What does the American Flag represent - Capitalism, expansion, and Christianity, or Democracy, sustainability, and separation of church and state? Seems like Democracy should be the #1, but you wouldn’t know it. The people who fly the flag seem to be rigid, righteous, and exclusive. But hey, that flag is supposed to belong to all of us.

The flag is now used to cover up, distract and avert blame. Basically, if you wrap anything in the American Flag it is beyond criticism. If you criticize a coal mining operation stripping down a mountain, but it has the American Flag all over its containers, you are un-American. You are taking away our freedom to destroy the land and this country, you hippie!

And that is how it’s been for the past 50 years or wait it’s more like 70 years now. It has been a long game of tree-hugging hippie (whether you’re a hippie or not) vs. corporate profits at the coast of the environment. And through it all, somehow the American Flag ended up representing not the people, but the corporations and those who side with corporate rule. Betsy Ross is rolling over in her grave!

I always see flags hanging outside people’s houses with square bushes and super-anal-trimmed lawns. What’s up with the crew-cut lawns? Not a grass out of place because it shows that everything is under control. We have conquered nature.

Oh well, it’s kind of gaudy flag anyway. Too many primary colors. Where is the purple? The LBGQ+ people got the rainbow so now that can’t represent everyone. It’s only for the most colorful people. So, what is a drab, mushroom-hunting hippie going to fly outside their door? A mushroom-marijuana flag? But what happens if you don’t like mushrooms?

Well, the funny thing about culture is it forms itself. No one is in charge. It just magically happens. What I notice around the hip parts of town is the Earth flag. It seems to cover all bases. Earth. All of us. No one nation under God, but one Earth that we are all a part of, a great big Goddess of life.

That picture of Earth is the first photo taken when Apollo went to the moon, and it really rocked people’s socks off. It was the first time people could see the Earth as one whole being from afar. And we look tiny in outer space. A little floating orb of blue and brown with a very thin atmosphere. So thin that it seems amazing that a solar storm doesn’t just blow it away. We are whole, we are fragile, we are Earthlings.

The Earth flag can’t be marred. There is no way a logging operation or a strip mine can fly that one and it make any sense. It doesn’t exclude anyone. It doesn’t make anyone more than anyone else. Yet there is pride in flying that flag and better yet, there is love. It is a beautiful thing that reminds us that we are part of something bigger, bigger than state or country or even politics. We are whole, a whole world. We are part of creation.

It isn’t un-American. It means we are more than Americans. And as Earthlings, it is our right to defend the Earth from pollution, extraction, ignorance, poor planning, and human-centric goals. We are not outsiders but are a part of the mother of us all.