Surrender

On Tuesday, July 22, 2014, a group of individuals crossed the iconic Brooklyn Bridge, in New York City, New York, and replaced the flags of the United States of America with what appeared to be white flags. Metal pans were used to cover the lights that normally shone on the flags in a coordinated, stealthy operation.

Typically, the white flag is used as a sign of truce, a sign that one party wishes to parley; usually, the flag is an indication of surrender. But these weren’t plain white flags at all, but in fact American flags, bleached white.

What did this mean? What was the message? Who was surrendering — New York, given the location of the act — or America, by virtue of the flags’ original provenance? Who or what was being surrendering to?

Questions about security were raised: after all, the atrocities of September 11 took place just over the East River, which the Brooklyn Bridge spans. Police have been searching social media, video footage has been pored over, cellphone tower logs have been queried, DNA was supposedly recovered.

Mass surveillance. Police response. Terrorism concerns.

Fear.

Fear is what America has surrendered to. Fear has driven America to surrender its most precious values, its founding principles of liberty birthed in revolution from tyranny, and to abandon what little moral fortitude it had left. America has surrendered to the politic, to the demagogues, to the irrational.

It is all so simple. The action of swapping out the flag only makes sense in the reaction to the deed: America has surrendered the freedoms of the people to fear.