Den Beste’s right: “No matter how many instances of the American flag they burn, or shoot holes in, or trample under foot, or tear to shreds, the American Flag will continue to exist. They can’t destroy the class ‘American Flag’ by destroying instances of it. Nor can they destroy the United States by burning flags.
“It’s a symbolic act of anger and contempt and resentment. It’s a political statement.”
To which I’ll add these thoughts: unfortunately, we can’t ascribe the same symbolic impotence to instances of frenzied Palestinian butchers shooting holes in, or trampling under foot, or tearing to shreds, or blowing to bits individual Israelis — be they schoolchildren, or teens in pizza parlors, or Holocaust survivors at holiday dinners, or toddlers in their beds.
The fact that a majority of Palestinians support the strategy of suicide bombings convinces many in the U.S. to define the class “Palestinian” unflatteringly. And that’s a shame.
[update: Ben Sheriff adds a few thoughts:
Den Beste emphasises that he ‘doesn’t hold individual instances [of the flag] sacred”. But that is precisely the attitude taken by at least some (if not all) versions of Islam to any fragment of the text of the Koran. During a previous World Cup, there was lots of upset arguing about a McDonalds promotion that involved their bags showing the flags of the competing nations. Saudi Arabia had gotten through to the finals, and their flag features a verse of the Koran. Since the McDonalds bag is designed to be thrown away, this went down badly with the Saudi government.
Now, this is cheap pop psychology. But if Palestinians generalise from this, or view the American flag as having an equivalent status, then it would make perfect sense to burn as many instances of the flag as you can: each one is as sacred as the next, and an ideal opportunity for creative ‘blasphemy’. Of course, they may just like burning American flags…
Let ’em generalize, I say. When they start burning our aid money, then I’ll believe they actually take this symbolic silliness literally.
picture via LGF]
Saudi Arabia in the World Cup finals? When was that? I have a very hard time imagining that happened.
Matthew, “World Cup finals” has two meanings. One is the final game of the tournament. But another is for the final tournament itself–the tournament that follows the qualifying rounds. Saudi Arabia has never made it to the final game and isn’t likely to in the foreseeable future. Butt they do regularly make it through qualifying. They were in the 24-team world tournament in 1994 when the McDonald’s bag controversy erupted.
Flag burning is not (usually) done because somebody thinks that would destroy the ideals the flag stands for.
In this case, it is done to raise the level of hatred towards the USA. Repeated sufficiently, this is how you manage to desotry any morality your crowd may have started with, to the point they are willing to support (and participate) in acts of terror against people that live 7 time zones away.
Why are they ripping up the US flag? Aren’t they grateful for all those guns, bulldozers, helicopters, etc used to throw them out of their homes and murder their children?
Yeah, that’s right. They get no aid from the U.S. Only death. And those bulldozer attacks are just random acts of Israeli aggression. Snore.