Make America Great Again?

I’ve been reflecting on what Joe Lowndes said on social media around July 4th: “For most people waving the American flag these days it might as well be the Confederate flag. Let’s just ban both of them and get it over with.”

After driving through rural Oregon yesterday I think he is correct. American flags were everywhere in this state that, until fairly recently, banned Black people from even living here. There has always been an ugly, racist, form of nationalism in the US. Since 2016 this tendency and these institutions have become again embolden and aggressive, giving permission for reactionaries to get in people’s faces, usually waving American flags or wearing American flags on their uniforms.

That flag represents a country founded on Native genocide, the slave trade, and the support for the capitalist organization of US society, exported around the world through the US military. The political Right knows this and is using violence, and preparing to use more violence, to preserve whiteness, patriarchy, and the ability to sacrifice the natural environment for personal and corporate gain: Making America Great Again. They continue to build power, recognizing the merely rhetorical nature of US “democracy,” while liberals and Democrats limit their vision to utilizing inadequate established institutions.

There has been civil war going on in this country since it was founded. The sooner people realize existing institutions will not deliver necessary change and that, instead, we need to create a culture, movements, institutions, and organizations to collectively create a radically different future, the better.