Flags here don’t come down. They hang limp in the damp air, or they snap like whips when the wind shifts off the bay. Some are American, some Texan, some blue-striped “Back the Blue,” and a few still bear Trump’s name like he’s still sitting in the White House.
Every time I drive down Old 146, I count them like mile markers. It isn’t patriotism — not the kind I was raised to recognize. It’s branding. It’s staking a claim that doesn’t end at the edge of someone’s yard. These flags bleed out into the street, into the way people speak, into who they size up as friend or enemy.
I used to shrug it off, call it theater. But theater ends when the curtain drops. This doesn’t. January 6 proved that. I was there, and I know what it looked like when theater broke into reality.
That’s why the flags bother me. Not because cloth on a pole is dangerous by itself, but because it marks a refusal to let go. In Washington, I saw people climb walls with the same look in their eyes as the folks who still raise Trump banners nine months later. They don’t see it as losing. They see it as paused.