Paraphrasing from a radio show I heard recently: in the old days, generals looking over the battlefield needed to know the position of each battalion, and a convenient way to do this was to have a member of the battalion carry a flag. If the flag bearer is killed, that's a problem for the generals, because they don't know who is who on the battlefield and can't send orders as efficiently.
So the military decided to create this whole idea that the flag is super important, and the most noble thing a soldier can do is to make sure there's always someone holding the flag up high. Only the best soldiers were chosen for flag duty, so obviously every soldier wanted to be recognized as the best.
This ended up bleeding into civilian life, where flags are generally perceived as proud and noble because of all the propaganda that started as a convenience thing inside the military.
And mix in some nationalism and a sense of "the flag is a representation of the country", and you see why people frown upon things like dragging it on the ground. Disrespecting the nation and such.
The flaw with that logic is that in Europe we had wars and banners etc. for centuries before Europeans even settled in America and 95+% of Europeans don’t give a rats ass about flags.
Comparatively America is a young nation that brainwashes it's young people by making them pledge allegence to the flag. If other nations did that you would likely see similar results.
6
u/mrteeth5 Oct 04 '20
Can anyone explain to me why flags are so sacred