The World Turned Upside Down On the Fourth of July

I want to recount an anecdote from my Fourth of July that should indicate the turmoil this country is facing. I live in Oakland, California, one of the most diverse places in all of California. I walked out the door this afternoon before I went to spend the Fourth of July with family, and I noticed one of my neighbors in Rockridge where I live - a peaceful neighborhood that has families and renters of all races - flying an upside U.S. flag. I became instantly distressed, and when the person who picked me up saw me, she immediately noticed. I want to call attention to the origins of the upside down flag, which I didn't know about until the scandal with Justice Alito flying the upside down flag around Trump's election. This is technically illegal under the U.S. Code, though it's also free speech protected by Cohen v. California, if that case is even still good law. My understanding of the upside down American flag is that it is used as a symbol of white Christian nationalism, and a call to arms, and basically a call to return this nation prior to the South's loss in the Civil War.

Now, maybe my neighbors were flying the flag as a symbol of protest because the Fourth of July has often oppressed Black persons, in which case I apologize to them because leftist protest movements have also used the flag as a symbol of resistance, and this current political moment calls for resistance. 

I only know that I wrote my job talk paper five years ago, and it is five years ago to the day I finished the first draft and today I finished it finally (after taking math and physics classes and studying game theory on my own and as a clinician), and that someone really wise predicted to me way back then that a) democracy would fall, b) Trump would become a media personality, and c) some other stuff I cannot reveal. A) seems to be in the process of happening, though I think the model is South America, such as the Videla regime in Argentina, where the rich got richer and there was a robust middle and upper class, or maybe Chile under Pinochet, and that unquestionably Trump was and is still a media personality. So both a) and b) are coming true, and as for c) I have no idea. But whoever predicted these things has more accuracy than me, and my final draft was sent to the journal today, 5 years to the day I completed my first draft of this paper, and the day of Marie Curie's death, which is an incredibly special date to me given my work ties into physics, though not to radium. So this is a short entry about the personal significance of the Fourth of July to me. It's always been my favorite holiday, even if it has a complicated history, and I celebrate Juneteenth as well. 

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