The Republican who represents my Congressional district held a town hall meeting this week. 

Perhaps even more than other districts, this is a swing. Mike Lawler, with the help of more than a million dollars of Elon Musk’s money, held on to the seat he first won in the GOP sweep of 2022. 

So the nearly half of voters who didn’t vote for him – and even a percentage of those who did – were pretty damn pissed about what’s gone down since January 20.

How pissed?

Here’s the first few paragraphs of Nicholas Fandos’ account in The New York Times:

No one was expecting a love fest when Representative Mike Lawler, Republican of New York, faced constituents in his suburban swing district on Sunday night. Still, even he seemed surprised by the night’s first clash — over the Pledge of Allegiance.

“Please tell me you’re not objecting to the Pledge of Allegiance,” Mr. Lawler asked incredulously after some members of the audience inside a high school auditorium audibly groaned when he suggested reciting it.

They acquiesced, and several hundred attendees labored to their feet to say the pledge, but not without indicating why they believed its words had come to ring hollow.

I didn’t attend the meeting at one of the high schools in my school district. I expected my more boisterous neighbors to show up and say pretty much what I would have said about the disaster that is the 47th Presidency of the United States.

But I would not have “labored to my feet” for the Pledge of Allegiance. Because I think you can find the core of what’s wrong with the United States right now in it.

Most of the countries that have traditionally been our allies – Britain, Canada, France, Italy and so on – don’t have a pledge. Their kids don’t start their day trying to say a word similar to “indivisible;” whoever wrote the Pledge – and its authorship is disputed – was not thinking clearly about the hearing and enunciation of elementary school kids.

That wouldn’t be a problem. We’re not those countries – as Archie Bunker said, “We threw the British out of here.” – and so there’s no need to follow their example.

The problem with the Pledge of Allegiance is that it’s only secondary to “the republic.” Its primary focus – and this goes for the National Anthem, too – is the flag.

The first thing is the flag. “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.”

The flag. Not the Constitution. Not the laws of our land. Not to the now 340 million of us who actually make up this country, who get kissed off at the end with the words “with liberty and justice for all.”

No. A rectangular cloth of nylon, polyester or cotton – is the thing to which we pledge our allegiance. The material would have been used as a windbreaker or a tablecloth or the flag of Vanuatu. But because it has a pattern of stripes and stars that meet general approval, it deserves our allegiance?

That seems like a lot. And I think the problem is that too many Americans – particularly the ones who support the current president – confuse the flag with what it’s supposed to stand for.

They think its existence is the height of patriotism. They actually say that – every year, some group runs with a flag from West Point to somewhere else before Memorial Day. The promotion of it in our town calls it the most patriotic thing.

It’s the Shroud of Turin of the American experience.

And lost in all this is how we think about each other.

We are supposed to be a nation of laws. We have this great Constitution – if you’ve been reading this blog recently, you’ve joined me in a full reading. And it’s being trampled by Trump and his henchmen because they worship the flag, not the principles that are supposed to guide American democracy.

Hell, they used the flag as a weapon on January 6, 2021. Watch the videos of these MAGA maroons assaulting Capitol Police officers with sharpened flagpoles. They pledged allegiance to the flag – and then betrayed the country it represents.

And then there’s the variations designed to intimidate people they don’t like. The black stars and stripes with the blue stripe in the middle that says I support police, even when they’re beating up people for no reason. The “Blue Lives Matter” answer to “Black Lives Matter.”

It’s not just the pledge – our national anthem is the freaking “Star-Spangled Banner,” about a flag that’s still flying after the Battle of Fort McHenry in Baltimore. No one remembers much about the battle, like how many Americans were killed or how they managed to hold off the British who had just stomped through Washington.

Instead, what they remember is some lyrics a lawyer wrote to a British drinking song about the flag still being there.

No other civilized nation I can think of is as hung up on the flag as the United States.

Various groups have established all these rules on how the flag should be presented. You can’t wear it. God forbid it falls into a puddle or, shudder, touches the ground. You have to burn a flag if it’s worn out, but if you burn it in protest, woe is you.

The things that are sacred to me about the United States of America are the things to which I’ll pledge allegiance.

The rule of law.

Civility. Conducting myself as a responsible citizen.

Kindness.

Appreciation of just how beautiful this land is. Shepherding the land so that fellow Americans appreciate the same things 1,000 years from now.

Honoring those who have served our nation. Not just the military, although it should be held in reverence, but those who have labored to make our states, our cities and our neighborhoods safer and stronger. That includes teachers, firefighters, sanitation workers, and so many others that their omission is going to piss off people. (Sorry!)

And celebration of the people who live in my country. No matter what they look like or who they love or where their families started their American journey.

When the flag is the point, people aren’t. And that leads to the kind of detachment so many Americans seem to have. We’re a nation of indignation because we’ve lost respect for our own people. America isn’t the flag – it’s the people and the laws that protect them.

That’s to whom we should pledge our allegiance.

We did, once.

In 1776, our representatives meeting in Philadelphia approved a document written by a Virginia farmer. It ends this way: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

We should be willing to pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor mutually – in support of one another – as Americans. Not a flag.

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