When my father asked me, “Where would we go?” that’s when the fear that I had been barely keeping at bay, gripped me. “If Trump gets in again, and things get even worse, where will we go?” By even worse, my father was not referring to the pandemic, the economy, or racial injustice, although he, like me, is disgusted by this administration’s inability to address any of that. My father was skirting around the issue of personal safety and existential dread; a fear that may be common in many non-white, non-Christian, and otherwise marginalized Americans these days.
It was always my mother who “heard goose stepping” from the moment Donald Trump rode a wrecking ball into our teetering democracy. She could see no other ending to this sorry tale. But my mother was afflicted with the generational trauma of being born into a Jewish family that had lost members during the Holocaust. She thought for sure that a Trump presidency would unearth the KKK and the neo-Nazis, and she was certain that she knew how it would go from there.
But I’d never truly believed that. And I’d certainly never heard my father talk that way. Yet, here we are, a month away from the election, and my father and I are honestly discussing whether we might need to escape from the United States of America if Trump manages to get another four years in the White House.
I think what’s gotten to us is the flags.
Countries have flags. Individuals do not. Citizens swear allegiance to their flag and march into battle to preserve and honor what it stands for. Candidates — even incumbent Presidential candidates —usually have lawn signs, bumper stickers, t-shirts, and buttons. What does it mean that American citizens are now waving enormous flags emblazoned with Trump’s name? That these flags are being hoisted up flagpoles right next to the American flag?
You don’t plant a flag to declare to all the world that you agree with someone’s economic policies. You don’t hoist a flag up your flagpole to indicate your support for someone’s plan to cut health care costs, fight opioid addiction, or help the unemployed. You don’t drive around with a flag practically slapping the driver behind you because you want to encourage that person to vote for your candidate.
No. A flag is meant to show sovereignty over or possession of. A flag indicates to what or to whom a place belongs. When the U.S. planted the American flag on Iowa Jima, or on the moon for that matter, what were we intending to say to the rest of the world? The message was clearly one of dominance.
It is no coincidence that Jewish and Black people often have visceral reactions to the waving of the swastika and Confederate flags. Regardless of the intention of the flag bearer, history has unequivocally taught us the meaning of those flags. They clearly delineate who does — and who does not — belong under it. Those flags have meant we will run you out, round you up, and kill you if we want to. Trump has openly indicated support for white supremacist groups and has used anti-Semitic language at rallies and coded imagery in tweets. Does Trump’s flag – and the people who wave it – mean to send the same message?
I’d be happy and relieved to hear something different.
Perhaps someone out there with a Trump flag hoisted up their flagpole can tell me what so excites them about their candidate’s platform and agenda? Or what he has already done to win over an allegiance and enthusiasm so great that it warrants a flag that rivals the Stars and Stripes? Or why your wish for the rest of us to vote your way is so overwhelming that a mere lawn sign just will not do?
Eve Brown-Waite lives in Deerfield.