America Honored

July 4th – Independence Day for Americans, Saturday for the rest of the world – marked the end of three weeks spent honoring America:

Before we go back to dishonoring America, I want to share a few words in praise of prose about flags – specifically, in praise of presidential proclamations celebrating the American flag.¹

I've read the last 70 years of presidential Flag Day proclamations. They're brief and simple and often follow the same pattern. Usually, they open with the creation of the American flag in 1777. The Continental Congress resolved: "that the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the Union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation."

After citing this in his proclamation, the president will list various sightings of the American flag:

Ronald Reagan²
when the British surrendered to General Washington at Yorktown
when our soldiers battled at Iwo Jima
when Admiral Peary reached the North Pole
the Marne
the Moon
on the side of the Space Shuttle Columbia as she circled the Earth

Bill Clinton
over smoky battlefields and peaceful demonstrations
the beaches of Normandy
the jungles of Vietnam
the deserts of Iraq and Somalia
the depths of Earth's oceans
the Sea of Tranquility on the Moon
in Oklahoma
on the sleeves of rescue workers
emergency personnel
volunteers
on the shoulders of those who each day risk their lives to protect the public safety
classrooms
statehouses
courtrooms
churches
from public buildings as a sign of our national community
on missions of exploration
on missions of mercy
wherever else Americans strive to express their precious freedoms in the face of adversity
wherever our questing spirits have been willing to venture

George W. Bush
over the debris of the World Trade Center
at the Pentagon
on cars
clothing
houses
hard hats
during the Opening Ceremonies of the Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City

Obama
on the podiums of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games
the banks of Baltimore's Inner Harbor
European trenches
Pacific islands
the deserts of Iraq
the mountains of Afghanistan
duty stations stretched around the globe
over the institutions that sustain our Nation at home and abroad
above monuments and memorials
beside the halls of government
capitol buildings
atop skyscrapers
over farmlands
town squares
our homes and storefronts
small-town storefronts
storefronts and homes³

And, of course, "over the land of the free and the home of the brave." To me, though, that's not just the borders of 50 states, 16 territories, and one federal district.

The (French) Marquis de Lafayette rejoiced at US victory in the Revolutionary War: "America is assured her independence; mankind's cause is won, and liberty is no longer homeless on earth." Lafayette was buried in a Paris cemetery, under American soil per his request, and an American flag has flown above his grave ever since (~180 years). If the US fell of the map, liberty would not be homeless on earth. It would still have a plot in Picpus Cemetery, or at least some space on a storefront.

<sub>1. I'll publish my review of The Vexillologist's Reader on another occasion.
2. In 1986, Reagan lets us know that "in recent years, citizen awareness, interest, and appreciation of the flag and its relationship to our American heritage have increased. More American families and businesses are buying and displaying the flag."
3. Obama is obsessed with storefronts.</sub>

You can read all the presidential proclamations at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/proclamations.php.

The Weal of the Convert

You know what they say: Ain't no zealot like a newly-found zealot, cos a newly-found zealot don't stop.¹ Someone raised in a non-Christian household may become born again and dazzle congregations of lifelong Christians. Someone raised in a fundamentalist Christian household may become a hardcore occultist and shock everyone into mistaking him for a Satanist.

The zeal of the convert is not a phenomenon exclusive to religion, but can occur when someone chooses any new group identity for themselves. One argument for why converts practise so strongly is that they want to prove themselves to others in the group.

This argument was advanced in the landmark court case, N.W.A v. The Police Department (1988). In testimony to the presiding Judge Dre, Ice Cube exhorted everyone to disrespect law enforcement officers, particularly if pulled over for a traffic stop without reasonable suspicion, but made one exception –

... don't let it be a black and a white one
'Cause they'll slam ya down to the street top
Black police showing out for the white cop

The 'convert' in this case is a black man in a historically white police force. Mr Cube suggested that because the officer is himself a targeted racial minority, he will use excessive force to demonstrate he's of one mind with the majority of police, and "police think they have the authority to kill a minority". No police officers testified before Judge Dre, so we can only speculate about a black officer's defense for assaulting a black "teenager with a bit of gold and a pager". But I reckon the black cop acts to prove his loyalty not only to white cops but to himself.

I think this because of the way Scots reacted to American independence in 1776. "Many influential Scots" showed out for the white cop – i.e. the English – and "seized on the American war as a means to underline their political reliability to London, deliberately contrasting their own ostentatious loyalty with American disobedience..." (Colley, pp. 138–9).

The Scottish were new to Parliament because the British parliament was new. It was only 70 years prior that Scotland united with England² to form Great Britain, and Scotland waged armed rebellion against Great Britain only 40 years before the Americans did. Many English³ sympathised with the American cause, but the Scots who felt themselves a suspicious minority expressed "ostentatious loyalty" to demonstrate they were of one mind with the greater nation.

Scots weren't just showing out, though. They were working out their new citizenship⁴ with the English in different ways:

[1] Some returned home as soon as they could, deeply alienated and disillusioned. [2] Others stayed on as foreign mercenaries, taking what advantage they could from their new surroundings while remaining fundamentally aloof. [3] Still others ... were turned into perpetual exiles by the experience, feeling themselves too Scottish to settle comfortably in England, yet becoming too English ever to return to their native land. [4] But some, particularly the most successful, were able to reconcile their Scottish past with their English present by the expedient of regarding themselves as British (Colley, p. 125).

I'm an American. I haven't returned home from Britain as soon as I could have [1], and I don't want turn into a perpetual exile [3]. It's fun for me to pretend I'm a scab [2]:

"Those fellows peculated our erstwhile positions of employment!"

But that's only a way to hide my anxiety. I don't regard myself as British and don't plan to [4], but I do want to reconcile my American past to my British present.⁵ I feel fundamentally unsettled and will remain a little aloof until I figure out how to reconcile my nationality with my residency.⁶

Being black and a police officer or being Scottish and British are not mutually exclusive identities, and it's not necessary for a black Scotsman to resort to violence to prove himself:

Our social practices elaborate, for us and others, who we are in the world. We exercise ourselves to know who we are where we are, but belief itself can power our practice – because, thank God, our selves precede police and passports:

For essential beauty is infinite, and, as the soul of Nature needs an endless succession of varied forms to embody her loveliness, countless faces of beauty springing forth, not any two the same, at every one of her heart-throbs; so the individual form needs an infinite change of its environments, to enable it to uncover all the phases of its loveliness.

George MacDonald, Phantastes

<sub>1. I've never heard anybody say this.
2. & Wales
3. & Welsh
4. subjecthood
5. Sometimes, I do this by professing my London present. It's easier to claim belonging in a world-class city than a new country. In fairness to my cop-out, I don't want to live anywhere else in England and would, in fact, rather live in Scotland than not-London England.
6. Employer sponsorship of a Tier 2 general visa would help.</sub>

Sail the Five Cs, steer through the storms

Sorry, Persian and Arabian. It's nothing personal.

At speech camp, they taught us to illustrate our points using The Five Cs:

1.   Character and context
2.   Conflict
3.   Choice
4.   Consequence
5.   Conclusion

For example,

1.   It's 1992, and President George H.W. Bush is running for re-election against Governor Bill Clinton.
2.   Many undecided voters think Bush is old and out-of-touch, and he's trailing behind Clinton, the good-ol'-boy from Arkansas.
3.   Bush decides to stage a campaign visit to a supermarket so that voters will see him as an ordinary man. All goes well as he walks through the store, greeting employees. When shaking hands with the cashiers, however...
4.   Bush marvels at the red laser-beam barcode scanners, and he praises American innovation. He doesn't know that barcode scanners have been ubiquitous at checkout counters for at least 10 years. To undecided voters, the gaff confirms that President Bush is out-of-touch, and he falls further behind in the polls. Clinton will become the next president of the United States.

"And what is this electronic abacus you have here?"

5.   Don't try to be someone you're not; prepare yourself before facing a challenge outside your comfort zone; go to a grocery store at least once a decade.

The fifth C is the take-home lesson and not a part of the story, but the first four Cs are essential. Imagine this story without the second and third Cs.

1.   It's 1992, and President George H.W. Bush is running for re-election against Governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton.
4.   Undecided voters think that President Bush is old and out-of-touch, and he's behind in the polls. Clinton becomes the next president of the United States.
5.   Well, you can't win 'em all.

Lacking conflict and choice, this is just a summary of events punctuated with a sigh. Anyone hearing this "story" will probably punctuate it themselves with a yawn.

If we face it, conflict gifts us with choice, and that gives life to our own stories. Conflict sounds scary, but talking around it makes for a life full of sighs and yawns.

Conflict *gasp!* challenges past choices. Consider mid-19th-century Siam. Before the king from The King and I supposedly danced and romanced with his British governess, he courted the British Empire.

I think this is way more romantic.

King Mongkut's predecessor, Rama III, spent his reign set against the West and its rising influence in the lands around his kingdom. On his deathbed, he warned: "There will be no more wars with Vietnam and Burma. We will have them only with the West." When Mongkut acceded to the throne, the type of neighboring conflicts which plagued his paranoid-but-prescient predecessor had not died down.

The Taiping Rebellion was spreading across southern China; Hong Kong was now a British colony and in a lull between opium wars; The US had sailed warships into Tokyo and demanded Japan open for business after two centuries of seclusion.

Mongkut lifted the ban on opium in 1852 and signed a monumental treaty with the British in 1855. He stopped avoiding change like the king before him had. He recognized the moment of conflict around him and chose to do something new. Historiography has judged this variously, but there were no wars with the West in the way Rama III predicted. Siam was no-one's colony.

For those who aren't kings or emperors, any choice is still empowering. Take, for instance, the best-dressed of Brazzaville: the sapeurs, clept after La Sape: "Society for the Advancement of Elegant People".

"The white man may have invented clothes, but we turned it into an art." – 'King' Kester Emeneya

The Republic of the Congo is war-torn and depressed, but citizens put their pants on one leg at a time like everyone else. If you were getting up to earn your $10 for the day, which pants would you choose to put on? Armani or Gucci? I'd wear Seattle Seahawks Super Bowl XLIX Champions sweatpants, but I don't face the challenge of daily life in Republic of Congo, and that's not ironic fashion in Brazzaville. One sapeur explains: "Even if I don't have money in my pocket, I only need to wear a suit and tie to feel really at ease." These men choose to pay an arm and a leg to dress like they do, figuratively, and their days are brighter.

When you face conflict and choose a way to deal with it, the consequences of that choice comprise the lived experience that supports your conclusions. The stories we tell ourselves form our future, and there's no life in a story with just three C's.

The assumption behind all the action, the first C, is that one character enacts a story, but we're never the only character. Although we all have to answer for our own actions, we don't have to enter conflicts alone, and we don't have to make decisions by ourselves. Reckoning your actions with who's above you and who's beside you, however, is not something they teach you at speech camp.

Are these 7 couples REALLY still together?

Yes.

Click-baited again. No ad revenue for me again— just the satisfaction of a hit on my stats counter. Onto the honest title and real article.

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7 Funny Overlapping Acronyms

1. BM = Bowel movement; British Museum
The arts editor of The Economist delivered a public lecture at the LSE, and I fought back laughter each time she said, "I know BM best," or "BM solved the problem of overflow on weekends...." I don't go in for toilet humor, but I live to juxtapose high and low culture. Nothing is lower culture than material evacuating through colons, slumped prostrate on hospital bedsheets. I will spare you a picture.

2. DD = Bra size; doctor of divinity
If braziers fit any theological study, they must form revisionist exegesis of the (X-Rated) Song of Solomon. But if buxom concubines in ancient Israel did wear bras, they were probably fitted according to ephahs or cubits or something, not the un-invented Roman alphabet.

Perhaps I think small thoughts. Plenty of women are DDs, and many women are vicars. Statistically, someone must have both a pair and a parish.

(nothing to proportion, scale, or good taste)

3. LBC = Leading Britain's Conversation; Long Beach, California
London has a radio station called Leading Britain's Conversation. Every Thursday, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg answers listeners' questions live on air, and the mayor of London does so on the first Tuesday of every month. These are called LBC Phone-Ins.

Snoop Dogg often informs his listeners that he hails from Long Beach, California, e.g. "With so much drama in the L-B-C. It's kinda hard bein Snoop D-O-double-G". British politicians are many things, but cool is not one of them. I die like 5-0 every time I hear that they're on the LBC.

"I'm as concerned as anybody about the chronic unemployment figures in east London."

4. NHK = Japanese news network (Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai); Dutch Reformed Church (Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk)
This is the most obscure acronym in the list, but I think the world needs a Calvinist Hello Kitty.

Five points to whoever gets the tulip. Not everyone will get the tulip.

American TV viewers can find NHK in the valley between PBS and C-SPAN. It's the same channel that airs Al Jazeera and BBC World News. There was no NHK on the island of Japan until national broadcast radio launched in 1925. Back when the country isolated itself from the world (1641–1853), the Dutch were the only foreign power allowed to run a trading post into the country, partly because they made no missionary efforts to reform the Japanese.

5. PRC = People's Republic of China; file format extension of Amazon Kindle books
China or Amazon – which one really allows for freedom of speech? Wake up, sheeple, to the Amazonian wolf at your door. First they put predatory prices on print books out of pure malice for small bookshops, and then they addict us to Prime digital books that, it turns out, we don't even own! What will Amazon do next? I think they should show their true colors: claim islands in the South China Sea.

That's right. Jeff Bezos wants Manila.

6. SA = Salvation Army, Nazi brown-shirts (Sturmabteilung)
I make no comparison. Just giving a fun fact!

7. STD = Sexually transmitted disease; Sigma Tau Delta International English Honor Society
The acronym STI (sexually transmitted infection) is used more than STD, but I want to get it out there that the organization of student wordsmiths is, in abbreviation, venereal disease. To be fair, STD was not in use as a medical term until World War II. But coincidentally, Sigma Tau Delta formed the same year (1924) as the first World Health Organization multilateral treaty "respecting... the treatment of venereal diseases."

I've read that many college students experiment with drugs, sex, and alcohol, so there must be some who are in STD with an STD. Whom can these bookworms model? The pantheon of writers abounds with alcoholics and drug-addicts, but I'm not aware of any authors mythologized for copulating unto the point of illness. Like sophomore English majors, we can speculate without research nonetheless.

Going way back, we know that Shakespeare sired a child out of wedlock and spent his career hanging around a theatre frequented by groundlings. Looking at the last century, I bet The Beats didn't carry prophylactics on the road with them, and Arthur Miller was married to Marilyn Monroe. She couldn't even sing "Happy Birthday" without trying to seduce someone. Also in the pantheon is Hunter S. Thompson. QED.

You may enjoy my five other Sevens:
_{7 things you do that YOU WON'T BELIEVE you used to hate
7 Reasons/Ways I celebrate Black History Month
7 People who should, but never ever will, work together
7 Things I Lost Escaping My Uncertain Fate (of '07 or '08)
Christmas List in July [7 items]}