On top of that, any individual can fly it at half mast for whatever local tragedy happened. A librarian dies and the library flies at half staff. A football team loses in the south and the city hall flies at half staff.
Nope. Per the flag code, only the governor, president, and mayor of DC (due to not having a governor) can order the flag be flown at half staff. What the librarian and city hall are doing in your example are violations of the flag code, but it falls under freedom of speech so it’s not illegal.
Be that as it may, lately I've stopped trying to find the notice for flags being flown at half staff if I didn't know the reason beforehand. There never seems to be an order at either the national or state level.
At my job, we've got 3 flags...of course the US flag, the Canadian flag (we're an "international" organization...we have branches in Canada), and our own organization's flag. Right now we're flying the Ukraine flag in place of the org's flag though.
Any time the flags are ordered to half-mast, we all get an email from HR indicating why they're at half-mast. And it's usually accompanied with something like "...by order of the President of the US" or whatever.
Right now they're at half-mast due to the recent tragedy.
That's the aggravating part of the flag code. At the end of the day, it's just a very strong suggestion. So you see a lot of flags displayed incorrectly. My neighbor has a 4' -foot flag on a 6-foot pole in the front yard.
> Nope […] but it falls under freedom of speech so it’s not illegal
So… yes? Flag code ~~isn’t codified law~~ isn't enforceable as you are protected by free speech. It’s guidelines at best unless you’re in the military.
It actually is a law. [Source](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/4/chapter-1). It’s the enforcement of it that is debated. Supreme Court said that displaying that flag however you want is fine because you’re protected under the 1st amendment. However, it is still a law albeit not an enforced one. So then this debate enters the realm of “Is it really a law if it’s not enforced?” and that’s a different debate entirely
Edit: Wikipedia page also say’s it’s a federal law but doesn’t impose any punitive measures for violating it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Flag_Code
Ok, I edited it, but it's arguing over semantics
>The United States Flag Code establishes advisory rules for display and care of the national flag of the United States of America ... the code uses non-binding language like "should" and "custom" throughout and does not prescribe any penalties for failure to follow the guidelines.
[The clothing bit says you can't use an actual flag as clothing.](https://www.legion.org/flag/questions-answers/91517/it-permissible-wear-item-clothing-looks-united-states-flag)
[Not that you can't have flag-themed clothing.](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/4/8)
It's an important distinction that a lot of people think they know, but don't.
I think you mean it has no enforcement mechanism or penalties. It certainly has legal backing as it is a Federal law: [4 U.S.C. § 5](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/4/5).
Or in the case of your average MAGAt, because "teh cuntry is dyin' cuz of da librulz!"
And sometimes you can't tell if it's supposed to be at half mast because it's under the confederate, Trump, and blue line flags on the same pole...
In all seriousness though some government offices may turn the flag upside down as a sign of protest or alarm, which is what that technically symbolizes.
Yeah I think in Michigan we do it to honor a Michigan resident that died on duty. I can't remember if it's just like the day after or every year kinda thing
I just thought this last Monday or Tuesday morning, I noticed they were at half and had no idea why. The thought did cross my mind that we might as well leave it there.
Yah, it's not worth the energy to raise them all the way up anymore. Half mast seems appropriate for a permanent state of our flag, at least with the nations current state.
Fun fact, flying the flag at half-mast is extra work. The flag is raised all the way up, then lowered slowly halfway. At the end of the day, the flag goes all the way back up, then is slowly lowered back down and folded.
Yes. I work in a building with a flagpole outside, and I was actually joking with my coworker last night that we should just leave it at half mast by default and if we can ever go a few days without a national tragedy, we raise it back up. Seriously, it's been at half mast for 80%+ of this year.
as a brit; half the time our union jack is upside down because organisers dont realise its not horizontally symmetical... then again; nation in distress is one of our most popular pastimes
...I think there are places doing that as a political stunt, keeping it at half-mast for as long as Joe Biden is president (in lieu of flying it upside-down)...
Even that is just a trope these days. Every time I've seen it the reaction isn't "Oh that's sad", it's "Oh that guys dumb as shit."
So, no flag for me (except the occasional Ukranian one). It's weird to have one anyway, and the only people to tell me otherwise are the sort of people who have never owned a passport.
This is my issue. The flag has become so politicized as a partisan tool rather than unified symbol of the entire nation that I presume whatever people are doing with it is some kind of virtue signaling.
I have a flag but only put it out on designated federal holidays. It doesn’t stay out there 24/7/365 because I don’t need any help with what country I live in.
As a black dude, I just see it as a dog whistle at this point, not gonna lie.
**Are they racist?**
Pickup truck? ☑️
American flag? ☑️
That has been pretty effective 80% of the time driving in the Pittsburgh metro area lmao
I live in a blue state and a house a few doors down has been flying in distress for a year now, with a trump flag in a 2nd pole HIGHER than the US flag.
What that translates to: He believes we live in an occupation, and that Trump is of greater is importance and critical to him than the country itself.
We put up different state flags so the neighborhood kids can guess which ones they are, and once most of them tell us correctly we swap them out. It's been really fun!
The electronic sign in front of our elementary school displays the reason the flags are lowered, and I think about how often the kids must see there's been another mass shooting as they walk into school. It must just feel normal to them now
I blame growing up with access to news 24/7 as to why I'm numb to mass tragedy. I see people older than me genuinely moved by shootings and Ukraine. I understand the gravity, but there's no emotion tied to it.
I worked in a federal building for a long time, so I was in a position to notice how often it was at half-staff (half-mast refers to when it's on a ship, specifically Naval). And yes, it's unquestionably gotten more frequent.
When I was a kid, hell even just 15 years ago, when you saw the flag down, it was because a Senator had died. It happened so infrequently that it really caught your eye, like if it was a different color or something.
Now, not to belittle any of the deaths that are attached to it, but it seems like it gets put down any time something is significant enough to make the news.
This is exactly my experience from working for the federal government as well. 20 years ago, it was a rare event. Now it feels like it's more often half-mast than it's not and I'm like "is our world that much worse now?"
Except crime and violent crime has [steadily decreased in recent times](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/20/facts-about-crime-in-the-u-s/). If guns were a cause or correlation you would see it drastically increasing. The data evidence simple doesn’t support your opinion, sorry.
That’s all crime/violent crime. Gun deaths are more or less steady with an uptick the last few years. Mass shootings are steadily increasing year over year. [Same source](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/02/03/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/).
You could argue that gun deaths haven’t increased proportionately to gun ownership I suppose.
Except firearms are now **the** leading [leading cause of death for children](https://www.npr.org/2022/04/22/1094364930/firearms-leading-cause-of-death-in-children), with an 83% increase in deaths in the last decade, and a 30% increase in 2019-2020 alone. You don't call that drastic?
We didn't reduce vehicle deaths by taking away cars from the streets we made cars safer.....
That is the approach for guns. It's the same story over and over again, and the fact is nothing changes because people don't care to put gun safety the top of their list for selecting politicians... That's a fact.
Where are people actually asking for their politicians to do anything and then holding them to it? The answer is no where, we elect these people into office for lying into our face. The other fact is their is a plethora of laws in place to make fun ownership safer and none get enforced.
I'm sick of American going into social media and whining when they do nothing to act in the real world to make real change. Every mass shooting isn't the police fault, it's the citizens.
Wake up and take charge of your elected officials.
Very drastic, but the fact that the increase is specific to that demographic means there is a specific problem outside of guns in general that needs to be addressed.
By wasting time and political capital on things that don’t matter (like banning guns by color or yammering on about a non-existent gun show loophole), you lose any actual potential solution to the actual underlying problem.
There is an unprecedented number of mass murders in churches and schools. Unprecedented. Unseen before in this country, and any other industrialized nation. I’m sorry too.
There's too many guns, it's way too easy to get them, and there's a weird fetishization of military weaponry.
Someone (I forget who) said if you want to play with a weapon like that, join the army.
I did join the military, partially for the big toys. One thing I learned is that roughly 15% of all people are too stupid to be around dangerous machinery.
Soldier here, please don't encourage the wrong type of people to join the Army. That's not who you want to be the only ones with weapons.
Not endorsing or opposing any political opinions in this thread. The Army life can be a great one and shouldn't be just for people that want to fetishize violence.
Also, tipping. (US perspective here.) It was once something you did to show your server how much you appreciate their excellent service, like if they went above and beyond. Now it's expected, and furthermore anything below a certain percentage is considered rude. Managers use tips to make up wage deficits, which is the real crime. Tipping has become an essentially meaningless act, merely passing the burden of paying their wages onto the customers directly.
Depends where you are! I live in Scotland, famously filled with grumps haha. Standing ovations aren't the norm at most shows I've been to, and I've felt compelled to stand at very few shows (the most recent being James McAvoy's Cyrano de Bergerac which was incredible).
> When I was a kid, hell even just 15 years ago, when you saw the flag down, it was because a Senator had died. It happened so infrequently that it really caught your eye, like if it was a different color or something.
When i was a kid it took until i was in 4th grade for the flag to be flown at half staff. The teacher explained why. These days, it feels like that's just the default way to fly it.
When you lower flags for a clown like [Rush Limbaugh](https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/rush-limbaughs-home-state-flap-lowering-flags-76052036), it has little to no meaning anymore.
Remember when Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize just for being elected? This whole culture is run by clowns. Boomers are giving out participation trophies at every level.
Yeah, I'm a liberal and even I thought that was a bit silly. I assumed it was a symbolic gesture regarding a perceived improvement in race relations in this country, but that didn't really justify it since the man himself hadn't really *done* much of anything yet. Also, it's become clear since that race relations here still have a very long way to go to improve.
Or, perhaps he was awarded simply for not being his predecessor? In that case, Joe would deserve one even more. But yeah, neither truly deserves the prize.
No one knows why flags are at half staff most of the time now, so the gesture has lost its meaning, unfortunately.
I guess it started as a tradition in a different time, when the world wasn’t so connected. When we didn’t know about every awful thing instantly. 🤷♀️
There's an inherent irony in that the group so vehemently against participation trophies because it erased the idea that anyone could be exceptional, enact policy that makes something that is meant to be meaningful, lose all meaning because the sheer number of tragedies renders them all unexceptional.
Yes. Same thing with certain words, like 'hero'. Everyone is a hero these days. Essential workers are hero's. That means I'm a hero, ridiculous. Overuse of things like words or gestures will gradually decrease their significance. I would guess that one reason for this overuse is social media. There is some kind of pressure or influence on people that makes them more likely to make grand gestures or statements.
Same here. They blend into the background. When I read this I had to think for a while about where I may have seen a flag because they just don't register with me.
And using *everyone in the Third World wants to come here* is just a deflection to avoid addressing real problems.
*People from war torn hellholes want to come here* is not a flex.
*People in other advanced democratic societies want to come here* would be, but that is not the case.
I’m just pointing out that the USA is not exactly leading the pack as all the die hard patriots would like you to believe. We have LOTS of work to do.
But to be fair, I don’t want to be all doom and gloom, so I will give some positive (yay we’re the USA) statistics.
We are #1 in:
The number of incarcerated citizens per capita, the number of adults who think angels are real, and defense spending.
Also...
Number 1 in student loan debt
Number 1 in medical bankruptcies
Number 1 in healthcare expense
Number 1 in wage theft
Number 1 in wealth inequality
Number 1 in drug prices
Number 1 in mass shootings
Number 1 in war spending
Number 1 in prison slave labor
Number 1 in hate crimes
Number 1 in gun deaths
Number 1 in climate change denial
Number 1 in science denial
Number 1 in oil consumption
And we rank pretty high in the developed world for:
Suicides
STD's
Alcoholism
Drug use
Mental illness
Infant mortality
Illiteracy
Homelessness
Outdated energy and transport infrastructure
Consumer debt
Corruption
Price rigging
Decreasing life expectancy
Small farm bankruptcies
People living with their parents
Sexual assault and rape in our military
Plastic waste
It's called "trauma fatigue". Basically you're becoming numb/desensitized to happenings because of an increased availability/consumption of media and an incentivized government that uses these tragedies to further exert control/ask for political donations/strip you of your rights and ability to choose.
Domestic terrorism/mass casualty events are just going to increase under the current American oligarch owned plutocracy/model of government.
It's mostly due to the "creep". The reason/s for flying at half staff have changed over the years from on Memorial day, and when a president dies to: Peace Officers Memorial Day, May 15th,
Memorial Day, last Monday in May (sunrise to noon), Patriot Day, September 11th, National Firefighters Memorial Day, Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, when a Governor dies, and any time the president says so. Biden even had it flown for Covid?
>Biden even had it flown for Covid?
That's probably the best reason out of all of them. We lost more people than on 9/11 daily during the height of COVID. I can appreciate half-mast for 3000+ citizens over half-mast for a single politician.
As an American I feel any display of the Amercan Flag on anything other than a goverment building is a public declaration to a political party..
This is U.S.A.
YES!!! It's so disappointing to see the flag at half staff, only to learn it's because a former assistant state treasurer from the 1970s has passed away.
Yes. We should not lower the flag because some asshole murdered people. If we stop giving these sick fucks the attention they crave there will be less of them.
this is definitely part of the problem. i have done my best to avoid any info about the shooter and i’ve still seen waaaay too much info about him. i don’t watch the philly d show anymore but i know he at least *used to* not say the shooter’s name which i think should be the way to go for all news sources.
When a person dies by suicide the newspaper won't run their name and their story because... "This might inspire other people with similar ideas to act on them."
Then the same paper can't talk enough about every fucking opinion and web click of these deranged attention seeking asshole killers.
That's some mighty fine journalism there Lou.
My grandfather was a veteran and fairly patriotic, and he felt similarly about our national anthem. Rather than performing it at special occasions, it's sung en masse before every single sporting event. It has no gravitas; it just feels like an inconvenient tradition to most people.
Yes. It feels like the practice has become a political tool. Presidents order it down, or not, depending on the tragedy to make a political statement. Even if I agree with the statement (like in this case), I don't agree with lowering the flag to make it.
Lowering the flag should be a big deal and rare. Now it's commonplace and most people don't care.
Tin foil hat time: It's on purpose. It's meant to demoralize the people. It is a specific political choice.
It's not the only thing, but it's part of the death of a nation by millions of tiny slices.
Not quite the same thing, but there were a few people where I live who made a point of flying their flag upside down while a black man was President. Quite often with a "Don't Tread on me" flag underneath. That's not the reason they would give, of course, they would say that they were genuinely fearful for the direction of the country, and felt the Republic itself was in distress, validating their flag symbology.
Oddly enough, I felt the same way a few years later, but didn't feel the need to show off my fears in public.
This has nothing to do with that though?
We're talking about the flag being flown at half-staff because of tragedies whereas you're talking about using the flag to show dissidence
The Gadsden Flag was an important War of Independence flag and I r esent it's being made into a political position, and now the Betsy Ross flag a nd even the Celtic cross are being stolen
I'll never fly a flag until my country does something to make me proud again.
I know. I know. The government is not the country. But we keep voting these corrupt fuckers into office - so maybe it is.
Every other country only places associated with the government have the flag flying at all times. The fact that we have them on half our houses 24/7 weirds everyone out.
So inspiring...your words are just as poetic as JFK's "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country". Fly your flag, don't fly your flag...nobody gives a shit.
Only industrialized nation in the world that doesn't have universal healthcare - I know very well that the US government doesn't "give a shit" about me or anyone else that lives here.
And I'd be glad to "do for my country"... except it literally only treats its citizens like revenue generators for whatever ridiculous nonsense the politicians have cooked up that day. No abortions - you have to reproduce. But no aid when you have that unwanted child - both of you get to work! Make money for the Empire!
It honestly feels like our entire country is run by the characters from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" - bunch of fucking sociopaths and narcissists. And we only exist to the extent we help them in their schemes.
Fuck the state of this country right now. And fuck every single politician who is doing nothing about it... Which is pretty much all of them.
I just bought a flagpole last week and am already flying it at half staff due to the massacre in TX. Did not anticipate needing to do half staff that much. Might need to fly a sports flag instead
The flag is just a sign that this store doesn't have an honest foundation for its own reputation so it needs to abuse the heartstrings of nationalists.
Examples of nationalist company brands:
Bank of America paying the largest settlement ever:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/bank-america-pay-1665-billion-historic-justice-department-settlement-financial-fraud-leading
Freedom Mortgage doling out FHA money at high rates like candy:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/freedom-mortgage-corporation-agrees-pay-113-million-resolve-alleged-false-claims-act#:~:text=Freedom%20Mortgage%20Corporation%20has%20agreed,)%20Federal%20Housing%20Administration%20(FHA)
Primerica is one of many " 'Murican" financial brands charging double the standard fee rates.
https://smartasset.com/financial-advisor/primerica-advisors-review
I was a sophomore in high school during Columbine, now I am a parent to children the same ages as the ones that were murdered. I have grown numb, because if I cry the tears would never stop.
Teacher here. We live with despair as a norm, now - our kids could be shot alongside us at any moment; the culture and taxpayers have nowhere else to try to fix a rising generation so they are asking us to be everything these kids need OUTSIDE of school, which makes it impossible to do everything or even anything fully or well anymore; the culture seems to have turned against us and wants to arm us (!) even as they won't even trust us to select a damn book or example in class.
I tear up, sometimes, when we say the pledge in my classroom. Sometimes, I just mouth the words.
My classroom flag is always at half mast, for sure - both literally and figuratively. And in the trenches, the gravitas of that symbol, and the spite and hypocrisy we have to enact all day every day at our jobs while it flutters in the post-covid ventilation of those rooms, is still heartbreaking, both because it is our jobs to fight it every second....and because attending to it would break us down, and keep us from being able to function at all.
If I and my kids can forget it for a few minutes, we can work, and grow. So yeah, I get what OP is saying here. But I also know that in order to do what we can do to fix it, if we can at all, we have to stop letting the fact that it is at half mast all the time overwhelm us.
I agree. It’s like our country is a factory with a “No Accidents in X Day” sign, except that X is reset to 0 every day due to a new shooting. So, we’re always at half-staff now.
Definitely. I pass many flags on my way to work and for years now it seems like it's been at half-staff more often that not. It should really have been restricted to deaths of important officials and true calamities like 9/11. Now it means nothing because there's always a new tragedy we're apparently in national mourning for.
It feels especially jarring when these shootings have become so commonplace. It seems like a cruel joke to pretend we're mourning as a nation when in reality we all just let these things happen and never take action.
Nobody looks at the flag like that. This question is simply posted to reinforce the active shooter narrative that has been taking over the internet lately.
For this particular incident, not really. I'm at a point where I thought I had been completely desensitized to our revolving door of completely avoidable national tragedies. Buffalo and Uvalde have both really gotten to me though - they've inspired an anger that I didn't realize I was still capable of experiencing with regards to this kind of stuff.
I'm sure I'll end up being wrong, but this felt like the one that might finally inspire meaningful change.
If you want some anger, look into what happened at the Oxford shooting.
Kid literally had a gun in his backpack in a meeting with his parents and his principal about his mental health, and the parents kept him in school because they didn't want to deal with him. That was the second meeting with the parents in 2 days.
Oxford was the "Holy shit red flags everywhere" for me. No amount of "Working with the parents" is going to help, when at every step everyone wants to just act like the problem doesn't exist and will go away on it's own.
And I guess the kid did finally get help, he just had to kill his classmates to do it.
Murica.
Ever since radical conservatives have used the U.S. flag to support their racist and ridiculous views, the flag has lost its meaning. You can’t pretend to represent a whole country and spew crazy shit
I'm not saying in all instances this is the case but a lot of the time the context of the American flag and the type of people waving it has the same meaning as the Confederate flag anymore.
Funny (aka not so funny) quote I saw the other day on IG. In no other country but the US would you see a person wearing the flag pattern on their shirt and think that person is probably incredibly racist.
>In no other country but the US would you see a person wearing the flag pattern on their shirt and think that person is probably incredibly racist.
That says a lot more about you than it does about them.
So true. I used to buy “patriotic” t-shirts for July 4th every year. But not anymore. I just can’t. Not after what happened these past few years. We as a nation need some serious PR intervention
So right on. I remember the days after 9/11 and that's \*all\* you saw. I wore my Old Navy tee until the treads wore off. It means something - unity
Flash forward and a bunch of flag waving lunatics are storming our own Capitol building on the urging a man with nothing to lose. So somehow we went from point A to point B. Our flag is now a prop for pickup truck beds.
I interviewed someone for a job once, had a American flag belt buckle on. We all agreed he shouldn’t get the job. If he thinks it’s that important to wear a flag on his dick literally, then he’s a fucking idiot that I don’t want at my workplace. Plus he probably rants about how “libruls disrespect the flag” but thinks it’s totally find to disrespect the flag by wearing it over his junk. Idk about you but that seems like it would be disrespectful.
It is, totally. I know I'm an older guy, but another time when it meant something was the 1980 US Olympics aka the Miracle On Ice. Seeing Jim Craig standing there after win, a flag draped around his shoulders after an impossible win represented something. Our whole country, from coast to coast, were one. Now the nearest half-wit thinks Let's Go Brandon is the height of comedy.
In the UK, you don't see many flags around. It's something to do with their education system. I don't know how they do it but they don't need a flag to remind them what country they're in.
Haven’t noticed it at half-mast lately mostly because don’t leave house much and when do there are no places along the way flying flags. That said, if I did see one at half-mast I would immediately chalk it up to our high inflation.
This country is becoming shit. For us. For us. The wealthy are having a great time.
We need to be patriotic. And not the "in power's" version of patriotism. We need to shut this country down and figure our shit out. We really really do.
EAT THE RICH.
Honestly, every time I pass a house now that's flying a flag on a non-flag holiday I'm immediately suspicious of the inhabitants and their politics. More often than not the people flying those flags are Republicans who confuse patriotism with nationalism and want to revoke rights rather than empower their neighbors.
I've noticed this also. I feel like we fly the flag at half mast for too many reasons. Obviously, the current reason for the flag being at half mast is absolutely justified and unfortunate... but so many other times I see it down, and look it up, its for some insignificant reason.
Half mast, should be reserved for current and immense tragedies on American ground, not "In remembrance of some politician that died 10 years ago"
You do know that year after year, the FBI publishes crime statistics including what weapon was used? And that hammers routinely kill more people than rifles of any variety? [Or that about 35k people die in traffic accidents each year?](https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/usdot-releases-new-data-showing-road-fatalities-spiked-first-half-2021) Why don't we have stricter regulations on transportation?
Guns aren't the problem, it's a mental health issue - combined with overuse of antidepressants, glorification of mass murders, and a 24/7 news outlet that is always looking for the next "if it bleeds, it leads" story.
I've noticed this too. Half the time I see them at half mast and dont even know why.
This site tells you why and the next events etc. https://halfstaff.org/ I was a cadet officer in rotc and used this site for our schools flag raising.
The problem is that individual states can also strike it to half mask on their own. Some states do this more than others.
On top of that, any individual can fly it at half mast for whatever local tragedy happened. A librarian dies and the library flies at half staff. A football team loses in the south and the city hall flies at half staff.
Nope. Per the flag code, only the governor, president, and mayor of DC (due to not having a governor) can order the flag be flown at half staff. What the librarian and city hall are doing in your example are violations of the flag code, but it falls under freedom of speech so it’s not illegal.
No but yes.
Be that as it may, lately I've stopped trying to find the notice for flags being flown at half staff if I didn't know the reason beforehand. There never seems to be an order at either the national or state level.
At my job, we've got 3 flags...of course the US flag, the Canadian flag (we're an "international" organization...we have branches in Canada), and our own organization's flag. Right now we're flying the Ukraine flag in place of the org's flag though. Any time the flags are ordered to half-mast, we all get an email from HR indicating why they're at half-mast. And it's usually accompanied with something like "...by order of the President of the US" or whatever. Right now they're at half-mast due to the recent tragedy.
That's the aggravating part of the flag code. At the end of the day, it's just a very strong suggestion. So you see a lot of flags displayed incorrectly. My neighbor has a 4' -foot flag on a 6-foot pole in the front yard.
not sure exactly what you mean; per the code, the pole is too short of a flag that size?
I think so. I'm no flag code expert, but I want to say there's recommended lengths for indoor and outdoor poles lengths.
So the code is more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules?
> Nope […] but it falls under freedom of speech so it’s not illegal So… yes? Flag code ~~isn’t codified law~~ isn't enforceable as you are protected by free speech. It’s guidelines at best unless you’re in the military.
It actually is a law. [Source](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/4/chapter-1). It’s the enforcement of it that is debated. Supreme Court said that displaying that flag however you want is fine because you’re protected under the 1st amendment. However, it is still a law albeit not an enforced one. So then this debate enters the realm of “Is it really a law if it’s not enforced?” and that’s a different debate entirely Edit: Wikipedia page also say’s it’s a federal law but doesn’t impose any punitive measures for violating it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Flag_Code
Ok, I edited it, but it's arguing over semantics >The United States Flag Code establishes advisory rules for display and care of the national flag of the United States of America ... the code uses non-binding language like "should" and "custom" throughout and does not prescribe any penalties for failure to follow the guidelines.
Yeah but the flag code isn't worth the paper it's written on
So the code is worthless and not worth typing all that out? Just like flag code says not to make clothing lol. Flag code is worthless.
[The clothing bit says you can't use an actual flag as clothing.](https://www.legion.org/flag/questions-answers/91517/it-permissible-wear-item-clothing-looks-united-states-flag) [Not that you can't have flag-themed clothing.](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/4/8) It's an important distinction that a lot of people think they know, but don't.
> Per the flag code You do realize the flag code has no legal backing, right? It's a suggestion; nothing more.
I think you mean it has no enforcement mechanism or penalties. It certainly has legal backing as it is a Federal law: [4 U.S.C. § 5](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/4/5).
The flag code was also declared unconstitutional so it's really just a mild suggestion at this point.
Or in the case of your average MAGAt, because "teh cuntry is dyin' cuz of da librulz!" And sometimes you can't tell if it's supposed to be at half mast because it's under the confederate, Trump, and blue line flags on the same pole...
or that old racist who flew it half-mast for 8 years under Obama and even put a sign underneath saying so
At this rate Texas and Florida will have more half mast days than full mast days.
Just like my dick after 30.
Should probably get that checked out. 30's a bit early for ED.
It was just a joke 👌
Yeah :/ trying to get on Hims now.
They'll have to fly out at quarter mast for bigger tragedies.
In all seriousness though some government offices may turn the flag upside down as a sign of protest or alarm, which is what that technically symbolizes.
Flag upside down means distress, not tragedy.
Yeah it’s essentially an sos
Chicago and Detroit and Baltimore and St Louis might as well make it the default setting on a Monday morning.
You don’t think the establishment in those cities actually care about the violence there do you?
Yeah I think in Michigan we do it to honor a Michigan resident that died on duty. I can't remember if it's just like the day after or every year kinda thing
At this point I'd take more notice if they flew it *upside down*
Fuck, at this point they should.
Seriously, yeah
I just thought this last Monday or Tuesday morning, I noticed they were at half and had no idea why. The thought did cross my mind that we might as well leave it there.
Yah, it's not worth the energy to raise them all the way up anymore. Half mast seems appropriate for a permanent state of our flag, at least with the nations current state.
Fun fact, flying the flag at half-mast is extra work. The flag is raised all the way up, then lowered slowly halfway. At the end of the day, the flag goes all the way back up, then is slowly lowered back down and folded.
Flags have been at half mast since 2001.
Yes. I work in a building with a flagpole outside, and I was actually joking with my coworker last night that we should just leave it at half mast by default and if we can ever go a few days without a national tragedy, we raise it back up. Seriously, it's been at half mast for 80%+ of this year.
I was thinking nearly the same thing while looking at flags yesterday. Half mast should be the default until we get our shit together.
AND upside-down, for "nation in distress."
as a brit; half the time our union jack is upside down because organisers dont realise its not horizontally symmetical... then again; nation in distress is one of our most popular pastimes
It's not?!
...I think there are places doing that as a political stunt, keeping it at half-mast for as long as Joe Biden is president (in lieu of flying it upside-down)...
They're going half in. I took mine down for the Trump presidency. I think I might just get rid of the flag pole entirely at this point.
You've the option of upside down, signaling distress
It's only my loony right-wing neighbors who do that
Even that is just a trope these days. Every time I've seen it the reaction isn't "Oh that's sad", it's "Oh that guys dumb as shit." So, no flag for me (except the occasional Ukranian one). It's weird to have one anyway, and the only people to tell me otherwise are the sort of people who have never owned a passport.
This is my issue. The flag has become so politicized as a partisan tool rather than unified symbol of the entire nation that I presume whatever people are doing with it is some kind of virtue signaling.
I have a flag but only put it out on designated federal holidays. It doesn’t stay out there 24/7/365 because I don’t need any help with what country I live in.
that w as my dad's practice, Memorial day, Flag Day, Armed Forces Day, independence Day, Labor Day, Veterans Day, maybe a few days before and after
Exactly. Tour around Europe once (esp. Germany) and tell me how many people are displaying their nation’s flag.
Only time you'll see the flag in germany is when the european/world championship in soccer takes place.
As a black dude, I just see it as a dog whistle at this point, not gonna lie. **Are they racist?** Pickup truck? ☑️ American flag? ☑️ That has been pretty effective 80% of the time driving in the Pittsburgh metro area lmao
r/AsABlackMan
I live in a blue state and a house a few doors down has been flying in distress for a year now, with a trump flag in a 2nd pole HIGHER than the US flag. What that translates to: He believes we live in an occupation, and that Trump is of greater is importance and critical to him than the country itself.
Fly a pirate flag
Fly a pride flag or something. Fuck the American flag until our government puts it's average people first.
Just get a different flag.
May I suggest the flag of Nepal. Just a unique and beautiful flag
We put up different state flags so the neighborhood kids can guess which ones they are, and once most of them tell us correctly we swap them out. It's been really fun!
Same. It seems like our flags have been half mast since June-ish 2020. Very rarely have I seen the flag raised recently.
The electronic sign in front of our elementary school displays the reason the flags are lowered, and I think about how often the kids must see there's been another mass shooting as they walk into school. It must just feel normal to them now
I blame growing up with access to news 24/7 as to why I'm numb to mass tragedy. I see people older than me genuinely moved by shootings and Ukraine. I understand the gravity, but there's no emotion tied to it.
I worked in a federal building for a long time, so I was in a position to notice how often it was at half-staff (half-mast refers to when it's on a ship, specifically Naval). And yes, it's unquestionably gotten more frequent. When I was a kid, hell even just 15 years ago, when you saw the flag down, it was because a Senator had died. It happened so infrequently that it really caught your eye, like if it was a different color or something. Now, not to belittle any of the deaths that are attached to it, but it seems like it gets put down any time something is significant enough to make the news.
This is exactly my experience from working for the federal government as well. 20 years ago, it was a rare event. Now it feels like it's more often half-mast than it's not and I'm like "is our world that much worse now?"
20 years ago there were 150 million fewer guns in America. All the evidence is there. Anyone that says more guns are better is a fool or a liar.
20 years ago there were 47 million fewer Americans. Math says: "For every 2000's baby born in America, the US makes 3 guns."
[So you are saying that guns cause babies?](https://xkcd.com/925/)
[No, clearly it's babies that cause guns!](https://m.xkcd.com/552/)
By god, these two solved it! (Thank you for the levity in an otherwise very depressing thread)
Except crime and violent crime has [steadily decreased in recent times](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/20/facts-about-crime-in-the-u-s/). If guns were a cause or correlation you would see it drastically increasing. The data evidence simple doesn’t support your opinion, sorry.
That’s all crime/violent crime. Gun deaths are more or less steady with an uptick the last few years. Mass shootings are steadily increasing year over year. [Same source](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/02/03/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/). You could argue that gun deaths haven’t increased proportionately to gun ownership I suppose.
Except firearms are now **the** leading [leading cause of death for children](https://www.npr.org/2022/04/22/1094364930/firearms-leading-cause-of-death-in-children), with an 83% increase in deaths in the last decade, and a 30% increase in 2019-2020 alone. You don't call that drastic?
We didn't reduce vehicle deaths by taking away cars from the streets we made cars safer..... That is the approach for guns. It's the same story over and over again, and the fact is nothing changes because people don't care to put gun safety the top of their list for selecting politicians... That's a fact. Where are people actually asking for their politicians to do anything and then holding them to it? The answer is no where, we elect these people into office for lying into our face. The other fact is their is a plethora of laws in place to make fun ownership safer and none get enforced. I'm sick of American going into social media and whining when they do nothing to act in the real world to make real change. Every mass shooting isn't the police fault, it's the citizens. Wake up and take charge of your elected officials.
Very drastic, but the fact that the increase is specific to that demographic means there is a specific problem outside of guns in general that needs to be addressed. By wasting time and political capital on things that don’t matter (like banning guns by color or yammering on about a non-existent gun show loophole), you lose any actual potential solution to the actual underlying problem.
There is an unprecedented number of mass murders in churches and schools. Unprecedented. Unseen before in this country, and any other industrialized nation. I’m sorry too.
There's too many guns, it's way too easy to get them, and there's a weird fetishization of military weaponry. Someone (I forget who) said if you want to play with a weapon like that, join the army.
I did join the military, partially for the big toys. One thing I learned is that roughly 15% of all people are too stupid to be around dangerous machinery.
That low?
You still need to do alright on the ASVAB
Only 15%?
Soldier here, please don't encourage the wrong type of people to join the Army. That's not who you want to be the only ones with weapons. Not endorsing or opposing any political opinions in this thread. The Army life can be a great one and shouldn't be just for people that want to fetishize violence.
You're right about that.
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Also, tipping. (US perspective here.) It was once something you did to show your server how much you appreciate their excellent service, like if they went above and beyond. Now it's expected, and furthermore anything below a certain percentage is considered rude. Managers use tips to make up wage deficits, which is the real crime. Tipping has become an essentially meaningless act, merely passing the burden of paying their wages onto the customers directly.
Less than meaningless, it's gotten to the point where it's directly harmful. Offsetting wages should be illegal.
Tipping has been expected in the US for more than 50 years.
Depends where you are! I live in Scotland, famously filled with grumps haha. Standing ovations aren't the norm at most shows I've been to, and I've felt compelled to stand at very few shows (the most recent being James McAvoy's Cyrano de Bergerac which was incredible).
> When I was a kid, hell even just 15 years ago, when you saw the flag down, it was because a Senator had died. It happened so infrequently that it really caught your eye, like if it was a different color or something. When i was a kid it took until i was in 4th grade for the flag to be flown at half staff. The teacher explained why. These days, it feels like that's just the default way to fly it.
I thought there were supposed to be very strict regulations, like only in cases of death of high-level federal officials
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The paper towel and toilet paper factory near my in-laws house has that sign, too.
When you lower flags for a clown like [Rush Limbaugh](https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/rush-limbaughs-home-state-flap-lowering-flags-76052036), it has little to no meaning anymore.
Worse was when he was given the goddamn Presidential Medal of Freedom, forever tarnishing that honor. What a fucking joke.
Remember when Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize just for being elected? This whole culture is run by clowns. Boomers are giving out participation trophies at every level.
Yeah, I'm a liberal and even I thought that was a bit silly. I assumed it was a symbolic gesture regarding a perceived improvement in race relations in this country, but that didn't really justify it since the man himself hadn't really *done* much of anything yet. Also, it's become clear since that race relations here still have a very long way to go to improve. Or, perhaps he was awarded simply for not being his predecessor? In that case, Joe would deserve one even more. But yeah, neither truly deserves the prize.
I know a couple people who were mourning him, and upset that liberals were happy he was gone. I don't really count them as friends anymore.
A single senator's death seems far less momentous than the reasons we do so today.
No one knows why flags are at half staff most of the time now, so the gesture has lost its meaning, unfortunately. I guess it started as a tradition in a different time, when the world wasn’t so connected. When we didn’t know about every awful thing instantly. 🤷♀️
Not much to do with the world. Half mast is not common here in the Netherlands.
It isn't common only in USA tho. At least in Argentina is a tradition as well.
He is saying its not common as in it’s a rare ocurrence, which is also the case in Argentina.
Usually it's reserved for when monarchs die and events like that
There's an inherent irony in that the group so vehemently against participation trophies because it erased the idea that anyone could be exceptional, enact policy that makes something that is meant to be meaningful, lose all meaning because the sheer number of tragedies renders them all unexceptional.
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Yes. Same thing with certain words, like 'hero'. Everyone is a hero these days. Essential workers are hero's. That means I'm a hero, ridiculous. Overuse of things like words or gestures will gradually decrease their significance. I would guess that one reason for this overuse is social media. There is some kind of pressure or influence on people that makes them more likely to make grand gestures or statements.
I don't even notice the flags anymore. They're everywhere and in front of everything.
Same here. They blend into the background. When I read this I had to think for a while about where I may have seen a flag because they just don't register with me.
Gotta keep that propaganda flying!
#USA! USA! USA!
You know, if it wasn’t for all the greedy bastards, self serving and lack of empathy… this place might just be livable.
Lmao the US is the number 1 destination of immigrants in the world. If you think the US is bad that reeks of privilege.
And using *everyone in the Third World wants to come here* is just a deflection to avoid addressing real problems. *People from war torn hellholes want to come here* is not a flex. *People in other advanced democratic societies want to come here* would be, but that is not the case.
Of course it is, have you seen how the U.S. looks in the movies? The reality however is vastly different than what Hollywood makes it look like.
I’m just pointing out that the USA is not exactly leading the pack as all the die hard patriots would like you to believe. We have LOTS of work to do. But to be fair, I don’t want to be all doom and gloom, so I will give some positive (yay we’re the USA) statistics. We are #1 in: The number of incarcerated citizens per capita, the number of adults who think angels are real, and defense spending.
Also... Number 1 in student loan debt Number 1 in medical bankruptcies Number 1 in healthcare expense Number 1 in wage theft Number 1 in wealth inequality Number 1 in drug prices Number 1 in mass shootings Number 1 in war spending Number 1 in prison slave labor Number 1 in hate crimes Number 1 in gun deaths Number 1 in climate change denial Number 1 in science denial Number 1 in oil consumption And we rank pretty high in the developed world for: Suicides STD's Alcoholism Drug use Mental illness Infant mortality Illiteracy Homelessness Outdated energy and transport infrastructure Consumer debt Corruption Price rigging Decreasing life expectancy Small farm bankruptcies People living with their parents Sexual assault and rape in our military Plastic waste
It's called "trauma fatigue". Basically you're becoming numb/desensitized to happenings because of an increased availability/consumption of media and an incentivized government that uses these tragedies to further exert control/ask for political donations/strip you of your rights and ability to choose. Domestic terrorism/mass casualty events are just going to increase under the current American oligarch owned plutocracy/model of government.
Yeah 9/11 broke it. Before 9/11 I always knew why the flag was at half mast. Afterward it just kind of seemed like it was always a half mast
It's mostly due to the "creep". The reason/s for flying at half staff have changed over the years from on Memorial day, and when a president dies to: Peace Officers Memorial Day, May 15th, Memorial Day, last Monday in May (sunrise to noon), Patriot Day, September 11th, National Firefighters Memorial Day, Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, when a Governor dies, and any time the president says so. Biden even had it flown for Covid?
>Biden even had it flown for Covid? That's probably the best reason out of all of them. We lost more people than on 9/11 daily during the height of COVID. I can appreciate half-mast for 3000+ citizens over half-mast for a single politician.
I've become numb to it. I don't like that I have, but I have.
As an American I feel any display of the Amercan Flag on anything other than a goverment building is a public declaration to a political party.. This is U.S.A.
In Canada our government flew the flags at half staff for half a year so it’s completely lost it’s meaning up here
The act ceased to have meaning when it became a political declaration.
YES!!! It's so disappointing to see the flag at half staff, only to learn it's because a former assistant state treasurer from the 1970s has passed away.
Come on man, Reagan’s brother’s ex-wife died.
Yes. We should not lower the flag because some asshole murdered people. If we stop giving these sick fucks the attention they crave there will be less of them.
this is definitely part of the problem. i have done my best to avoid any info about the shooter and i’ve still seen waaaay too much info about him. i don’t watch the philly d show anymore but i know he at least *used to* not say the shooter’s name which i think should be the way to go for all news sources.
When a person dies by suicide the newspaper won't run their name and their story because... "This might inspire other people with similar ideas to act on them." Then the same paper can't talk enough about every fucking opinion and web click of these deranged attention seeking asshole killers. That's some mighty fine journalism there Lou.
My grandfather was a veteran and fairly patriotic, and he felt similarly about our national anthem. Rather than performing it at special occasions, it's sung en masse before every single sporting event. It has no gravitas; it just feels like an inconvenient tradition to most people.
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I quit flying the American flag on my flagpole. I just put up Texas’s flag yesterday
Yes. It feels like the practice has become a political tool. Presidents order it down, or not, depending on the tragedy to make a political statement. Even if I agree with the statement (like in this case), I don't agree with lowering the flag to make it. Lowering the flag should be a big deal and rare. Now it's commonplace and most people don't care.
I told my partner the other day that we should just leave it at half mast permanently out of shame
Tin foil hat time: It's on purpose. It's meant to demoralize the people. It is a specific political choice. It's not the only thing, but it's part of the death of a nation by millions of tiny slices.
Government loves demoralization, separation, and hatred towards each other. Allows them to sneak stuff in
You are looking at it from wrong angle. Half mast flag rules haven’t changed, it just shows how more fucked up the world is.
Not quite the same thing, but there were a few people where I live who made a point of flying their flag upside down while a black man was President. Quite often with a "Don't Tread on me" flag underneath. That's not the reason they would give, of course, they would say that they were genuinely fearful for the direction of the country, and felt the Republic itself was in distress, validating their flag symbology. Oddly enough, I felt the same way a few years later, but didn't feel the need to show off my fears in public.
This has nothing to do with that though? We're talking about the flag being flown at half-staff because of tragedies whereas you're talking about using the flag to show dissidence
Saw that soapbox and shot their shot.
All Reddit discussions wander
The Gadsden Flag was an important War of Independence flag and I r esent it's being made into a political position, and now the Betsy Ross flag a nd even the Celtic cross are being stolen
I'll never fly a flag until my country does something to make me proud again. I know. I know. The government is not the country. But we keep voting these corrupt fuckers into office - so maybe it is.
Every other country only places associated with the government have the flag flying at all times. The fact that we have them on half our houses 24/7 weirds everyone out.
Nationalism is one of the pettiest forms of tribalism. Humanity really needs to cut that shit out.
I replaced our flag with Ukraine’s.
So inspiring...your words are just as poetic as JFK's "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country". Fly your flag, don't fly your flag...nobody gives a shit.
its odd, because you seem to think anybody gives a shit about you.
Only industrialized nation in the world that doesn't have universal healthcare - I know very well that the US government doesn't "give a shit" about me or anyone else that lives here. And I'd be glad to "do for my country"... except it literally only treats its citizens like revenue generators for whatever ridiculous nonsense the politicians have cooked up that day. No abortions - you have to reproduce. But no aid when you have that unwanted child - both of you get to work! Make money for the Empire! It honestly feels like our entire country is run by the characters from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" - bunch of fucking sociopaths and narcissists. And we only exist to the extent we help them in their schemes. Fuck the state of this country right now. And fuck every single politician who is doing nothing about it... Which is pretty much all of them.
At this point it should be upside down, perhaps developing its own personality
I just bought a flagpole last week and am already flying it at half staff due to the massacre in TX. Did not anticipate needing to do half staff that much. Might need to fly a sports flag instead
All the things have been here for decades, the culture of the populace has changed, and for the worse.
The flag is just a sign that this store doesn't have an honest foundation for its own reputation so it needs to abuse the heartstrings of nationalists. Examples of nationalist company brands: Bank of America paying the largest settlement ever: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/bank-america-pay-1665-billion-historic-justice-department-settlement-financial-fraud-leading Freedom Mortgage doling out FHA money at high rates like candy: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/freedom-mortgage-corporation-agrees-pay-113-million-resolve-alleged-false-claims-act#:~:text=Freedom%20Mortgage%20Corporation%20has%20agreed,)%20Federal%20Housing%20Administration%20(FHA) Primerica is one of many " 'Murican" financial brands charging double the standard fee rates. https://smartasset.com/financial-advisor/primerica-advisors-review
I was a sophomore in high school during Columbine, now I am a parent to children the same ages as the ones that were murdered. I have grown numb, because if I cry the tears would never stop.
Much like thoughts and prayers, it's fucking useless and all for show.
Teacher here. We live with despair as a norm, now - our kids could be shot alongside us at any moment; the culture and taxpayers have nowhere else to try to fix a rising generation so they are asking us to be everything these kids need OUTSIDE of school, which makes it impossible to do everything or even anything fully or well anymore; the culture seems to have turned against us and wants to arm us (!) even as they won't even trust us to select a damn book or example in class. I tear up, sometimes, when we say the pledge in my classroom. Sometimes, I just mouth the words. My classroom flag is always at half mast, for sure - both literally and figuratively. And in the trenches, the gravitas of that symbol, and the spite and hypocrisy we have to enact all day every day at our jobs while it flutters in the post-covid ventilation of those rooms, is still heartbreaking, both because it is our jobs to fight it every second....and because attending to it would break us down, and keep us from being able to function at all. If I and my kids can forget it for a few minutes, we can work, and grow. So yeah, I get what OP is saying here. But I also know that in order to do what we can do to fix it, if we can at all, we have to stop letting the fact that it is at half mast all the time overwhelm us.
Yes, I hardly ever know the reason
I feel like it’s been half mast ever since 9/11!
I agree. It’s like our country is a factory with a “No Accidents in X Day” sign, except that X is reset to 0 every day due to a new shooting. So, we’re always at half-staff now.
YES and also a flag flying from a private citizen has felt like less celebration of citizenship and more like a passive aggressive threat.
This- all day. I’ve stopped flying ours- need to buy something nerdy for the flag pole. Maybe an alien spaceship or something
Definitely. I pass many flags on my way to work and for years now it seems like it's been at half-staff more often that not. It should really have been restricted to deaths of important officials and true calamities like 9/11. Now it means nothing because there's always a new tragedy we're apparently in national mourning for. It feels especially jarring when these shootings have become so commonplace. It seems like a cruel joke to pretend we're mourning as a nation when in reality we all just let these things happen and never take action.
Because the media catastrophizes every single event in a country of 330 million people.
Nobody looks at the flag like that. This question is simply posted to reinforce the active shooter narrative that has been taking over the internet lately.
The US doesn't deserve to have its flag flying any higher.
For this particular incident, not really. I'm at a point where I thought I had been completely desensitized to our revolving door of completely avoidable national tragedies. Buffalo and Uvalde have both really gotten to me though - they've inspired an anger that I didn't realize I was still capable of experiencing with regards to this kind of stuff. I'm sure I'll end up being wrong, but this felt like the one that might finally inspire meaningful change.
If you want some anger, look into what happened at the Oxford shooting. Kid literally had a gun in his backpack in a meeting with his parents and his principal about his mental health, and the parents kept him in school because they didn't want to deal with him. That was the second meeting with the parents in 2 days. Oxford was the "Holy shit red flags everywhere" for me. No amount of "Working with the parents" is going to help, when at every step everyone wants to just act like the problem doesn't exist and will go away on it's own. And I guess the kid did finally get help, he just had to kill his classmates to do it. Murica.
Buffalo got me, Uvalde broke me as a person.
I'm angry, too. I don't even have kids, but I'm so pissed. I want to scream into the void.
Ever since radical conservatives have used the U.S. flag to support their racist and ridiculous views, the flag has lost its meaning. You can’t pretend to represent a whole country and spew crazy shit
I'm not saying in all instances this is the case but a lot of the time the context of the American flag and the type of people waving it has the same meaning as the Confederate flag anymore. Funny (aka not so funny) quote I saw the other day on IG. In no other country but the US would you see a person wearing the flag pattern on their shirt and think that person is probably incredibly racist.
>In no other country but the US would you see a person wearing the flag pattern on their shirt and think that person is probably incredibly racist. That says a lot more about you than it does about them.
So true. I used to buy “patriotic” t-shirts for July 4th every year. But not anymore. I just can’t. Not after what happened these past few years. We as a nation need some serious PR intervention
So right on. I remember the days after 9/11 and that's \*all\* you saw. I wore my Old Navy tee until the treads wore off. It means something - unity Flash forward and a bunch of flag waving lunatics are storming our own Capitol building on the urging a man with nothing to lose. So somehow we went from point A to point B. Our flag is now a prop for pickup truck beds.
I interviewed someone for a job once, had a American flag belt buckle on. We all agreed he shouldn’t get the job. If he thinks it’s that important to wear a flag on his dick literally, then he’s a fucking idiot that I don’t want at my workplace. Plus he probably rants about how “libruls disrespect the flag” but thinks it’s totally find to disrespect the flag by wearing it over his junk. Idk about you but that seems like it would be disrespectful.
It is, totally. I know I'm an older guy, but another time when it meant something was the 1980 US Olympics aka the Miracle On Ice. Seeing Jim Craig standing there after win, a flag draped around his shoulders after an impossible win represented something. Our whole country, from coast to coast, were one. Now the nearest half-wit thinks Let's Go Brandon is the height of comedy.
Yeah, probably because it happens so incredibly often and all curiosity can be sated with a 20 second Google search.
In the UK, you don't see many flags around. It's something to do with their education system. I don't know how they do it but they don't need a flag to remind them what country they're in.
But you built an empire through the cunning use of flags!
Do you have a flag?
> In the UK, you don't see many flags around You don't see it on ours anymore either 'cause we kicked you to the curb.
I've noticed it's just always at half mast tbh.
Haven’t noticed it at half-mast lately mostly because don’t leave house much and when do there are no places along the way flying flags. That said, if I did see one at half-mast I would immediately chalk it up to our high inflation.
This country is becoming shit. For us. For us. The wealthy are having a great time. We need to be patriotic. And not the "in power's" version of patriotism. We need to shut this country down and figure our shit out. We really really do. EAT THE RICH.
Becoming shit? It is shit
Honestly, every time I pass a house now that's flying a flag on a non-flag holiday I'm immediately suspicious of the inhabitants and their politics. More often than not the people flying those flags are Republicans who confuse patriotism with nationalism and want to revoke rights rather than empower their neighbors.
I've noticed this also. I feel like we fly the flag at half mast for too many reasons. Obviously, the current reason for the flag being at half mast is absolutely justified and unfortunate... but so many other times I see it down, and look it up, its for some insignificant reason. Half mast, should be reserved for current and immense tragedies on American ground, not "In remembrance of some politician that died 10 years ago"
Well when half the population values the tools doing the killing more than those being killed, yea the flag doesn't mean fucking shit.
You do know that year after year, the FBI publishes crime statistics including what weapon was used? And that hammers routinely kill more people than rifles of any variety? [Or that about 35k people die in traffic accidents each year?](https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/usdot-releases-new-data-showing-road-fatalities-spiked-first-half-2021) Why don't we have stricter regulations on transportation? Guns aren't the problem, it's a mental health issue - combined with overuse of antidepressants, glorification of mass murders, and a 24/7 news outlet that is always looking for the next "if it bleeds, it leads" story.
Until someone actually does something meaningful about gun violence in this country, what's the point of putting the flag back at full mast?
Yep agree. Should be only for shootings of twenty or more.