In Which I Burn a Flag — But Only Symbolically

America exists and has always existed on two levels: The symbolic level in which we stand as a grand experiment in freedom and self government and the tangible level where we do the work of bringing that experiment to reality. Symbols have been crucial to the idea of America since before the beginning. The founders understood that. Franklin roamed Paris in a preposterous outfit symbolizing what the French thought a simple, but wise country bumpkin would look like. Washington himself was a living symbol of integrity that survives to this day. But the real Franklin was incredibly sophisticated and the real Washington harbored tremendous ambition that was curtailed by his many failures.

Successful leaders understand and use the power of symbols, in America and in every other country in the world. That will never change, even as the meaning of the symbols seems too. The current argument over statues is over that meaning of symbols. Jefferson can stay even though he’s a slave owner and a rapist because he symbolizes much more than that and we can close our eyes to the evil he inflicted and choose to see only the good. And we can make a very good case that the public good outweighs the private bad. Lee in full uniform astride Traveler must go because there is nothing else he can symbolize. There is no Declaration or Bill of Rights to counterbalance the treason, the kidnapping of free blacks and sending them to slavery in the South, the whipping of his own slaves or the breaking apart of families. No one has yet been bold enough to suggest we leave Lee’s monuments up as a reminder of the national hypocrisy and the complicity of a generations of Americans, before and after, in the lie on which the white vision of the South has always rested.

But something has changed. There has always been a conflict over the meaning of the symbols we use. But until now there hasn’t been a conflict over their role. The symbols have been stand ins for the ideals we want to achieve and even the means with which we wish to achieve those ideals. But in the last 30 years, we have shoved the symbols more and more to the forefront. We’ve fought so much over flag-burning, insignias, statues and platitudes that the symbols of our freedom have become more important than the freedom itself. They have, in fact, become a tool to deny that freedom to people with whom we disagree. But something more insidious has happened. We’ve gone from choosing sides by symbol and fighting elections by symbol to governing by symbol.

They will tell us we’re just going to have to die our way out of the pandemic.

It’s not just a president threatening to starve our national defenses if someone interprets a signal differently from him. It’s not just the symbolic use of language as dog whistles so the racists don’t have to say the quiet things out loud. It’s that we’ve put some much meaning on symbols that we’ve substituted symbols for policy.

Trump wants a border wall. The wall won’t have a significant effect on illegal immigration. Most illegal immigrants don’t sneak in and those who do will be able to hop it or tunnel it with relative ease. The wall is a symbol. But there’s nothing backing that symbol up. There’s no policy to keep people out that would recognize the realities on both sides of the border. There’s just a wall and the fight over the wall and the problem goes on.

We’ve issued mask orders in Texas. But there’s no policy behind those orders to stop the spread of COVID. You don’t have to wear a mask in church, where spread is easy and frequent. There’s no push to increase testing, there’s no contact tracing, there’s no quarantine policy for those potentially exposed. Without these things, there’s nothing to stop the rising rates of infection and death. It’s just a symbol and a month from now, when the number are still going up and the hospitals are overwhelmed, people are going to be angry that they had to give their freedom, angry that the masks didn’t work and the policy makers are going to say, we did what we could, it didn’t work, or people didn’t obey. And they’re going to tell us we’re just going to have to die our way out of the pandemic. Our governing class has become so addicted to symbols — not just flags and songs, but effete liberals, conspiratorial socialists, violent radicals — that they can’t see the tangible. Having dealt only in symbols, they can’t see the symbols are just illusions, mirages unless there is tangible action and leadership behind them.

This isn’t to say say symbols are evil or useless. Symbols are essential, we cannot communicate without them, language is nothing but a symbol. But the nature of a tree doesn’t change whether you call it a tree, un arból, or the big raw wood thing with green curlers that’s stuck in the ground. It still provides shade and converts carbon dioxide to oxygen. Public health policy is meaningless as a symbol. It’s worse than meaningless, it’s deadly and it’s a criminal abdication of responsibility by our leadership. Leadership isn’t whipping people up around a symbol. It’s getting people to go where they need to go when they don’t want to go there. That takes thought, courage and the willingness to risk popularity from the leader. Washington knew he was a symbol and he used his symbolic importance. But he never hid behind it, called it a day and went home leaving everyone else to fend for themselves.