11.11.11
Gadsden Flag-ism
Many images from 2011 USA provoke headache and nausea. For me, the Gadsden flag sure does.
When you get down to it, it’s now functionally equivalent to flying the Confederate flag, the exclusive property of the extremist right. This image, linked from the DailyKos, has to do with the Tea Party and its fondness for it.
Now when seen it just signals here-comes-shit.
Most notably last week, it was in national news for being proud property of one of the members of the Georgia Ricin Beans Gang.
Rather than a symbol of patriotic American defiance, the Gadsden flag has been adopted as the elegant rattlesnake-emblazoned colors for the worst us.
And as often as not it is the favorite towel of hosts of really unpleasant and often frankly repugnant people: angry bigots, whites who want to re-fight the Civil War, precious metal fanatics who wish to blow up the Fed, local GOP politicians interested in grass roots legislation to allow state secession or nullification orders, removers (violent, if necessary) of the reproductive rights of women, heavily armed survivalists, advocates of laws allowing people to appear intimidatingly armed in public, hoarders of improvised homemade weaponry, pro-lifers, theocrats, militia men …
I could go on. If you’re one who is interested in the roots of domestic terrorism, the Gadsden flag is almost always there, somewhere.
The Gadsden flag is a very visible symbol of a vile part of the 2011 United States.
The “Don’t Tread on Me” lovers have come to be known for their bleak philosophies, usually involving direct attacks or persecution of others not exactly like them. And intertwined with this is a hatred of all government because it gets in the way of waging such a patriotic war.
Naturally, they don’t see themselves in this light.
But many of the rest of us sure do.