In a Monday piece, Salon’s Chauncey DeVega urged “people of conscience and true patriots” to fly their American flags upside down on Tuesday, the Fourth of July, “as a collective signal of our national distress” over Donald Trump’s presidency.
“America’s citizens have been traumatized, the national mood is sour, racism and bigotry are publicly resurgent, and political violence is on the rise,” declared DeVega. “Many of Trump’s supporters appear to live in an alternate reality created by their Great Leader and the right-wing propaganda machine…Through Trump’s presidency, they wish to impose their political cult on all other Americans.” In DeVega’s view, upside-down flags “would symbolize that Americans, as individuals and as a people, are much better than Donald Trump and what he represents.”
From DeVega’s piece (bolding added):
This July 4 will be the first with Donald Trump as president of the United States. The country is in distress. Donald Trump and the Republican Party are largely responsible.
They are trying to impose a “health care” bill that can reasonably be called a crime against humanity…
Trump and his 2016 presidential campaign are under federal investigation for conspiring with a foreign power to undermine American democracy…Whatever the investigation may reveal, this is an unprecedented event in American history.
The social safety net and the very idea of the commons have been targeted for destruction by Donald Trump and the Republican Party…
…Trump has debased the office of the presidency. The Republican Party and the corporate news media enable him…
[Upside-down flags] would signal that the United States is a country where the president is not above the law.
[They] would signal that Donald Trump does not represent the majority of American people.
[They] would signal that many Americans do not view Donald Trump as a legitimate president…
I am well aware that supporters of the Tea Party flew American flags upside down for several years, in what they perceived as patriotic protest against former President Barack Obama. But patriotism cannot be surrendered to the right-wingers, the zealots, the jingoists and the racists. It is time for the rest of us -- the vast majority, who support a pluralistic, forward-looking vision of America -- to reclaim it.
