My Two Flags

There have only ever been two flags in my life that mattered.

The first was not American.

I found it as a teenager, buried in a box in our attic, mixed in with other relics of a war that had ended long before I was born. It was a Nazi flag. Silk-screened, not embroidered. Red field, white circle, black swastika. Tarnished brass rings sewn onto the corners so it could be hung easily. It was cheap, utilitarian, meant to be visible and replaceable. A banner designed for dominance, not reverence.

My paternal grandfather had brought it home from Germany in the 1940s. By the time I discovered it, he was long dead. My father put it away, not disclosed, never explained.

I was the oldest of three children, fourteen or fifteen. My parents didn’t provide spending money for the kind of counter-cultural experiences that shape you when you’re young. In the eighties, we still fetishized Confederate symbols as Southern heritage, and punks wore fascist regalia like jewelry. So I took the flag to a local military surplus store and sold it. The clerk didn’t particularly value it, but we negotiated fifteen dollars. I used that money for a ticket to see Depeche Mode. It was my first concert.

I’ve never told my father.

At the time, it didn’t feel like rebellion, but rather a sense of profound disgust and practicality. I converted a dead symbol of a defeated ideology into something alive. Music. If that flag was meant to assert permanence, it failed twice. Once when its regime collapsed, and again when it became a ticket stub.

The second flag was American.

A few years ago, after a mass shooting at a country music festival in Las Vegas, I was shaken in a way I didn’t yet have language for. I felt grief, anger, and a deep unease about what we had normalized. I flew my American flag upside down in front of our house. Not in contempt. As a signal of distress.

That signal has a long tradition. At sea. In emergencies. When something has gone wrong, and you need help. It does not mean rejection. It means alarm.

This is the first home we have ever owned. Heather and I are proud of it. We were excited to welcome my parents for their first visit. My father saw the flag and refused to come inside. He and my mother left without a word, finding lodging near the Marine Corps base across the river. That, I think, made him feel better.

I had hoped he would read the signal the way he always claimed to read signals. I had hoped he would say, “I see distress. The Marines have arrived. What can I do to help, son?”

Instead, he chose withdrawal. Ritual.

After that incident, I took the flag down. I folded it carefully with my son. I am an Eagle Scout and a returned Peace Corps Volunteer. Tristan was a Boy Scout then. We folded it the way you’re taught to handle something that matters. Then I gave him the flag. I have refused to display the American flag ever since, except on my vehicle for camouflage.

Not out of spite. Out of authenticity.

These two flags have flown with me for decades, yet neither hangs on my facade. One was a symbol of totalitarian certainty, didactic and cruel, whose moral emptiness is written in blood and ashes. The other has become a symbol of ideals so malleable that the rights enshrined 250 years ago are often left dishonored.

What troubles me is not that my father disagrees with me politically. It’s that he can quote peace while tolerating harm. He invokes the law while ignoring what the law is doing. That he recites philosophy as insulation rather than as inquiry. That he can claim love while refusing to recognize distress when it’s right in front of him.

I sold the first flag to hear music. I folded the second flag to teach my son respect, not obedience.

If symbols are to mean anything, they should reflect the truth. And if they can’t, then sometimes the best thing you can do is put them away.

I still believe in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that the American flag is supposed to represent. They are all threatened by pretending everything is fine when it isn’t.

I have borne the weight of two flags in my life.
Neither is about loyalty.
Both are about conscience.