The flags of Alito

I was walking down a cobblestone street in Lublin, Poland, last month when I saw a familiar flag on the back of a leather jacket.

A Confederate flag.

It is a repugnant symbol of oppression, subjugation, slavery, treason and supremacy. 

It was the battle flag of Robert E. Lee’s treasonous Army of Northern Virginia, which sought to destroy the United States of America. They were the losing colors of a slave tyranny that were fueled and stacked in defeat at Appomattox, Virginia, in April 1865.

It was the flag of terrorism and the the Ku Klux Klan in the 1870s. The terrorism led directly to the creation of the Justice Department.

It was the flag of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. The flag of lynchings, beatings, degradation, humility and suffering.

It was the flag of Jim Crow, segregation, Bull Connor, George Wallace, and the angry mobs that spit on little kids trying to go to school. It was the flag of state violence — a warning and a declaration.

When the Confederate flag of slavery was first raised, it flew alone, but over time new flags were raised in common cause. Fascist flags were raised in Europe and those fascist symbols came to America where they were raised next to their American equivalent. The swastika and the Confederacy were joined together in common cause the first time the swastika was ever raised. They are flags of supremacy and oppression.

Because the Nazi standard is illegal across Germany and much of Europe the extremists have adopted the preceding flag as their substitute, which of course is the most famous flag of hate available for use.

The Red Hand Defenders, a Loyalist Ulster paramilitary group, march with the Confederate flags in Newtownstewart in Northern Ireland.

It is the ready substitute for a rising and virulent form of nationalism and modern fascism that is ascendant across the world’s great democracies. This coincides with the very moment in time the last of the liberators, survivors, perpetrators and collaborators are coming to the end of their long natural life spans.

Whatever flag the racial supremacists, fascists and nationalists have raised has eventually been torn down and thrown in the dust and rubble of the ruins it wrought. What has been raised in victory over the most evil causes ever manifested by the minds of man is this symbol:

US 48-star flag (1912-1959)

Here is what one of America’s greatest patriots, heroes and servants, General of the Army George C. Marshall said about the flag of the United States of America:

We are determined that before the sun sets on this terrible struggle our flag will be recognized throughout the world as a symbol of freedom on the one hand and of overwhelming force on the other…

When World War II ended, this statement held true all over the world, except in parts of America where Black Americans lived under apartheid called Jim Crow.

The flag of freedom and democracy that Marshall saluted contained 48 stars on its blue canton. It represented a glaring and grave hypocrisy that would soon be contested by a young Black preacher in Atlanta at the head of the most important moral movement in American history.

When Martin Luther King marched to the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 and to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965, he did so under the 50-star American flag. It is the only flag in American history that has ever been raised over a republic where, under the law, all men and women are created equal.

This fact is paramount towards understanding the role of civil rights leaders in redeeming the promise of America. MLK, John Lewis and Rosa Parks are the founders of the republic as we understand it today, every bit as much as are Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and Adams. They are the descendants and inheritors of the cause of Lincoln, Douglass, Grant and Garfield. They are the founding mothers and fathers of a free America, and because the lie of supremacy was shattered the intellectual chains and misery it brings were cast off — at least for a while.

The American flag flew high and uncontested for a while without challenge in the world. It flew next to the flags of our allies and partners over a world where the spread of liberty seemed inexorable, and freedom was a shared destiny.

Over time, new flags came together abroad. They were deeply encouraged by the chaos and division they saw across all of the democracies, resulting from the rise of a single man.

(Clockwise from top left): Flags of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea

Donald Trump built an extremist movement out of grievance and resentment, and new flags were raised:

Then they marched.

They marched on the US Capitol where 158 years after Gettysburg, the Confederate battle flag finally breached the “citadel of democracy.”

The American flag was used as a weapon to maim and destroy. It was weaponized as a bludgeon. The mob came to install the loser of a presidential campaign as the winner, and subjugate us under a tyranny of the minority, destroying the dreams of all of our founders.

It was an attack on the American civilization and our way of life by fascists. Hundreds of people have pled guilty and been convicted in jury trials — some of seditious conspiracy.

It was an attack on the rule of law and the US Constitution.

What did US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito do?

He raised a flag, as reported by Jodi Kantor of The New York Times.

He desecrated the American flag.

He inverted the flag. He perverted the meaning of that act by making it a declaration of solidarity with the forces of the extremism, sedition and tyranny. It was a corrupt and despicable act by a corrupt and despicable justice, who is manifestly unfit to serve on the federal bench at any level.

His conduct is shameful. His excuses, which involve blaming his wife, while justifying the action because his neighbors dared to insult Trump, makes it all even worse.

Sixteen years ago, I was tasked with leading this man’s confirmation process in the Bush White House.

Let me be clear. I am deeply ashamed of my association with this wretched man and unfit justice. Along with Clarence Thomas, he is a totem and a towering one in this atrocious era of corruption, dishonesty and betrayal.

Never let them take this symbol from you:

It’s beautiful, isn’t it?

Let’s defend it.

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