It's Not About the Flag

The current Minnesota state flag situation is a perfect example of the way Dave Roberts and others have described the control of the right-wing media/social media ecosystem over its audience.

As people here know and I've written before, Minnesota got a new flag design and state seal about 2.5 years ago. Our previous flag was a blue blanket with the state seal in the middle of it. The previous seal was a circle depicting a white settler plowing a field with his rifle leaning against a stump, while a Native man rode his horse off toward the west. On the flag, the seal looked like an unintelligible mess of colors that required inclusion of the word MINNESOTA to have any possibility of viewers knowing what state it represented.

The new flag and seal were the result of a commission appointed by the State Legislature when the DFL had a trifecta, but the commission was not controlled by Democrats in the Legislature. Instead, it was led by design professionals and had representation from the state's Historical Society, the State Arts Board, the Capitol Area Architectural and Planning Board, the Secretary of State (the only elected official), reps from the state's major tribes and several other cultural groups, and three people who are called "general member of the public." There were four non-voting members from the Legislature, two from each party.

The process included a call for submissions to the general public. And a huge number of residents responded with a wide array of visual ideas! It was fun to see them all and many people expressed their opinions on the designs. The Commission winnowed the submissions down, voted, and revised a bit to professionalize the final choice — submitted by a 20-something white guy from southwestern Minnesota — to what became the final design. 

By all objective criteria, one would think this was a great outcome. The chosen design is praised by professional flag people (vexillographers) for its clarity, meaning to Minnesota, and recognizability as a flag. 

But here we are today with the city councils of some smaller cities in greater Minnesota, and even a few Twin Cities suburbs, voting to bring back the old flag to use at their city halls. Why? 

In my opinion, it's entirely a case of right-wing media or social media railing against it and feeding that captive audience to believe the flag is "woke." Some believe it's the flag of Somalia. Really. 

Bill Lindeke wrote a nice essay about the flag and a bit about the controversy today for MinnPost, which is what prompted me to also write. I agree with him that insisting on using the old flag is the Minnesota equivalent of flying the Confederate stars and bars. 

But I also think this controversy over the new flag is our local example of how right-wing true believers are manipulated, or want to be manipulated, into following whatever version of reality their overlords give them. 

Currently, the construction of data centers and even ICE detention centers are widely unpopular on a bipartisan basis among regular people. I predict that soon one or both will also become partisan, with Republicans falling in line to support data centers and concentration camps, as their leaders tell them what to think about them. The same way they have come to oppose wind farms — even though Texas and Iowa are major producers of wind energy, for instance.

The Minnesota flag wasn't a partisan controversy at first either. There were progressives who wanted different flags, or didn't particularly like this flag. It was made controversial. The flag could have been an image of anything, any kind of design. Between the fact that it was something that changed and who was in charge when it changed... that was enough for it to be bad, in their eyes.