> >This is complete bullshit! This is what people want to say to pollsters,
> >but it doesn't reflect reality. I've been observing these behaviors since
> >9-11 and I would argue that a minority of people fly the flag from their
> >car or from their home.
>
> Where you been? In my parents' neighborhood in suburban NJ, theirs is
> about the only house without flags. Many lawns are festooned with
> multiple flags even. Most apartment bldgs in nonpoor neighborhoods of
> Manhattan have flags displayed - a real shocker, in this hotbed of
> secular humanism.
>
> Doug
I just took a walk down my street in my middling neighborhood in my middling town. It didn't seem more red-white-and-blue than what you'd expect at this time of year. I didn't count, but it seems that about half or a little less have flags displayed. Nothing real ostentatious, e.g., multiple flags on lawns. Driving to Madison today, I passed through several small towns, none of which seemed to be overdoing it in the flag department. Pretty much nil in Madison, except for those put up by officialdom. I did see a huge one hanging from a crane at a construction site. I formed similar impressions when I was in SW Wisconsin and NE Iowa along the Mississippi last week, and two months ago up in northern Wis, in Hayward, an old lumber town not terribly far from Duluth/Superior. There was a lot of flag-display going on at Christmas-time, but it seems to have died away by now, excepting the usual 4th of July upsurge. I still see a lot of flags on cars, though.
Maybe people in or near media centers like NYC are more affected by the official propaganda, and adorn their homes and yards accordingly.
This is all completely impressionistic, of course, unlike the scientific results obtained when totting up what people tell telephone pollsters.
Jacob Conrad