Why I Don’t Wear a Flag Lapel Pin

There is a crucial distinction between our nation’s flag when used as a sign vs. a symbol. It is this difference that leads many, including me not to wear the flag pin out of respect, not lack of patriotism.

A sign is designed to attract attention, to be noticed as a publicity artifact. Our visual world is virtually polluted with signs targeting consumers of a myriad of products. Signs urge us to vote for a stream of eager candidates and have become an important part of any media and propaganda campaigns. Our clothing and accessories have become transmitters of sign messages. And so too have our jewelry and our pins.

A symbol is not a sign reduced to a jewelry accessory to be worn for public display. Symbols are those signs that have been elevated to inspire and communicate an emotion about those values and emotions we feel most deeply. Symbols are not worn on the outside, they are felt from within. Tell me what a person is willing to die for, and you will reveal the deepest symbols of life. They cannot be reduced to signs without cheapening their ultimate significances.

My America is a symbol that cannot be reduced to a mere sign, a pin. America is the symbol of hope for a nation that can truly aspire to help create a world that is more just, tolerant and peaceful. We are a work in progress and a vision of what might become. That symbol should live deeply in our hearts and souls, not as a pin on our lapels.

Perhaps we need to know others more by their inner selves and less by their pins.

Bitterness???

What is the negativity toward “bitterness”? Yes, bitterness can be a negative personality characteristic, especially among the classes of gifted and well endowed who don’t make it, but he is referring to the kind of bitterness that comes when we are victims of circumstances over which we have no control. It is when we are held accountable but are not responsible. That is the condition of many Americans today. So “bitterness” of this kind is a very appropriate emotion.

The context is important. My ancestors settled in PA in the early 1700s and were involved in the founding of Easton. I was born and raised in Pittsburgh and taught at Dickinson College in Carlisle during the decade of the 60s. A week there early this month revealed that not much has changed over the past forty years. They are a proud independent stock. Remember they created the Whiskey Rebellion and never forgave General Washington for marking west to stamp it out. This past April 1 it was the truckers in PA who protested the rise in fuel prices.

Do you remember the movie, “Network,” and the cry from the open apartment window, “I’m damn mad and not going to take it anymore?” He might have said I am “bitter” since he was exhausted by a system over which he had no control, yet suffered. So what do Pennsylvanian, and all thinking Americans, deserve to be bitter (angry) about? You know:

A war that we should have never started and were systematically lied to about, and still are from our own government;

The death of our youth who are recruited primarily from the under economic and social classes of our society;

The economy in which for the average worker the purchasing power is about what it was the in the mid 1970s, although they are working harder and longer;

An educational system that is not delivering quality education;

A health system that fails to cover far too many working class people;

Etc.

But more to the point: Obama is giving US the opportunity to realize that we do have more control than we realize. We should be bitterly disappointed in OURSEVLES. ALL Americans have the right to be bitterly disappointed with themselves. We continue to live the illusion that we have the highest standard of living, the best educational system, the finest health care, are the most innovative people and for more generous than any others. This is the rhetoric that feeds a myth perpetuated by our own historical/political amnesia.

Deep down we know that being honest will be difficult. It is time to tell the truth, but we prefer to pull back. We are bitter because we fear the truth will reveal that we have only ourselves to blame. Anger with ourselves may be the only bitter-sweet therapy for our own future as a nation. Then we can emerge perhaps with a new vision and energy to live and work for greater justice and pace in the world and move beyond our own national curse of race.

Merle F. Allshouse

p.s. Isn’t it ironic that a nation that believes it is “the best” is afraid of an elitist?