The American Flag Should Be Replaced With A Scarlet Letter X For 100 Years…And Other Ideas
Just Flying the American Flag Upside Down Would Be Too Good For The United States Of Hate
This is as good of a time as any to stop and honestly consider the notion that the United States of America is irrevocably broken as a nation. Related, it’s time that we as a country accept our collective shame as a country divided by an incredible breadth of divisions and fly the notorious battle flag used by the Confederate States of America as our own National Scarlet Letter Of Apologetic Despondency for a period of no longer than 100 years. This era should be — with a solid plan of cross-racial and cross-cultural revolutionary action attached — enough time for the country to figure out its best anti-racist and anti-classist future that ensures an actually “United” States moving forward. America’s first fractious 240 years of its history deserves to be a sad and unrepeatable memory. Here’s how we make this occur.
We’re at this unfortunate juncture that requires Hester Prynne-style punishment because of the simple idea that America was built on two faulty sociological fears-as-premises for nation creation. Foremost, rich European white men who were worried about a British re-Invasion of America’s shores wanted to have guns in their homes for protection of their selves and their property. However, more importantly, these same men presupposed that they were going to always live in a nation wherein America’s most native peoples would always be okay with being violently disposed of their land, and moreover — and ultimately most important to the present day — that the slaves brought over from Africa to work said land would be okay with being slaves forever.
Over the past 240 years, there’s a good argument to be made in retrospect that civil rights that needed to be immediately given in full to minorities in America have always been given in part. Moving forward, this is an issue that if America is meant to be the land of the free and home of the brave that it purports itself to be, must be immediately addressed.
Regarding being “brave,” there’s tremendous bravery in accepting shame, which is the reason for America needing to fly the stars and bars as the country’s banner for 100 years. Last week, eight people died in three American cities. In those eight deaths being intrinsically linked to problems that America could’ve solved over 200 years ago, it’s apropos to fly the symbol of that problem at its worst before the United States can likely truly become the best it’s ever been.
It’s shameful that the US Government gave Black people the right to land ownership, but not the right to be educated in schools alongside their fellow Americans. It’s shameful that they then gave Black people the right to be educated alongside their fellow Americans, but not the right to vote for those who advocate for and protect their freedoms. They said that “separate, but equal” was adjudicated out of the American lexicon with 1954’s Brown vs. Board of Education ruling. However, there’s ample proof that this statement is pure fallacy and that the “separate, but equal” has shamefully defined and violently divided white America vs. Black America for the entirety of American history. Maybe 100 years of national penance for white violence against blacks and black violence against whites by looking up at a symbol that sits next to swastikas in global racist lore might solve a few things.
And apologies to those Americans who are neither white nor black who would have to endure 100 years of this conceived national comeuppance. Intriguingly though, the white vs. black issue has similarly framed how America has fumbled relations between whites and Native Americans, most Arab and Asian cultures, Latinos, Spanish-speaking nations, and hell, let’s toss in the LGBTQ community (of all racial backgrounds), too. However, so much of what needs to be ironed out is directly related to the white vs. Black conversation that’s dominated the conversation regarding strife in American pop culture for more than half of the nation’s history, but the trickle-down effects of angst and violence across all American minorities definitely needing to be discussed, too.
The conversation regarding where America would head in a shame-less future should be best had by proposing a “Council of Social Unity” which would be a group comprised of 100 Americans aged 18+ who would be voted upon by race, and have decade-long terms. The goal of the Council would be to create a group of 100 US social justice-related mandates per decade-long term (10 per year) that would supersede reproach via our established system of checks and balances.
As an aside, if that sounds like re-writing the US Constitution, that’s n0t the case. If this sounds like 1000 Constitutional amendments, that’s not the case, either. Rather, this is an acknowledgement that the America that existed in 1787 isn’t the America that exists in 2016, and that we’re needing to make some concessions for well, the first 240 years that the document created the guidelines for the country. If the United States Constitution is a novel, this is that novel’s “Modern Era Second Edition.”
If we’re continuing this conversation regarding the United States accepting shame, this Council’s existence allows for the resolution of a conversation regarding the Legislative Branch’s inability to be a body free of control of private interests. Corporations would more than likely be quite interested in the goings on of a Council of Social Unity and certainly attempting to pass legislation through Congress that would be concurrent to its aims, but this would hopefully be somewhat mediated by this concept. However, as a balance aimed at easing this blow to America’s highest legislative body, the Council’s legislative mandates for the nation would be check-able by only via the oversight of the Executive and Judicial Branches.
The composition of the Council would be broken down even further by equal percentages related to economic class, gender and if a race numbered more than one person in the council, age as well). Ideally, this unit would create 1,000 American rules-as-”greater than”-laws over 100 years that ideally — given the ideal lack of corruption that would honestly address issues that have faced the country and stymied its social progression in the past and present, setting up a “more perfect union” with an idyllic future.
We’re at such a frightening point as a country where it’s probably necessary to fly the Confederate flag for a century and legally enfranchise a group of people to lead us in a nation in doing better as people. Doing anything less than that allows the space for protest, murder and a general malaise of ill will to set over America for yet another 250 years. Yes, there’s been good days in America in its first 240 years of existence. However, there’s been probably five times as many terrible and absolutely no-good days to counter those positive feelings in what the United States stands for and can accomplish as a unified body politic.
If this sounds like desperation, it’s because it is desperation. America’s a shameful land that requires a shame-filled solution for itself. A National Scarlet Letter Of Apologetic Despondency is just the beginning, a beginning that sets the tone for the radical and necessary national changes-to-come.
