An Immodest Proposal

Davy Carren
4 min readJun 5, 2018

The United States Flag (otherwise and also known as Old Glory or The Stars and Stripes or The Star-Spangled Banner or That Damned Rag) should be flown at half-mast at all times on all federal and state buildings indefinitely for the reasons stated below:

1. There is no foreseeable end to tragic events involving firearms such as mass killings on school campuses and in other supposedly safe public gathering places as long as the NRA controls the means to impact and/or affect the outcomes of these aforementioned tragic circumstances.

2. Famous and honorable people (like all people) must eventually die, and will always continue to do so whether they are honored by a half-mast flag or not.

3. The cost and effort of constantly raising and lowering the flag from half- to full-mast is placing an undue burden on citizens and flag raisers.

4. A flag flying below the summit on a pole (which in many countries is seen as a symbol of respect, mourning, distress, or, in some cases, a salute) is possibly the emptiest gesture on the planet, and therefore by flying the flag at half-mast at all times the countrywomen and stateswomen and loyal jingoistic patriots and carpenters and Fuller-brush salesman and your ordinary headline skimmers and/or well-informed denizens and other un-united workers of the world alike will not be lost searching for meaning in the tragedies that have befallen the country on an almost daily basis, and can go back to distracting themselves with what they want to hear and think about the country that they live in, believing that resigning oneself to a continual state of mourning the dead is better than having to ponder over what specific tragedy has unfolded on that particular day.

5. It is widely held that aesthetically all flags look better at half-mast.

6. People have stopped caring about the common ground they hold with others, the sadness and devastation they all might share if they were not constantly bickering with each other about politics and other nonsensical matters; and so the fact of signifying some calamitous event’s occurrence for all the nation’s people to respectfully mourn together with a symbol has been made obsolete and somewhat lame.

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