In the Vietnam era, military associations made the flag a fraught symbol. The politicization of the stars and stripes predates Trump, by far. La Vigne meant the act as “an expression of pride in how the system of democracy actually works.” But as the hours went by and she noticed more and more flags around her neighborhood, she realized she was seeing something broader: A spontaneous reclaiming of a symbol that, in the Trump years, had come to represent only one side. The day Biden gave his victory speech, Nancy La Vigne, executive director of the Council on Criminal Justice’s Task Force on Policing, took out the flag she always flies on holidays and hung it outside her home in liberal Bethesda, Maryland. He sent me a photo of the flag, still hanging beside his garage, his own Dodge Ram pickup in the foreground.Īcross the country, in their cautious euphoria after the election, foes of Trump have been embracing the flag in similar ways: unfurling it in front of their homes, waving it in the streets, or simply looking at it differently. When the election was called for Joe Biden, “I said, ‘Time for my flag to go up,’” Woodall told me by phone, a couple of weeks later. Now, at last, it looked like Trump might lose, so Woodall set his new flag on the dining room table and waited. That is desecrating the flag that I served over 20 years with.’” “They’ve always got a Trump flag and the American flag,” he said. He grew angry when he saw American flags on pickup trucks around town.
But he didn’t want anyone in his neighborhood outside Columbia, South Carolina, to associate him with President Donald Trump’s racial rhetoric or anti-immigrant policies. The 72-year-old Vietnam War veteran and retired infantry soldier had taken down his old flag about a year into the Trump administration. About a month before the election, Curtis Woodall logged on to Amazon and ordered an American flag.