The recent story about the flag at the home and vacation home of Judge Alito and his family reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to blog about more broadly: how much political attention is focused on interpreting the flag in our politically polarized era In a sense, this is frustrating.
Alito Flag brought up a recent example, but I think this is a dynamic that comes up over and over again. What does “from river to sea” mean? What is “critical race theory”? What does “all lives matter” mean? It’s surprising how much politics ends up being channeled through the contested meanings of the phrases and symbols used.
I’m sure there’s an academic phrase that already describes this. But without understanding this, I call it the strange politics of the distribution of meaning. This is my idea. In a polarized political environment, where there is little communication between the two sides, it is easy to anger your own side if you interpret the other side’s symbols or phrases callously. This is what you announced. Now you can see them for real. Finally, they say the quiet part out loud. This is who they are.
Sometimes the meaning specified is correct and the ruthlessness is simply accurate. In this case, that’s fair enough. However, meaning is often important and may be contested. A specific symbol or phrase may mean different things to different people. A specific use may be innocuous or used where the meaning is uncertain. In this case, the assignment of meaning can cause a lot of trouble. It can effectively create a different meaning than the person using the symbol or phrase intended.
I personally don’t know the meaning of specific flags, so I don’t know to what extent the Alito Flag story reflects this dynamic. But it seems to me that a lot of the concerns in our politics feed into that concern. Note a phrase or symbol; the person on the other side will claim that’s what it means; both parties understand the facts completely differently because they give the symbol or phrase a different meaning.
This is not to doubt that there are real differences in political views, or that certain symbols and phrases are deeply disturbing. But I wonder if something is lost when we focus on symbols and phrases rather than trying to directly address underlying disagreements.
