There’s a picture circulating online right now of a small pleasure boat at rest on the bottom of a clear lake. A flagpole appears to shoot up from the boat, with a bright-red Trump 2020 flag gently aflutter, purportedly in the currents of Texas’s Lake Travis, where, at a Donald Trump boat parade this past Saturday, several boats sank in the wakes of boats said to belong to other Trump supporters. This, we know, actually happened. The photo, though, is a fake. You can tell because the boat is only flying one Trump flag. 

The Trump flag, of which there are, like the Confederate flag, several variations, seems to have displaced the humble lawn sign as a symbol of allegiance to Trump’s America. Along with the traditional red Trump 2020 flag, there are a variety of what might be considered Trump-supporter “battle flags.” A popular one features a painting of Trump holding an assault rifle astride a Trump–labeled tank speeding behind a bald eagle, bombs bursting in air, with the actual American flag relegated to a supporting role in the background. Another, available outside Trump rallies, features Trump as a cut, sweaty Rambo in a black tank top gripping a rocket launcher—though, with an unlikely thick tuft of bright blonde hair flopping over a red headband, the figure looks more like the aging Karate Kid villain Johnny Lawrence of the 34-years-later series Cobra Kai than he does Stallone. 

Perhaps the most popular flag, though, is blue with a thin red line surrounding “Trump” in big white letters above a smaller “Pence” and “Keep America Great.” A friend in Wisconsin tells me that popular in his rural area is a variation that substitutes the slogan “No More Bullshit.” Another version replaces both Pence and the official slogan with the unofficial mantra of Trumpism, “Fuck Your Feelings.” The basic blue Trump flag, though, is “ICONIC,” in the words of the campaign, which deluges supporters with emails and texts hawking them, like one labeled “Boat Parades” offering a discount: “$35 $25 in the NEXT HOUR.” Act fast, though, urges the special offer: “be sure to get yours NOW before they’re gone.” But that’s what’s most interesting about these flags: They won’t be gone, not for a long time.

Unlike yard signs, which fade and wilt in the weather, are easily plucked by other candidates’ supporters, and tend to be thrown out, anyway, after the election, flags endure. I’ve seen nearly as many Trump 2016 flags flying recently as Trump 2020s, which, if it’s a bad sign for Trump campaign fundraising, may be an even worse sign for democracy’s prospects. I lost count of how many Trump flags I passed on a recent drive across rural New Hampshire and Maine. (Total Joe Biden yard signs: seven.) Many homes flew several, sometimes in checkerboards of blue and red. Often, the Trump flag flickers or hangs limp right beneath the American flag; sometimes, it flies in its place. One house featured as curtains in its two front windows an American flag and the blue Trump banner, like guiding lights of the same Trumpian vision. There aren’t a lot of Confederate flags in New England (though more than you might think), but elsewhere the Stars and Bars and Trump’s blue MAGAs and KAGs frequently fly together. Like friends.

Such flags aren’t really about the campaign; they’re about identity. Inasmuch as the same might be said of a yard sign, it applies only to a moment in time. To post a Biden sign in your yard is to urge support for a candidate right now. Beyond the Biden family and a few dedicated aides, there are not likely people who think of themselves in terms of their support for Biden. A flag, though, speaks to the personhood of one who flies it. A pride flag means far more than a parade, just as the American flag, or the flag of any nation, transcends any given political season. Such flags transcend party too—Democrats, Republicans, and independents all fly the American banner. So too the Trump flag, flown by Democrats, Republicans, and independents, many of whom now align themselves not with parties but with the idea of one nation under Trump—an “EXCLUSIVE ACCESS” nation, in the all-caps vernacular of Trump’s campaign come-ons. It’s not so much a whites-only club, this America, as one open to all so long as they’re willing to honor its statues and its flags and most of all the whiteness of its past. “We grew up with a certain history,” Trump declared at a press conference on Monday, seemingly explaining his rejection of all that challenges the legacy of white supremacy that has culminated in his presidency. 

There’s a parallel to be found in the Blue Lives Matter flag, the American one drained of all color but for a blue stripe across the middle, the police (and their grievances) centered as the essence of American identity. That flag, the man who made it, Andrew Jacob, previously told me, was created in response to Black Lives Matter. The black below the blue, Jacob said—half the flag—“represents criminals.” It’s an American flag that divides the nation into us and them, or, as Trump might put it, “our people” and “animals.”

The solid blue field of the Trump flag, though, is all about “our people,” who are, of course, very fine indeed. It has become the American flag, a statement not of political support but of a state of being. If Trump wins—or takes—another term in November, you’ll see more of the blue MAGAs and their variants, and not just in Trump-red counties. And some who don’t love Trump may fly them as American flags, “don’t-fuck-with-me” or, more to the point, “don’t-shoot-us” flags, as my liberal rural Wisconsin friend says of the large Stars and Stripes above his home, or like the little American flags many Muslim taxi drivers used to decorate their cabs after 9/11. 

But even if Trump loses and deigns to leave office, I suspect most of the flags will remain. A different kind of don’t-fuck-with-me flag: a flag for grievances and a new “lost cause,” the Trumpism that will, even if its namesake someday faces prison time, or especially should that come to pass, rise and rise again, a chronic condition with its own American branding, as long lasting as any scar.

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