At the bottom of my closet I have an American flag. It was my Uncle’s, the flag that draped his coffin. It came to me from a relative who gave it to a relative who gave it to a relative. It has been in my closet until just now.

My father served but didn’t receive a military funeral. He served in the Pacific theatre as a medic and it wounded him so deeply that he never spoke about it. My uncle never spoke about it. No one ever spoke about it. It was just a flag, folded in a triangle in the bottom of my closet.

We have a flagpole in the front yard of the house we bought a few years ago and when we moved in I would look at the tattered flag that flew there and it filled me with remorse for a country that was so divided. I lowered that tattered flag. I lowered the flagpole and thought to myself a flag will never fly there again, I am embarrassed by it. I wont be party to a hoax. I won’t be a party to a charade I wont be party to county that paid so little honor. A flag in a bag in a closet.

I didn’t serve. Saigon fell when I was a junior in high school and I was the last wisp of a generation that protested and burned and denigrated the symbols that had any association to the country that stood for values of capitalism and racism and repression and abandonment. A government that was not of the people, but of just a few of the people. I sure didn’t know who the hell they were. I turn into the news today and I still don’t know who the hell they are or why they’re there. These are people on both sides of the isle whose wisdom I suppose I should venerate but I cant help but just stare at the Lilly white faces of a generation who have reached beyond their expiration dates.

Today I took uncle Cliff’s flag out of its plastic bag. I did not let it touch the ground. I unfurled it and with veneration raised the flag as high as it would go. I did it for my parents generation who fought for and believed in its value and its weight.

Most imporantly I raised it for hope. Hope that we are on the edge of a new frontier where all votes count, all people count. Where debate is civil again and ideas are exchanged and minds are changed and middle ground is reached by a new generation who might, in time, look at the flag again.

I hope they see uncle Cliff’s in my front yard and I hope it gives them pause. More importantly, I hope it gives them cause.