Leave the flag at half-staff all the time
From mass shootings to fallen victims and heroes of many kinds, there’s always a reason
Flags across the nation, ordered to half-staff after Lewiston, went back to pole-tops at sunset on Monday. The national, muted symbol of condolence ends. We fly high again.
The American flag goes to half-mast many days of the year. It should stay there, permanently. Given the amount of mass shootings, drug deaths, domestic violence, tragedies big and small, we should say that there always is a reason to lower our heads, lower the flag, and grieve.
The President makes a proclamation about when we do this flag exercise, defining what merits a national gesture.
So for example “Old Glory” went to half-staff for six days beginning September 29, after California’s US Senator Diane Feinstein died.
9/11, of course.
May 29, Memorial Day, drop down.
May 7-11, after “senseless acts of violence” in Allen, Texas.
March 27-31, after “senseless acts of violence” in Nashville Tennessee.
January 22-26, after “senseless acts of violence” in Monterey Park, California.
It’s always the same proclamation phrase for mass murders, just stick in a new location.
Strange, but two weeks after Nashville, where six people were killed in an elementary school, there was another slaughter in Louisville, Kentucky, where a 25-year-old bank employee opened fire at his workplace, killing five while livestreaming the attack on Instagram.
Flags weren’t lowered for that one.
Neither were they lowered in late April, after a 38-year-old man charged into a neighbor’s home in Cleveland, Texas and killed five people, including a 9-year-old boy; his neighbors had asked him to stop firing his AR-style rifle because a baby was trying to sleep.
Why were those events and victims less significant? No idea, but the question could be asked many times.
Lewiston is considered the 36th mass murder in the country this year, defined as four or more people dying within 24 hours -- not including the shooters (pretty much all of these are shootings, though I did notice an arson). That’s basically one a week, so if each was acknowledged, the flag put at half-staff one day per victim, that alone would mean leaving it down all the time.
That’s not counting when fewer than four people are killed at once — three, two, even one. Do those murders not deserve public recognition and mourning? Are they less tragic?
There are many other tragedies that don’t “rise to the level” of dropping the flag. The Center for Disease Control reports 109,680 drug overdose deaths in this country in 2022. That equates to a staggering average of 300 people a day. Are they lesser victims than those who died from bullets? Are we implying that they were somehow “responsible” for their deaths so that massacre is not worthy of a lowered flag?
Three hundred a day.
It's not just the Stars and Stripes that goes up and down. Every state has a flag, and every governor orders it dropped now and then as well. Here’s the latest example from our Commonwealth:
Please be advised that Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey has ordered that the United States of America flag and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts flag be lowered to half-staff at all state buildings from sunrise until sunset on Tuesday, October 24, 2023, the date of interment, in honor of First Lieutenant Alfred Pezzella, U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF), who served with the 328th Bombardment Squadron (Heavy), 93d Bombardment Group (Heavy), 9th Air Force (KIA Romania, 1 August 1943), of Natick, Massachusetts. Remains of 1LT Pezzella, who was killed during the Operation TIDAL WAVE, Bucharest, Romania, 1943, will be laid to rest at the Massachusetts National Cemetery, in Bourne, Massachusetts on this day.
Fallen soldiers of more recent times also receive the “honor,” as do others like David Bartley, John Olver, Mel King, and Alice Wolf. All these names mean something to me, probably not to most of us. The link is they were elected officials.
People could make the argument that if we left flags at half-staff all the time, the gesture’s significance and impact would disappear. That’s assuming the gesture has real significance and impact, which is debatable.
But let’s say it does. In that case, how we choose to express our national condolences and respect is way too arbitrary, political, and judgmental for me.
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Jan 6 comes to mind. Those tourists were quite unruly.
how about getting rid of flags as symbols . I think they are fine as wind socks or decorations.