Tuesday, November 2, 2021

Black Flags Raise Red Flags




My Twitter friend Melissa Quinn Amour drew my attention to this article from the Bucks County Courier Times which covers a number of small towns north of Philadelphia:

They’ve been popping up across the country for months, and now they’ve been spotted in Bucks County in places such as Perkasie, Plumstead, Buckingham, and Jamison.

The all-black American flags being flown by so-called local patriots apparently means “no quarter given” and may even imply a willingness to use (lethal) violence against perceived enemies, essentially any non-Trumper who threatens their washed out, retrograde vision of what the U.S. is supposed to look like, how they believe democracy is supposed to function, or what they think freedom is.

The article goes on to caution that the people who raise such flags won't necessarily engage in violence themselves. But I would have to suspect that anyone who raises such a flag has no trouble with Kyle Rittenhouse crossing state lines with an AR-15 style rifle, killing two people and calling it self-defense. These black flags raise red flags.

If Rittenhouse is acquitted and others are inspired to act in the same manner we will see more tolerance of such behavior and thus more black flags. And for what? Because Joe Biden won the election? Because vaccines save lives? Because they think JFK, Jr. will rise from the dead?

In a way I'm glad that people are raising black flags. Because they are telling us who they are and where they stand. In which case, those who of us who believe in reason must raise our voices and say without equivocation that will we not stand for violence and murder because our beliefs and opinions are contrary to what former President Trump tells them to accept at face value. 

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