I bought some cheap Chinese 2-way radios. The packaging has a big American flag and a “Designed in U.S.A.” claim, which I suspect is bullshit given the company involved. Also, there are two Bible verses referenced. This smacks of pandering to a particular slice of conservative Americans. All I want is cheap radios for skiing with my kids next winter, not a reminder of my country’s socio-political bullshit.
The American flag is very politically charged atm. Honestly. By & large the left hates the American flag, see below “I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a B&W American flag”. They hate the flag displayed, and they hate the people who wear it.
This isn’t a new or fringe sentiment; see it in this 4 year old YT video.
The left has surrendered their claim to the American flag. A couple years ago there were some TikTok videos saying “if there was an American flag at their house they some racist ass white motherfuckers”.
Here’s a woman appearing to bemoan that fact, saying that we’re all Americans & all should fly the flag.
Yeah it’s a bad rhetorical position to have backed ourselves into, but also yeah we’re certainly there. I think the 00s really did it with the flag waving support our troops leading to defense of torture and dismissal of war crimes. By that point it was hard to be proud to be an American and rather than join a national conversation about what we’d done, the right saw us recoil in horror and advanced. They screamed “love it or leave it” and asserted that America was the best. By the time the disaster of the war on terror really hit them they owned the cultural perception of “patriotism” and “America fuck yeah”. They then descended into conspiracy to explain it, the most recent contrapoints video was quite compelling on that discussion.
The left has been doing some work to reclaim it. Shermanposting is very much an example, but reclaiming national pride is hard in the face of a nationalist movement. Our history is such a mix of good and bad and when you’re committed to reality it’s hard to reclaim the flag waving position, especially when it’s gotten so bad your national value of liberty has become a fascist buzzword and the country has ruined most of its goodwill internationally.