Nor was it any surprise to me to see articles to the effect the Biden Administration had violated it by presenting the Trans-* flag in the position of honor in a vertical flag arrangement. I was more surprised by Forbes' claim that this wasn't a violation because, however the vertical flags were arranged, there was an American flag atop the building that was in an even more elevated position and that somehow saved the day.
Is Forbes right about that? They are not. The ordering of displays considers the display as a group, not the presence or absence of other flags that are not connected to the display. If I were to arrange a display of fifty national flags that put America's in the last place, the fact that there was a flag somewhere else nearby that was on a taller pole wouldn't have any bearing on my display's intent or effect.
The flagpole atop the building was not part of the group that made up this display, and thus is not relevant to the question. It is a permanent feature, whereas this display was arranged as a unit for a particular event at a particular time for a particular purpose. That is why the offending flags were always photographed together: they were a display meant to be seen together, to create their particular effect. Nobody noticed the flag pole twenty feet up because it wasn't part of the display or the event; it was just a permanent feature of the building.
The fact is that the question never occurred to these people, for whom the matter is not even of idle interest and never has been. It never occurred to them that they shouldn't put the Trans-* flag at the center of the display, since that was of course the center of the event. It never occurred to them that the United States flag should not be displayed as supporters of the Trans-* flag, as the whole point of the event was in fact that the United States government was in support of the Trans-* movement. It makes perfect sense according to the symbolic logic of their actual system of beliefs, which just don't happen to be the same ones that were held by the earlier generation of Americans who wrote the Flag Code. They are not Americans in the same sense.
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Of course they are not. They are TWANLOC, as coined by a observant commenter going under the handle "subotai badahur".
Those Who Are No Longer Our Countrymen.
I didn’t mean it quite as strongly as that, although at some point it may be so. I meant something more like what AVI was talking about a week or so back. They’re not the same sort. They have a different kind of patriotism: they don’t love the country, like the Flag Code generation; and they’re opposed to liberty in the traditional sense, though they hotly defend liberty if it means abortion rights and alternative sexuality.
But this of all things is the most natural thing of all to them: that their political agenda should be at the center, and the American government arranged in support of it. There’s a conservative version of that too. It’s very different from the old idea of American liberty.
I would argue the label TWANLOC is correct in much the same way an unrepentant sinner committing mortal sin openly self-excommunicates themselves from the church. It is by theoir own actions, no matter how much they may still want the validation of calling themselves Christians. So it is with these 'Americans' in name only.
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