[Marxism] Flags

[Chris Brady <cdbrady@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"...at least here in the Bay Area, I see FAR fewer flags (actual and
decal) on cars than I did a year ago. Don't know if that's a nationwide
trend."

It may be because the stripes have all bleached out of them.  When I was
in art school we did exercises with paint, dye and ink samples, and
pigment studies.  We found that some reds are notoriously "fugitive"
--from the Latin "to fly" as in TEMPUS FUGIT (Time Flies), and related
to "refugee".  These colours DO run, counter to the famous
bumperschticker brag.  They lose intensity when exposed to the bright
light of day, i.e., The Sun, that is to UltraViolent Rays [insert eerie
Sci-Fi Theremin music here].  From their crimson hues of blood, they
dwindle into orangey madders, then faint yellow, to finally disappear.

I lived in a town in September 2001 where the local newspaper put out a
special edition addition: a full, double-wide center sheet spread of the
American Flag.  Patriotic folks taped that page to their windows at
home, at work, in classrooms, and in cars.  I think it had a slogan
underneath, "One Nation Indivisible."  Whenever I saw it I asked myself
why it made me think "One Empire Invisible." In those days I felt
inundated with The Flag.  One neigbour had flags on her car antenna, on
her car windows fore, aft and sideways, on her dress in sequins, and in
front of her house.  I dreamed that certain folks would not be
half-happy until everything everywhere was covered in the Battle Flag of
the Republic. Anyways, by the New Year most of these newsprint flags had
begun to yellow, the reds faded into ochre, and people took them down.

Other exsamples come to mind, apart from Old Glory.  The flag of Canada
as we know it now was introduced in the 1960s, if my memory serves.
When I went to Elementary School in Toronto, the janitor hoisted aloft
the Union Jack in front each a.m.  I do recall the years when the
official national flag changed from the Canadian Red Ensign to the
now-familiar red Maple Leaf avec two bars.  I guess some political
connection got the contract for the new and improved banner of
Canuckness, because the material wasn't dyed with the same colour as the
Ensign or the Jack.  Within a year, Maple Leaf flags from coast to coast
had turned to a shade of rust, much to the chagrin of Canadian
officials, and to the glee of typically sarcastic hockey fans.  To this
day, I still don't see ordinary Canadians overwhelmed with the same
exaggerated emotional attachment to their national flag as I have
witnessed in Americans over the past quarter-century.  All that passion
over a square of coloured cloth!  Don't give that BS about "what it
represents."  What about real things?  I find their hyper-patriotism
kind of scary, irrational.

My favourite story about fugitive reds comes from my time in Chile.  I
lived there for the exact time Pinochet enjoyed the hospitality of the
British Crown.  He left Chile = I arrived.  I departed = he returned.
Very convenient.  I would not like to have bumped into him, say, while
grocery shopping in the supermercado in San Antonio, or at the Feria de
Libros in the old Santiago train station.  Anyways, that was also the
time of the big election contest between the right-wing,
Pinochet-favourite Joaquin Lavín and the left-center, putative
"socialist" Ricardo Lagos.  There were other participants, notably
Gladys Marín of the Partido Comunista de Chile, but the real tussle was
between Lavín and Lagos.  Lavín was a rich guy and the mayor of the
wealthiest borough of Santiago.  Big money and Pinochetista
reactionaries supported him.  They spent a fortune on blue and yellow
signs, posters, stickers, painted-up cars and vans, and flashy nylon
jackets.  Lagos tried to come off as the sober, elder statesman.  He had
posters put up, with his slogan "Crecer con Igualdad"  --Growth with
Equality.  They were printed in the red-white-and-blue of the Chilean
flag-which looks very much like the flag of the Lone Star State.  The
word "Crecer" was in blue, and "con Igualdad" was in red.  The election
was a squeaker.  Lagos barely got in.  The sun is strong in Chile.  A
month after the election, after things had settled down, you could still
see the election posters pasted up on certain walls around town.  But
the sun had done its work.  The idealistic appeal to "Equality" had
been, shall we say, disappeared.  The last word was only "Growth".

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