15/09: Bears repeating
… if I do say so myself. I had commented I’m generally for the burning of flags. Someone demurred.
… reasonably enough, I’d add. I suppose I could have more succinctly clarified: I’m specifically for the burning of one’s own flag. Or flags. But anyway, from a Pharyngula comment thread:
On the burning of flags
Tho’ you didn’t strictly say it was, let’s be very clear: a flag is not a book.
You can argue with a book, as a book often is an argument—or several—good or bad.
A flag, as a highly abstract symbol, is an incredibly flexible tool for demagoguery. It has no meaning of its own, explicitly represents no principle, no intention, beyond membership in and loyalty to a cause or tribe.
So as the demagogue knows—if he wishes to induce others to commit horrors on his behalf—or merely to be systematically miserable and marginalizing and inhuman to those it is implied fly a different one—it is wonderfully helpful to give them a flag to salute while they do so. The flag will have no comment, either way, and so they may stare at it and swear ‘I am a patriot’ while they gas, while they bludgeon, while they blast the designated enemy to bits of blood and bone. And every moral monster who made his career on division and the savvy selection of scapegoats knows if he wraps himself in it before he demands every merely just social program be scrapped in order to further favour his funding oligarchy—he knows he will be applauded wildly, wearing that flag. Likewise, every authoritarian slimeball who ever told you ‘this regressive monstrosity of a law that doth cut the legs out from under minority X is a matter of national security/how we enforce our traditional values’ has at least a dozen flags in his closet, ready to wear.
Burning a book carries overtones of the suppression of ideas. I’m generally uncomfortable with such acts, for this specific reason, I might add*.
And generally, therefore, burning a flag is quite another matter from burning most books. True, it may well mean ‘I wish to burn those who fly it’, as you recall above…**
However, it may also mean ‘I wish to burn this rag you manipulative sleazeballs attempted to wrap so tightly around my neck, the better to strangle my mind’.
In the latter context, I must salute you for burning it, again. Indeed, in my view, you cannot possibly burn enough of these rags. Disgusting things, such flags. Me, I wouldn’t wipe my ass with ‘em.
… reasonably enough, I’d add. I suppose I could have more succinctly clarified: I’m specifically for the burning of one’s own flag. Or flags. But anyway, from a Pharyngula comment thread:
On the burning of flags
I fully support your right to do that, yet I despise the burning of flags and books. As a symbol it is powerful and it usually means “I’d like to burn the thing and people it stands for instead”. And I don’t think it’s possible to get away from that saying “oh but I intend it to mean that I oppose the politics of the current rulers”…
Tho’ you didn’t strictly say it was, let’s be very clear: a flag is not a book.
You can argue with a book, as a book often is an argument—or several—good or bad.
A flag, as a highly abstract symbol, is an incredibly flexible tool for demagoguery. It has no meaning of its own, explicitly represents no principle, no intention, beyond membership in and loyalty to a cause or tribe.
So as the demagogue knows—if he wishes to induce others to commit horrors on his behalf—or merely to be systematically miserable and marginalizing and inhuman to those it is implied fly a different one—it is wonderfully helpful to give them a flag to salute while they do so. The flag will have no comment, either way, and so they may stare at it and swear ‘I am a patriot’ while they gas, while they bludgeon, while they blast the designated enemy to bits of blood and bone. And every moral monster who made his career on division and the savvy selection of scapegoats knows if he wraps himself in it before he demands every merely just social program be scrapped in order to further favour his funding oligarchy—he knows he will be applauded wildly, wearing that flag. Likewise, every authoritarian slimeball who ever told you ‘this regressive monstrosity of a law that doth cut the legs out from under minority X is a matter of national security/how we enforce our traditional values’ has at least a dozen flags in his closet, ready to wear.
Burning a book carries overtones of the suppression of ideas. I’m generally uncomfortable with such acts, for this specific reason, I might add*.
And generally, therefore, burning a flag is quite another matter from burning most books. True, it may well mean ‘I wish to burn those who fly it’, as you recall above…**
However, it may also mean ‘I wish to burn this rag you manipulative sleazeballs attempted to wrap so tightly around my neck, the better to strangle my mind’.
In the latter context, I must salute you for burning it, again. Indeed, in my view, you cannot possibly burn enough of these rags. Disgusting things, such flags. Me, I wouldn’t wipe my ass with ‘em.
*With certain exceptions. A book they have sworn you must uphold as holy, and printed in massive runs of tens of millions, a book someone in authority has demanded you must place on the top shelf of your home and make a formal show of revering, much as you salute a flag, this book, I think, I will make an exception for, and I will not complain if you have the courage to burn it. As such a book is well enroute to becoming a flag anyway.
**And note that, in this case, there is generally another flag in the picture, flown by those engaged in said burning.
**And note that, in this case, there is generally another flag in the picture, flown by those engaged in said burning.
