The American Flag on Marston Quad

So it is, in fact, true that an American flag flies across campus from the post on Marston Quad, and not only on national holidays, as I had originally assumed. I am not sure why it strikes me so, how timid it looks, frail in the autumn wind. Ironic, considering its patriotic glory. I understand it. I am in the United States, after all. Still, I cannot shake the question. Why? Why here? Why now? Why at all?
I think, in contrast, about my unrivaled affinity with the Brazilian flag. The two countries share familiar specters: corruption, censorship, crises of national identity, though they manifest differently and unevenly. Perhaps it is telling that many far-right Brazilians have turned to the American flag in place of their own. It carries something their national flag no longer can. Hate.
It all feels like a simulation. A strategic assembly of symbols, controlled by a strategic assembly of oligarchs. Controlled by no one. They govern wealth, capital, law, just about everything. When I look up at Old Glory red, “pure white,” and Old Glory blue, it is them I feel I am looking at, them looking down on me. I have the instinct to wince, but I hold it back. What some people I knew would give to be in my place. Sitting on a bench on Marston Quad, in sunny Southern California.
I remember being in Bahia as a child, picturing this very flag from the seaside. The excitement I felt was taller than the flagpole, some thirty feet.