30 September 2017

Civility War




Anxious to get home but not wanting to miss the sunflower photo op for yet another year, I pulled my convertible over for a quick few seconds on Route 16 in Milton, Del., raised my BlackBerry too high over my head to see the screen, and yet somehow managed to capture a gorgeous, miraculously only slightly atilt image.

In victory and haste, I cruised past the old gold 1974 Chevy pickup I'd been crushing on at the edge of the field, then lamented the whole way home that the truck would be gone and/or the sunflowers would be toast a week later when I'd pass by again.



But a few days into August, with the field only slightly on the wane, I got the photo I sought, complete with side window-mounted American flag waving in the breeze. I could see how that 1970s ad campaign extolling baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet practically wrote itself.

Ten minutes west in Ellendale, where the 25 mph limit is strictly enforced and the old houses all but overhang the street, a familiar beat up Victorian was newly flying a Confederate flag. Pop went my happy thought bubble, and driving on in a funk, I recalled my fury following the presidential election upon finding a Dixie banner dangling — in celebration? — from a dead tree a few feet from the road in the next town toward home.

A week later, after the shameful Charlottesville white supremacy rally and death of Heather Heyer, an American flag joined the Ellendale display. I imagined the various scenarios in which it had been raised. Defiance? Pride? Pride in what? Was it calculated to make passers-by mad? Was the flag bearer hedging bets or assuaging guilt? Was there a message I was missing?

It's lotto-lucky to be American. I appreciate that freedom is far from free and that every day, extraordinarily generous and brave citizens risk their lives and sometimes die to protect it and us. On national holidays my balcony sports a jumbo flag clearly seen from across the harbor, but I have always found devotion to a piece of cloth as a kind of idolatry and often an expression of superiority meant to signify the “right” way to show love of country. I do not need a flag to do that, but I respect that others might. I love the flag, but for me, helping others, being kind, and working to effect social change and justice is way more patriotic than saluting the stars and stripes could ever be. I never cared a whit about the Ravens until they took a knee, making me appreciate their powerful potential as an agent for change even at the risk of their careers. But to each his/her/their own. We don’t need to agree as long as civility reigns.

Although Delaware remained in the Union during the Civil War, it's complicated (just like Maryland), so I wasn't surprised at the end of August when a New York Times article detailing the building boom in Confederate monuments on private property listed Delaware along with Alabama, Texas and North Carolina. "Ultimately, this is about competing stories, and who gets to tell the story," said David Blight, a Civil War historian at Yale University. Of monuments, the article concludes that "someone's racist is another's relative," underscoring the push to tear down Confederate statues and a help in understanding the Ellendale flagbearer’s attempt to control the narrative with so much else out of his control.

A few weeks ago on the way to Rehoboth, I spied two men sitting on that house's front porch, maybe a father-son duo, and in a rare Ellendale traffic jam, my convertible became immobilized in front of them. Our eyes locked, and I’m not especially proud to say I stared back at them with contempt and disgust — and maybe a little fear, assuming a raw reaction should they somehow discern that I am Jewish. Still, sitting so close, I would have rather acknowledged their presence more politely and asked about their flags, but I felt vulnerable in my open car and unsure I could mask my emotions. The only thing I felt safe about was that a dialogue might dissolve into a shouting match and would be to no good end.

Passing the mostly dried-up field in Milton, I imagined the few remaining sunflowers hanging their heads as if in sorrow. I hope reframers of Civil War history and/or those on the opposite side of our current cultural war at least agree with that sentiment.