There are many reasons I’m proud to work at The Dispatch. The latest one is that we’ve had a rollicking debate internally over the past week about whether the Great Flag Freakout of 2024 is justified or not.
The Great Flag Freakout began with a New York Times report about the Stars and Stripes being flown upside down at Justice Samuel Alito’s home shortly after January 6. It was sustained by a second Times story published this week about an obscure flag display at a home Alito owns. That would be his beach house in New Jersey, which sported an “Appeal to Heaven” banner at some point last summer.
That flag, the Times explained, “dates back to the Revolutionary War, but largely fell into obscurity until recent years and is now a symbol of support for former President Donald J. Trump, for a religious strand of the ‘Stop the Steal’ campaign and for a push to remake American government in Christian terms.” It was carried outside the Capitol during the insurrection, the paper made a point of noting, just as the upside-down American flag was.
I think the only conscientious reaction one can have to all of this is ambivalence.
Nick Catoggio is a staff writer at The Dispatch and is based in Texas. Prior to joining the company in 2022, he spent 16 years gradually alienating a populist readership at Hot Air. When Nick isn’t busy writing a daily newsletter on politics, he’s … probably planning the next day’s newsletter.
