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As an aside, I've always wondered why we don't just make a song like America the Beautiful the anthem. It's a much better song, to be honest. And it's less arduous to sing. But it would lose the flag stuff and I think that would make a lot of people very angry. And I have no lack of judgment to think that if we open that can of worms, we won't get something by Cardi B as our anthem. So this is all just a useless lament.
Sometimes I feel like the flag itself has a position that flags don't in every other country, it's the center of civic nationalism in the way that monarchs tend to be in some other countries. That's probably the core of the disconnect that makes non-Americans weirded out by the American love of the stars and stripes.
Brits sing "God save the King" and pledge allegiance to "his majesty King Charles III and his heirs and successors according to lawr", Americans sing "does that star-spangled Banner yet wave" and pledge allegiance to "the flag, of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands." The British make fun of Americans for frequently flying the flag, but then they go wait hours and hours to see the Queen lying in state and buy cheap tat whenever there's a jubilee year. Conservatives push to ban flag burning as a constitutional exception to free speech, "compassing or imagining" the death of the king is a crime -- once upon a time a capital one -- in Britain. We hand flags out for dead veterans, soldiers talk about the flag as a centerpoint for allegiance the way the British talk about the King. Conservative Americans get very, very offended if people talk about how they hate the flag, conservative (well, high Tory, at least) Brits get very, very offended if people talk about how they hate the King. And progressives push those boundries because of course they do.
As another aside, I wonder why the British don't make "Rule Britannia" the anthem. (Of course, I understand why, but still.) God save the king is so... bland. "RULE BRITANNIA! BRITANNIA RULE THE WAVES! BRITONS NEVER, EVER, EVER WILL BE SLAVES!" is so fucking metal and it makes me want to go to war for the country, and I've never even been there.
Similarly, the Scots have chosen the maudlin "Flower of Scotland" rather than the rousing "Scotland the Brave." I think that there is something harmful in the water supply on that island.
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