Pride Month, Flag Day, and the Heteronormative Laugh of Dismissal

My parents voted this morning – for a conservative state candidate – and I’m very divided. The people (read: Republicans) last night were hospitable and on the whole didn’t seem unkind, but they obviously aren’t what the candidate termed “Muslim sympathizers” and the host’s wife, morbidly pregnant, laughed about me getting out of state just under the wire as the shooting in Orlando happened.

In his not-so-brief speech of gratitude that wandered through local politics and gratefulness, the candidate mentioned that his opponent had gone knocking on people’s doors, telling them that he “wasn’t a Christian, was a Muslim sympathizer, and didn’t believe in this country”, to the response of much mmm-mmm-ing and headshakes from the small assembly gathered round. “But none of this bothered me,” he said, “until he attacked me and said I wasn’t really an Eagle Scout”. Har har – who cares about being lumped in with them there ferners but daggone it if someone questions the one afternoon you spent doing “community service”.

I don’t know what to make of all this, and I can’t imagine how the LGBTQ community is feeling if I’m uncomfortable.

This morning I went to work out at the county club gym (close to a voting location across the road), where campaign signs out front encouraged people to participate in the Republican Primary.

After channel-hopping through crap like Cougar Town and reality nonsense, I landed on C-SPAN, which was broadcasting live the US House of Commons; each speaker was given five minutes on the floor. While some spoke about arbitrary, distracting topics like small business owners and the history of some colonel in Michigan, others commanded with moving presence, like Al Green, who expressed gratitude that members of the non-African-American community had helped black Americans to where they are today, and encouraged those Americans who “owed a debt to others” to repay it now by standing with the LGBTQ community, and ended with the pledge of allegiance, clutching an American flag, or Nydia Margarita Velázquez, who did not thank Mr. Speaker, but began by reading the names of those murdered in Orlando, voice often breaking with emotion. She followed this list only with a simple statement that those who were killed would not be forgotten and would inspire action to better the States, finishing early.

Where does Orlando leave us in the age of bi-partisan politics that will not end? I bought the star-spangled spatulas in Miami, a place obviously proud and patriotic, as evidenced by the many American flags highly visually present on Ocean Drive and elsewhere. In thinking through the material culture of Americanness, through things like voting stickers, outdoor flags and banners, flag-shaped cooking utensils, and corrugated voting propaganda, I realized that most of my American identity derives from a connection with an American “thing”. A flag, a bald eagle meme, a stars-and-stripes bikini at Walmart made in Cambodia, a US flag speedo worn on Miami beach. Captain America paraphenalia, etc – the more insecure the American identity becomes, the more tangible – and commodified – it becomes. You can literally hold Americannness in your hands; you can rotate red, white, and blue, you can cover your sex with it, and flip your pancakes with it.

This is part of the reason – perhaps a stretch – that guns are so embedded in American identity. The more precarious the male American ego, the more tightly clenches the fist round a clip of ammunition and a hard barrel. This is why – even following mass shootings involving military-style assault rifles – that gun laws are not changed. A gun in the hand is an American in the making. America’s problem – admittedly, one of many – is that it holds so tightly to the identities and supposed ideals of the “founding fathers” that is evolution is retarded almost to the point of regression.

This is an on-going thought process. More soon, from a proud and patriotic American, ex-pat, academic, moderate, June Cleaver Gloria Steinem love child – a walking contradiction in terms.