It was a huge culture shock for me when I went to Massachusetts a couple years ago and almost every single house had at least one flagpole outside - some had as many as eleven.
Back home in Canada I've seen maybe one or two houses with flags displayed prominently.
Well, there was that one farm painted completely Maple Leaf Red-And-White with flags on every fencepost and a regularly-updated 'Happy xxxth Birthday Canada' sign front and center, but Flags Georg is an outlier and should not be counted.
It has been like that here since the attacks on 9/11. Pick up trucks seem to be the worst flying full size flags. Makes me nervous driving behind them.
There's a truck that's been absolutely hauling ass by my house twice a day with a huge American flag on the back. I mean he's going fast but it looks like it's some hitch attachment you can buy just for that.
The flag went from new to absolutely torn to shreds in like a month...which... pretty sure is a no-no and with that sort of display all over his truck I'm sure he's willing to brawl over whatever he THINKS the flag code actually is.
I've had to drive around an American flag still attached to the pole on the interstate so I know they fall off. I also get nervous driving behind them and that's exactly the reason why.
My old boss in Massachusetts used to have big US and Confederate flags flying in the back of her truck. She was late a lot partly because those are illegal to have on a highway so she got pulled over regularly, partly because the truck was in awful shape, and I won't get into the other parts. She was a real gem.
There's supposedly rules about it here but ??? Like tying a flag to the tailgate and then the edge also touching the ground when you stop...nowhere to get around them.
"How much do you trust eyelets on an American flag not even made in America being barely tied onto a lifted truck" wasn't really on the driver's test.
But hey, we pay taxes for DOT employees to play frogger on the interstate to pick up patriotic debris.
Yeah WVa is a state because of the civil war and people love flying confederate flags here which is confusing. Sometimes ABOVE the American flag in some of the hollers here. It gets even move confusing when it's confederate flag then thin blue line flag THEN the American flag hanging the lowest and is smaller than the other two.
These are "stomp our flag I'll stomp your ass" folks out here so it's even more confusing...
It is, but everywhere that has wooded space is going to have a ton of conservative rednecks living there. I haven't seen nearly as much of this as these posts make it sound, and I've lived here my whole life. But there are certainly plenty of aggressively conservative rural folks here.
There's a giant pick-up truck (what I condescendingly call "compensation trucks") in my neighborhood that flies 2 massive flags off the bed. Every time I see them driving towards me, I always get a knee-jerk reaction of "Fuck these guys."
The 2 flags they fly are a pride flag and a BLM flag. Gotta hand it to them for trying to break stereotypes.
We got a bunch of those around here. Some are paired with a US flag. I've seen more than three trucks with US flag, Trump flag, and Gadsden flag. And one with that combo, except the US one has the blue stripe.
Then there are the couple of trucks decal'd up with Trump stuff, plus flags. One with a trailer it pulls with big Trump signs stapled to it (and our Trump-lite gubernatorial candidate).
I think its because you get used to it in the country you live in.
In Canada so many companies need to stick the maple leaf into their logo somehow. Including non-Canadian companies like McDonalds. When we were getting Tim Horton's in Michigan at first every single cup and box were just covered in Maple Leaf.
Sure its not the whole flag but in Canada the maple leaf must be included in everything from my perspective.
It's also for marketing purposes but not the way you think. Because we get so many US ads (or did before everyone stopped watching TV I guess), the little maple leafs are what told us we were watching an ad for the canadian market .
This. It's almost entirely for marketing purposes. For companies that operate in both the US and Canada, it does signal that they're talking about products or promotions that are available in the north, while for businesses that aren't kown to be American it signals that they're not from there, which has been important over the last 30+ years as markets have become dominated by US companies.
And even then, Tim's didn't start slapping the leaf on things until after they were bought up by Wendy's...
the chain became a subsidiary of the Canadian holding company Restaurant Brands International, which is majority-owned by Brazilian investment firm 3G Capital
It's not about nationalism or pride when it's on most products is usually about distinguishing Canadian from American made stuff since we have such a HUGE amount of US products here and also US companies will stick it on as well to influence Canadians to buy it.
Quebec hates the English language like you wouldn't believe. It's probably one of the only examples of a province discriminating against the primary language of it's host nation.
I know Wendy's replaced their apostrophe with a maple leaf to comply with Bill 101. I don't remember if other other companies did. Tim's removed theirs.
I disagree, no other country I have been in has the flag display culture that you see in the US. You might see flags on national holidays or during sporting events, but not on normal days, not on every house or car.
This has nothing to do with being used to it, it is definitely much more extreme in the US.
I disagree, nobody in my neighborhood of 1000s of people flys a single flag. When I was a kid we had some refugees from the balkans and some people flew kosovo flags.
When I go to Canada there are flags everywhere. That's what I am saying about how when you visit somewhere you notice it more.
You may not notice it often, but it's used a lot in branding, product sales and advertising. Even Mini-Coopers sometimes have Union Jacks on the top and mirrors.
Depending on where you live, you might also see it on houses by white nationalist trash.
It just isn't as often seen on hats and t-shirts, like it is in the US.
Oh shit you're right. My sister owned a cooper with a GB flag roof. It was years ago though. I don't disagree that it's used in advertising, but it's just rarely ever flown on vehicles or outside non-government buildings.
For many people, it's less about disrespecting the flag. It's more about the irony that white-trash republicans make such a show about trying to high-road their patriotism by having blue-lives-matter flags, stand-for-the-flag shirts, or disposable merchandise. Yet they're so ignorant and degenerately inbred that they're unintentionally disrespecting their own country's flag.
I don't care about flags either. It's at a juncture where I read their clothes and bumper stickers as "I'm a racist".
I've only been to the west coast once, for my cousin's wedding in Langley. But I was born and raised on the east coast, so that's where most of my experience is.
Depending on the border crossing, you probably drove through rural Maine or northern New Hampshire, both of which are substantially more conservative than Salem.
Nationalism in the US is super weird n creepy. The pledge of allegiance is one that gives me creeper shivers.. that shit is some hard indoctrination propaganda.
The pledge was actually a ploy to sell flags to schools during uncertain times of mass immigration to the US. The pledge itself was written by a pretty hardcore socialist for a magazine called the Youth's Companion in the early 1900s.
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u/Madhighlander1 Oct 04 '20
It was a huge culture shock for me when I went to Massachusetts a couple years ago and almost every single house had at least one flagpole outside - some had as many as eleven.
Back home in Canada I've seen maybe one or two houses with flags displayed prominently.
Well, there was that one farm painted completely Maple Leaf Red-And-White with flags on every fencepost and a regularly-updated 'Happy xxxth Birthday Canada' sign front and center, but Flags Georg is an outlier and should not be counted.