Today Is Flag Day, Unfortunately

Did you know today was a holiday? It is. It is Flag Day, when we're all supposed to fly the American flag somewhere, in commemoration of the Second Continental Congress's June 14th, 1777 adoption of the design commonly, but, many believe, mistakenly, attributed to Philadelphian seamstress Betsy Ross. The best thing about this holiday, to me, is that it reminds me of my favorite song by the Housemartins. (That's former Housemartins singer Paul Heaton, above, performing it last year.) The worst thing about it is pretty much everything else. I don't like flags.

I don't like flags mostly for the same reason that I don't like any of the other trappings of nationalism. The Marxist hippie pipe-dream thing of imagining that the world would be a better place without countries. No lines drawn on maps to divide people. Nothing to kill or die for and all that. No religion, too.

I understand, though, that like all pipe-dreams, a world without countries is probably unrealistic. Or in fact, were it possible, undesirable. I'm not an anarchist, and the notion of a single-body world government is of course fraught with its own problems—those both logistical and of the sci-fi dystopia, Illuminatus, United Nations' blue-helmeted variety. (I'm sure THE MACHINES will handle at least the logistics part well.) So, I guess, countries might be our best bet. All my wishes are only lies.

But still, flags do seem to embody and encourage all the worst aspects of nationalism. Something to rally around and salute, to get mad about if, God forbid, this piece of cloth material touches the ground. Bursts of signifying color to wave in big crowds while we shout the name of our country, to let everybody else know: We are us, you are not. We choose us.

I also happen to think our flag, the American one, is ugly. Blocky and overly primary colored. Off-puttingly un-semetrical, and yet still rigid and staid. I know this particular analysis is specious. It's hard to separate the aesthetics of an image so loaded with symbolism and meaning, and we get so much of the latter fed to us for our entire lives. But, I really don't much like it. If we really need to have to have a flag—and, again, I don't think we do. How great would it be if a new country, Southern Sudan, say, just decided, "Nope, no thanks. No flag for us. We think saluting an inanimate object is stupid." But if we really need to have a flag, wouldn't it be nicer if we could have one like Mauritania, or Palua? Or Barbados?

Now that's a good-looking flag. It's like the old Seattle Mariners caps. I miss them.

But again, a pipe-dream. Here in the U.S.A., we're stuck with the flag we've got. Old glory. And everybody's always going to expect us not to draw on it or step on it or light it on fire. Until THE MACHINES reassign us one that's just a bar code. That will better, sort of.

Today is also World Blood Donor Day. Which is a holiday I can more easily get behind. Though don't try the thing where you give blood and then go drinking right after to catch a cheaper buzz. A friend of mine in college did that once and fell down a flight of stairs and split open his chin. He had to go to the hospital for stitches. He still has the scar.