This is another one of those “I noticed something I didn’t understand and wrote until I figured it out” pieces — a meandering braid of patriotism, perception, and permission. A loose thread I kept pulling until, eventually, the tangle turned into a knot I could name. Or maybe a bow I could tie.

It started with a road trip — from cobalt-blue Vermont into Elise Stefanik’s fire-engine red Congressional district in upstate New York.

Yesterday,

On the way there and back, we kept noticing how visible patriotism was. American flags on homes, on porches, on barns and small-town storefronts — many more than I remembered from making the same trip alone last November. Even in Vermont, the visual vocabulary of pride was louder. There was one American flag redesigned with Palestinian colors, but every other flag we saw was just that — a flag. Not a protest. Not a signal. Just the symbol.

There were mailboxes and yard ornaments too. My favorite was a cutout of Bigfoot, posted at the foot of a long gravel driveway that disappeared into thick woods. One of those Vermont houses so far off the road, so tree-draped and obscured, you can’t even guess what kind of place it leads to. The kind where visitors probably need snow tires — or a ferry ride — to reach it between November and April.

Bigfoot was wearing boxer shorts patterned like the American flag. Red, white, and blue. Stars on one cheek, stripes on the other.

Some people might find that disrespectful. Maybe it is; I wouldn’t mount a legal defense. But it made me grin anyway. It was funny. It was cheerful. It felt loved, somehow — as if someone had taken time to give their Bigfoot a fresh outfit for the season.

Josh and I wondered if Bigfoot gets a whole wardrobe. Were there Easter boxers last month? Halloween ones in the fall? Does he switch into Santa shorts in December, or does he just proudly rock Old Glory all year long?

And once we crossed into New York, we saw something even more striking.

For miles, utility poles displayed photographs of local veterans. Each one with a name, a branch of service, and a lifespan. Faces and facts, visible to everyone who passed.

Many of us offer ritual nods to the price of freedom — a reverent post on Memorial Day, maybe a flag on Veterans Day.

But do we ever stop and ask: Do we understand just how free we really are?

Threading the Loop

Confirmation bias is real, of course. Maybe there wasn’t any actual increase in patriotic displays along the route. Maybe I just noticed them more this time. But I doubt it — and not just because of the drive.

I practically live in Michaels and Hobby Lobby — and I’m only exaggerating a little. It wouldn’t shock me if one day an employee handed me a piece of misdelivered mail addressed to me, laughing. I also love decorating for holidays, so I always notice what’s out there for sale.

This year, the Fourth of July stuff? It’s everywhere. Bigger. Brighter. Bolder. I brought home a few small things, and each one cheered me up. Each one chipped away at the edges of my depression.

So on the drive home from Josh’s, I was looking forward to the last step in decorating: swapping out my usual fairy lights — combinations of purple and green — for the new red, white, and blue ones. And I couldn’t stop wondering:

Why now?

Why this year?

Even if the stores really are offering more — and I think they are — why hadn’t I decorated for Independence Day before?

And why do I feel like I have permission this year?

I know “permission” isn’t quite the right word, but it’s close. Patriotism feels allowed in a way it hasn’t felt in years. It feels… non-cringey. Non-defensive. Not like a performance of stubbornness or an invitation to argue.

And I think that shift — strangely — has something to do with Trump.

Which confuses me. I’ve criticized him as much as anyone. I only voted for him in that half-hearted “lesser of two evils” way that feels depressing.

So why would his return make patriotic expression feel less fraught?

That’s what I’m trying to untangle.

Pulled Taut

My gun lives in the top drawer of my nightstand. The magazine — the bullet thingy, if you’re not gun-literate — is stored just far enough away that I’d have to fully wake up to load it. That’s intentional.

I’ve trained at the range. I know how to use it safely. But unless there’s an actual midnight threat, it stays in the drawer.

One night last week, driving back from Josh’s place, I stopped for gas at a rural station — the kind that’s closed after 8 but keeps the pumps running. It was pitch black in all directions. Not another car. Not a single lighted window. Just my headlights, the quiet, and the mountains.

I wasn’t scared.

And my gun was at home.

That might be the most jaw-dropping expression of privilege I can name. It’s up there with a monarch who’s never boiled water, or a billionaire born to billionaire parents who’s never heard “we’re out of stock.”

Do you see why?

In 2025, there are still corners of the world where being a woman is itself a vulnerability that will lead to lifelong oppression. In Afghanistan, women can’t show their faces through windows or be heard by unrelated men. In parts of Iran, even the wrong kind of laughter can draw punishment.

But I — purely by the accident of birth — am an American citizen. I have a great job in a field I chose for myself. I earn my own money, and no one else has a claim to it. I can contact my elected representatives, even the ones I didn’t vote for, and expect to be treated seriously. My voice, if not always heeded, is heard.

And I’m so free, and so safe, that as long as I use basic common sense — like avoiding downtown Burlington unless Josh or Kevin or another male friend is with me — I don’t even need to carry my weapon.

Statistically, carrying it would probably make me less safe — more likely to be targeted, or disarmed, or panicked into a decision I cannot undo.

That’s what freedom looks like, too. Not just the right to bear arms, but the privilege of choosing not to, and of having a life where that is, in my particular circumstances, a sensible decision.

The Tangle and the Thread

Two of the houses we passed gave me secondhand embarrassment for the residents.

One had a yard sign reading, “Trump Is A Rapist”. The other flew an American flag reimagined in the colors of the Palestinian cause — the only politicized version of the flag I noticed all day. No other signs explained its intent, so I couldn’t tell if the message was “accept Gazan refugees,” or simply “support Palestine.”

Here’s the thing: I don’t know if those residents do appreciate the freedom that lets them say those things so boldly. Maybe they do. Maybe I’m projecting.

But part of me doubts it.

Because when your message is so deliberately provocative — so loaded it almost dares someone to challenge it — it can start to feel like performance. Like you’ve forgotten that the very ability to publicly accuse the sitting President or visibly signal allegiance in a foreign conflict is a freedom many people do not have and could not imagine.

Even if the message is righteous — even if you’re right — it’s still a gift to say it without fear. To plaster it on your very home.

There’s a reason “I know where you live” is a threat — and yet they felt free and safe to express their views at their home, on their home, through their home. Not a whisper behind closed doors, not a username in the void — a sign on the lawn, a flag on the porch, a statement left up for every neighbor, every delivery driver, every stranger to see.

That’s not just freedom of speech. That’s the kind of embodied safety most people in most places have never known. Will never know. Utterly unimaginable for most humans throughout history.

And we shouldn’t be ashamed to love the country that makes that possible.

That’s what kept tugging at me.

That’s the thread I followed all the way home.

Because we often are — even if we don’t realize it.

We often seem to need permission, if only implicitly.

Knots You Only Notice When You Trip

I don’t know why I needed permission. Maybe not everyone did.

Maybe the knot was only in me — some internal tangle of fear and cynicism, tightened slowly over years of watching symbols get hijacked, meanings get mangled, and good-faith pride get sneered into silence.

Maybe other people never stopped flying their flags. Maybe they didn’t feel the shift because they were never waiting for it.

But I was.

And here’s the strangest part: the permission I feel now — the relief, the clarity — seems to be arriving hand-in-hand with the cultural ascendancy of the political right.

Even though I’m very much center-right, and even though I’ve never been under any illusions about Trump’s characterological flaws, something about his return — or maybe just the shift he represents? — has made patriotism feel less fraught.

Less like something I have to defend. More like something I’m allowed to enjoy.

I’m not entirely comfortable with that. But I won’t deny that this is very much my experience.

Because now that it’s here — whatever “it” is — I don’t want to waste it. I don’t want to be too cool, too careful, too bitter to see the gift for what it is.

Not the symbols themselves. Not the flag or the fairy lights or the boxer-clad Bigfoot.

But the country that lets me choose to love them.

The country that gives me the freedom to ask the question.

To not know why it feels different this year.

To feel the shift without fully explaining it.

To decorate my apartment in red, white, and blue — and still feel ambivalent about what doing it for the first time means.

The safety to question.

The freedom to change my mind.

The space to keep tugging at the thread, even if I never quite tie the bow.

That’s the gift.

And that, I think, is the point.

Coming soon (for paid subs): I’m reading Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House, by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes. The combination of what they uncovered and what Tapper reported in Original Sin, which I reviewed here with such thoroughness that you can skip the book and read my review if you don’t want to give Tapper any money, is allowing for some really startling inferences about what the hell was going on. I hope to publish it by this weekend.