Flags and Crosses

While traveling through Ohio recently, walking along a main street in Yellow Springs, a friend brought to my attention a real estate office with Bush-Cheney signs all over, a large panel of pictures of President Bush, and the following picture accompanying the entire exhibition:

Earlier, my friend, some of whose relatives had been killed in the Holocaust, had such a strong reaction to this image in the context of a shrine to Bush-Cheney that she banged on the window, shouted �Ich bin ein Jude,� (�I am a Jew,� in German) opened the door and told the people inside how incredibly disgusted she was by an image that seemed to say �If you�re not Christian, you don�t belong in America.�

They of course missed the point and just thought she was just being immature and overreacting.

(They also couldn't know that my friend was in Hamilton, Ohio in 1997 observing a Klan rally. The Klan had an Israeli flag, which one of them took down, put in his pants, rubbed it, took it out, urinated on it, then burned it. Flags are important symbols to the Klan and always have been.)

Later, I walked back to the office by myself to speak with these folks and in a calmer way, let them know that this imagery was offensive to me and why, and why my friend had had such a strong reaction to it before, and that of course, I understood it likely meant something entirely different to them.

Needless to say, I didn�t get very far. I tried to explain respectfully that as a Jew in America, to walk by a window that had an American flag with a cross on it sent shivers down my spine because it recalls things like members of the KKK, draped in white robes, waving flags, burning a cross in the lawn of a Jewish or black family. I explained that I understood that wasn�t the image it represented to them, it was important they understand what it might mean to others.

Here are some of the things that come to my mind when I see a flag and a cross. I wish I�d had them with me at the time. These kind of images are readily available on the web with a simple search, which is where I found these.*

Klan Poster	Klan Flag	Tulsa, 1923

Ohio, 1924	Virginia, 1925	Birmingham, 1960

Recent	Recent	Recent

While they did listen, they seemed to do so with a lot of eye-rolling and general discounting of what I had to say. The owner told me she had a Jewish son-in-law who never said anything about the image. She said that they were nice people and hadn�t I read the caption for the image? I admitted I hadn�t, but said that frankly, the image itself was so striking to me that I just recoiled from it alone. She and I went back to the window, I read the caption, which said basically that this was taken at a ball game and was an unretouched photo, etc. Frankly, it didn�t change things for me. (For the record, a search on the Internet finds claims that this picture was taken in Arizona on September 11th, in addition to several other claims of its origin. This picture makes regular rounds by e-mail via Christians all over the country).

In the end, my fellow Americans at the real estate office basically said that if I were offended, I should just ignore it. Trying to make the point that different images had different effects on different people, I asked whether it would be offensive if I placed a cross smeared with dung in my window on the street, but she just took it as some sort of provocative and seemingly childish statement on my part.

Apparently, I didn�t make my point very well. What I think I left out was the true context for all of this. While I do find offensive imagery which seems to say �Real Americans are Christian,� the truly important piece is the electoral politics in the current political climate.

Anyone willing to look with an unjaundiced eye has seen how the Bush administration (at the least) insinuated that anyone who criticizes their policies is un-patriotic, un-American, or possibly sympathizing with terrorists. John Ashcroft went so far as to come out and say: �To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists.� Zell Miller recently said, talking about criticism of the abuse and torture at Abu Grahib that he would refuse to join a "national act of contrition" that was giving "aid and comfort to the enemy." Republican Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, "If George Bush loses the election, Osama bin Laden wins.� Vice President Dick Cheney recently said "It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States.�

These are just a few of the highly-polarized, fear-mongering, and dissent-quashing statements that help to create an atmosphere of intolerance. The implication of all of them is that if you criticize the administration, or vote Democratic, you are treasonous and help terrorists.

THAT is un-American.

Back to the flag and the cross. Here�s the context: George W. Bush and the current Republican party often insinuate that any criticism of their policies is flat-out unpatriotic and un-American, and often do more than just insinuate it. This administration has done everything it can to extend the power of the Executive branch and limit the checks and balances of the other branches and the free press by using under-the-radar Executive actions instead of Congressional legislation to make budgetary and policy changes, by misrepresentation of their activities, by refusing to acknowledge clear conflicts of interest, such as the Vice President�s secret meetings with energy companies to write energy policy which they have refused to release despite court orders, and giving no-bid contracts to companies with close relations to the administration, by thwarting all Freedom of Information Act requests since taking office, by fighting appropriate investigations (i.e., the 9/11 Commission and numerous others), and finally by acting in clear contempt of the separation of Church and State laid out in the Constitution, and much, much more.

Let�s not forget that frightening quote by 1930s Louisiana governor Huey Long: �When fascism comes to America, it will be draped in the American flag.�

The Republican party, and especially George W. Bush and his staff, with their overtly Christian-flavored religiousity have begun to make America seem to be a religious (and Christian) state, despite the Establishment Clause of the Constitution, the tremendous number of non-Christians in the country, and, frankly, despite Jesus� own warning that �And when you pray, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily, I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father in secret." (Matthew 6:5 - 6:6)

Given this context, and the context of the Klan�s use of the flag and crosses, and the various uses of the flag and Christianity and its icons to oppress, kill, enslave, and more, and the quashing of dissent in the name of so-called �patriotism� and "Christian values" when I walk down the street and see a window full of Bush-Cheney material topped off with a flag with a cross on it, regardless of the apparently innocuous intentions of the seemingly nice people who put it up, I get scared.

Let us never forget that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Let us never forget the �good Germans� who did nothing to stop the Holocaust. And let us never forget, finally, that we are all a community, and it is our responsibility to be informed and aware, that our own views may not be the only ones out there, and that we should all be sensitive to the history and context that others bring with them, even if they are not our own, and we should respect our fellows by being sensitive to imagery and speech which could be construed as hateful. We don't have to be slaves to so-called "political correctness" to be respectful. It's a balance, and we should all be willing to make some adjustments out of respect and compassion for each other, otherwise all the talk of compassion, community-building, our ideas of God and religion, and the ideals of America is nothing but loud air.

*These images were found on the web through Google. There was no copyright or attribution information listed, and we have no idea who took these photos. We are publishing them here for the purpose of discussion under the Fair Use section of the U.S. copyright law.

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