Essay by Barbara Kingsolver
Patriotism – November 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
My daughter came home from kindergarten in Tucson, Ariz., and announced, “Tomorrow we all have to wear red, white and blue.”
“Why?” I asked, trying not to sound wary.
“For all the people that died when the airplanes hit the buildings.” I fear the sound of saber-rattling, dread that not just my taxes but even my children are being dragged to the cause of death in the wake of death. I asked quietly, “Why not wear black, then? Why the colors of the flag, what does that mean?”
“It means we’re a country. Just all people together.”
So we sent her to school in red, white and blue, because it felt to her like something she could do to help people who are hurting. And because my wise husband put a hand on my arm and said, “You can’t let hateful people steal the flag from us.”
He didn’t mean terrorists, he meant Americans. Like the man in a city near us who went on a rampage crying “I’m an American” as he shot at foreign-born neighbors, killing a gentle Sikh man in a turban and terrifying every brown-skinned person I know. Or the talk-radio hosts, who are bullying a handful of members of Congress for airing skepticism at a time when the White House was announcing preposterous things in apparent self-interest, such as the “revelation” that terrorists had aimed to hunt down Air Force One with a hijacked commercial plane. Rep. Barbara Lee cast the House’s only vote against handing over virtually unlimited war powers to one man that a whole lot of us didn’t vote for. As a consequence, so many red-blooded Americans have threatened to kill her, she has to have bodyguards.
Patriotism seems to be falling to whoever claims it loudest. This is what I’m hearing: Patriotism threatens free speech with death. It is infuriated by thoughtful hesitation and constructive criticism of our leaders. It despises people of foreign birth who’ve spent years learning our culture and contributing their talents to our economy. It has specifically blamed homosexuals, feminists and the American Civil Liberties Union. In other words, the American flag stands for intimidation, censorship, violence, bigotry, sexism, homophobia — and shoving the Constitution through a paper shredder?
Outsiders can destroy airplanes and buildings, but it is only we, the people, who have the power to demolish our own ideals. It occurs to me that my patriotic duty is to recapture my flag from the men now waving it in the name of jingoism and censorship. This isn’t easy for me. The last time I looked at a flag with unambiguous pride, I was 13. Right after that, Vietnam began teaching me lessons in ambiguity, and the lessons have kept coming. I’ve learned of things my government has done to the world that made me direly ashamed.
I search my soul and find I cannot love killing for any reason. When I look at the flag, I see it illuminated by the rocket’s red glare. This is why the warmongers so easily gain the upper hand in the patriot game: Our nation was established with a fight for independence, so our iconography grew out of war. Our national anthem celebrates it; our language of patriotism is inseparable from a battle cry. Our every military campaign is still launched with phrases about men dying for the freedoms we hold dear, even when this is impossible to square with reality. In the Persian Gulf War we rushed to the aid of Kuwait, a monarchy in which women enjoyed approximately the same rights as a 19th century slave. The values we fought for and won there are best understood, I think, by oil companies. Meanwhile, a country of civilians was devastated, and remains destroyed.
STATING THESE REALITIES does not violate the principles of liberty, equality and freedom of speech; it exercises them, and by exercise we grow stronger.
I would like to stand up for my flag and wave it over a few things I believe in, including but not limited to the protection of dissenting points of view. We can create a new patriotism out of new cloth. Stripes from the uniforms of public servants who rescued the injured and panic-stricken. The red glare of candles held in vigils as people pray for the bereaved, and plead for compassion and restraint. The blood donated to the Red Cross. The stars of film and theater and music who are using their influence to raise money for recovery. The small hands of schoolchildren collecting pennies, toothpaste, teddy bears, anything they think might help the kids who’ve lost their moms and dads.
My town, Tucson, Ariz., has become famous for a simple gesture in which some 8,000 people wearing red, white or blue T-shirts assembled themselves in the shape of a flag on a baseball field and had their photograph taken from above. That picture has begun to turn up everywhere, but we saw it first on our newspaper’s front page.
Our family stood in silence for a minute looking at that photo of a human flag, trying to know what to make of it. Then my teenage daughter, who has a quick mind for numbers and a sensitive heart, did an interesting thing. She laid her hand over a quarter of the picture, leaving visible more or less 6,000 people, and said, “That many are dead.”
We stared at what that looked like — all those innocent souls, multi-colored and packed into a conjoined destiny — and shuddered at the one simple truth behind all the noise, which is that so many beloved people have suddenly gone from us.
That is my flag, and that’s what it means: We’re all just people together.
Barbara Kingsolver is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News in Paonia, Colorado (hcn.org). She lives in Tucson, Arizona, and is the author of nine books including The Poisonwood Bible.
