Albuquerque Journal

Since When Is U.S. as Flimsy as a Flag?
By Jim Belshaw Of the Journal

When did we become so weak in the knees about what's patriotic and what isn't?
   
When did we become such delicate desert flowers that if some ROTC kids screw up and take down one flag but leaves up another, we dissolve into spasms of outrage?
   
You know the story.
   
Peter Lynch, an Air Force veteran and student at the University of New Mexico, sees the Mexican flag flying on campus one day, as it has on that one day every year for nearly 20 years as a courtesy recognizing Mexican Independence Day.
   
But when he sees it, it's flying alone. No U.S. flag flies with it.
   
He tries to get UNM officials to take it down, takes it down himself, tears it apart, gets arrested, gets convicted of a criminal misdemeanor.
   
He says he is "floored" that he would be convicted of a crime in America.
   
The jury, not as easily floored, takes about half an hour to come to a verdict. (When will we get it into our heads that the responsibilities of a jury demand more of us than talk radio does?)
   
All of this is accompanied by the usual outrage machine.
   
Thursday morning I heard a KKOB caller describe UNM as a "Democrat-controlled communist" place.
   
The commies. What would we do without them?
   
Wait ... they lost, didn't they?
   
And the Democrats ... well, they're enough to give anybody a case of the vapors.
   
Not everyone is outraged, though.
   
I know some World War II guys, tough old birds who saw hard times and suffered on behalf of all of us in America. I don't recall any of them mentioning the UNM flag thing other than to roll their eyes at all clamoring patriots proclaiming their patriotism.
   
Why is that? Do you think those old World War II guys disrespect the flag?
   
Or could it be they have a good handle on the whole sound and fury signifying nothing question?
   
Last fall, one of the outraged said that any foreign flag flying alone without a U.S. flag made him feel as if the country had been "conquered."
   
When did it become so easy to knock us off?
   
Back in September, the UNM Army ROTC commander wrote a public letter explaining what happened.
   
On a Friday afternoon, ROTC cadets took down the U.S. flag, mistakenly left up the Mexican flag and then compounded the error by forgetting to raise the U.S. flag the following Monday.
   
This doesn't sound to me like William the Conqueror just landed at the Rio Grande Nature Center.
   
It sounds like some ROTC kids made a mistake.
   
Then along comes Peter Lynch and then along comes Outragefest.
   
On the Journal Web page Thursday, an online poll has about 65 percent of the respondents saying Peter Lynch should be given a medal.
   
For what?
   
When did this happen to us?
   
I've always worked under the assumption— or hope— that Americans had thicker skins.
   
I've always thought it took more than an obscure mistake on a quiet weekend to rile us up to the point of feeling "conquered."
   
I suppose it could be the UNM flag thing is just another milepost to mark the times we live in— The Outrage Age, The Overstatement Epoch.
   
I'm never sure what's at the center of it.
   
All I'm certain of are the adjectives: overwrought, overstated, too loud, too mad about too little.
   
But the noun the adjectives modify, the center of thing, escapes me.
   
Write to Jim Belshaw at The Albuquerque Journal, P.O. Drawer J, Albuquerque, NM 87103; telephone— 823-3930; e-mail— jbelshaw@abqjournal.com.