all divided on what it means, America. What it stands for, Freedom. And we've been placed into a land of Babel, where nobody talks and only horror breaks through. Many of us long for a day when the flag meant something, but we don't realize that it never did. Today. Right now. Do you think a soldier stationed somewhere in the world is "fighting" for your "freedom?" How so? They say "Freedom isn't free," but just what the fuck is it? No, friends. We are a warlike nation. Get used to it. We have always... all my life... been at war. That's the status quo. And the only reason we can't see it is that we've taken a flag and folded it over our eyes, and used it as a blind-fold.