Flag Insanity all over the World

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When you read about a country in a guide book undoubtedly the national movement of the country comes up. Each modern state has a few dates a year that it dedicates to this nationalism. Normally the "independence day", "constitution day", "republic day", "president's day", "liberation day" etc. Some even have more than one of each type. Hungary for example I believe has three independence days! Which pretty much tells you how good the Hungarian Army was more than anything!

I don't really know where I stand on nationalism, I would never think of myself as anything but British and was definitely upset by the concepts of devolution in the UK. But on the other hand this clinging to some sort of geo-political outlined piece of mud seems a little ridiculous. To me it conjures up this picture of an alien going to an uninhabited island, or perhaps planet (or a moon) and sticking a flag into it, saying in the name of Marty the Martian.

And getting on to flags, what is the obsession? I mean I like a good interesting flag as much as the next traveller, but how is it that practically every building in Istanbul has a huge Turkish flag hanging down it. When I landed at Ataturk Airport I even saw an aircraft hangar with a massive one draped over it. As if to tell the incoming passengers, don't worry the Turks control this hangar and the next one and the insurance building and the car park. I'm in Istanbul who else would be controlling it!

Is all this, less metaphoric more actual, flag waving a big insecurity complex about national identity?

Is it a state enforced solidarity for law and order?

I know that for Turkey nationalism saved them from being invaded by multiple sources - Churchill, Hitler, Stalin, perhaps even the Persians and Arabs might have wanted a piece. But why are they still so militant about the flagging?

The USA are another country that has an unnatural obsession with flaggary, I would imagine half the US army have stars and stripes boxer shorts. And there are plenty of days where you can go out and wave flags about and revel in mass wrist waggling. Many Americans are fanatical about their ancestral roots and practically bathe in the history of their family. Still they only wave the Stars and Stripes. Is it a reassurance to their fellow Americans, "I might not have the same ancestral roots but I'm your brother now"?

Another odd phenomenon is the concept of sacredness of the flag. For example hanging a Union Jack upside down would represent anarchy, hooliganism perhaps even an end to the civilised world to those flaggy types. When probably 90% of the population of the UK wouldn't even be able to tell it's the wrong way up! Does it represent a regime or part of their soul?

When regimes are toppled, flags are burned and for a split second everyone thinks that change is happening before their eyes when the reality is they have just witnessed impromptu pyromania not the instatement of a fair and agreed system of governance for the people. Oddly the guy penning the new constitution rarely gets a photo op.

There are many countries who even give significance to the height of the flag pole, take the North- South Korea Space Race; Each side keeps adding a few girders under the flag pole to make it higher than the other one. The first one to reach space wins and presumably takes control of the whole peninsula, or perhaps just disrupts satellite TV.

Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan are three more countries skewered by giant flag poles, unfortunately for the Turkmen, they built this ginormous flag in a city that really isn't windy, and as such you hardly ever see the flag as it is too heavy. I know they have a lot of gas money, but really! Turkmenistan has a whole bunch of cool unique ways to spend money - rotating gold statues, buildings shaped like books, etc.- Why did they go for the cliché?

One last point, what is with Flag clustering, if a place needs to be symbolised as part of the regime, 1 flag is perfectly sufficient, what possible requirement would there be for a row of the same flag? Does it designate how important that place is? This is a one flag institution, perhaps a school. This is a three flag institution such as a hospital, this is 5 small flag + a big flag institution such as the Ministry of Defence.

I will draw on one piece of factual absurdity to match my rather anecdotal evidence... If we had just not bothered to have a physical flags flapping about in the UK, the government by now would have saved the equivalent of the entire budget deficit.

Well this rant hasn't really concluded anything, but I'm flagging and need to stop writing. I would love to hear some of your ideas here, feel free to flag anything up that I missed. I don't really know jack about flags, or have any real standards to go by, I guess I will serve my pennants for it...

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Comments

[Sameul david]

Very Good one
I agree with you 101%. To much jingoism in the world! Great blog!