![]() A YouGov poll from 2018 showed a 26 percentage-point gap between Republicans and Democrats when asked whether they felt patriotic. Gaskins points to polls that show that civic pride dropped precipitously among Democrats after Trump took office. But the partisan divisions grew worse during the Trump administration. To some on the left, for instance, the flag became a stand-in for every terrible act that had been done, through history, on the nation’s behalf. Those collective bonds were fraying before Trump hit the scene. For most of history, Americans have largely agreed on those ideals: God and freedom, capitalism and opportunity, a legal system and a common culture. In normal times, those totems represent not just a shared identity, but a common set of beliefs about what the country means, says Ben Gaskins, a political science professor at Lewis and Clark College. Think the flag, the Liberty Bell and the original Constitution, written on parchment with quill. Social scientists call that association “civil religion”-the worship of secular objects that represent a national ideal. Because, he says, it’s a stand-in for the nation as a whole. “Why would anybody risk their lives for an inanimate object?” he asks. Evans, a sociology professor at the University of California-San Diego. During trench warfare, it wasn’t unheard of for soldiers to run through open fire to rescue a flag that had been left behind, says John H. Reverence for the flag is part of American history-and, fundamentally, part of human nature. And a good marketing campaign is hard to undo. Trump’s rebranding of the flag as a wholly partisan statement has been, in a sense, a triumph in marketing. And that unwillingness to unite over the basics of democracy-to acknowledge that, whether you like the results or not, the system works-is unlikely to disappear when Biden takes office. Where Trump’s opponents see a triumph of democracy, his fiercest supporters see something different fueled by right-wing media, they’re still complaining about fraud, coups and stolen elections. And it’s nice to see the flag again representing the country as a whole, instead of one section of it.”īut the election, like the flag, doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone. “My attitude’s changed about it now,” Kamen, an independent, told me weeks after the election. Now that Trump seemed repudiated, through the mechanics of democracy, the flag suddenly meant something different to him. ![]() A crazy person,” said California screenwriter Ed Kamen, who tweeted a similar sentiment when the election was called for Biden. “When I saw somebody with a flag bumper sticker or a T-shirt with a big flag on it, I immediately thought … it’s a Trump nut job. 25 in Newport News, Va.īy that time, for many people on both sides of the political chasm, the flag had been recast as a kind of shorthand, an extension of the MAGA hat-sending an instant message of which side you were on, or inspiring stereotypes that pulled the country even further apart. Trump speaks during a campaign rally on Sept. He sent me a photo of the flag, still hanging beside his garage, his own Dodge Ram pickup in the foreground. When the election was called for Joe Biden, “I said, ‘Time for my flag to go up,’” Woodall told me by phone, a couple of weeks later. Now, at last, it looked like Trump might lose, so Woodall set his new flag on the dining room table and waited. That is desecrating the flag that I served over 20 years with.’” ![]() “They’ve always got a Trump flag and the American flag,” he said. He grew angry when he saw American flags on pickup trucks around town. But he didn’t want anyone in his neighborhood outside Columbia, South Carolina, to associate him with President Donald Trump’s racial rhetoric or anti-immigrant policies. The 72-year-old Vietnam War veteran and retired infantry soldier had taken down his old flag about a year into the Trump administration. About a month before the election, Curtis Woodall logged on to Amazon and ordered an American flag.
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