Contemporary Flag Designs
Mostly about Banana Republicanism
Over the past year or so the idea that the US is becoming a banana republic has evolved from being a fear to a conviction. My response has been multifaceted; here I present the artistic side.
The image above is almost self-explanatory, as the insurrectionists of 1861 and their subsequent followers have never been interested in lofty ideals such as freedom for all, equality before the law, or for that matter any post-feudal concept of government. That took expression by replacing the stars in the common (but by no means not the only) version of their flag with bananas, to more truthfully depict what kind of countries they envisioned for themselves. But upon further consideration I have concluded that this image may be too abstract for the MAGA insurrectionists, and have constructed a modern version that should resonate better with them. It is on display behind the paywall.
As described in my earlier flags post [1], I was inspired by the art of K.P. Brehmer, who reconstructed a German flag to encode the distribution of wealth in his country. I did an analogous reconstruction of the US flag, in which the combined areas of the red and white bars were adjusted according to the fraction of US wealth held by the top 10% (red) and the next 40% (white), with the blue area then adjusted to depict the bottom 50%. In doing so, the stars were eliminated from the blue field to avoid confusion. I entitled it according to Brehmer’s title, “Correction of the national colors measured by the distribution of wealth”. It is shown below, oriented in accordance with nautical convention, according to which flying the flag upside down is a signal of a ship in distress.
The image correctly conveys the reality that the combined wealth of the richest 10% of the US population exceeds the combined total of the remaining 90%, and that the lower half the population owns but a tiny fraction of the nation’s wealth. And that fraction is itself shrinking.
In the year that has passed since the creation of this image the political situation has changed, thus calling for revisions. The current version of this flag, as well as other modern interpretations, are beyond the paywall.