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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   32864 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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“Ted Kaye of the North American Vexillological Association called the new design "outstanding" and said that it has a place in the top 10 flags of the U.S. Despite praise from the organization, a poll found that just 23% of Minnesota voters supported switching to the new flag, while 21% supported replacing the flag with a different design and 49% wished to keep the existing flag. The flag officially became the new state flag on May 11, 2024.”

This one paragraph explains more about the American political situation than a thousand thinkpieces.

New slogan- Trump/Vance 2024: Stop Changing the Fucking Flags.

As a flag nerd I actually followed this process as it was happening. The original submissions are still up here: https://serc.mnhs.org/flags

An advocacy org but together a shorter list of the ones they liked here: https://newmnflag.org/designs

My personal favorite was #1304: https://21588026.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/21588026/Imported%20images/1cc6671bd76cede520772dafec0adfa2effd303d81b709c42ec59b16f5aff59c.png

There's been a recent push to change a whole plethora of state flags to look more akin to Microsoft Office clipart just because some rando with delusions of competency put out a pamphlet of what he thinks state flags should look like.

There are some people who really should have been bullied more in high school.

The old Minnesota flag was kind of dogshit, but the new one is too far into current year /r/vexillology trends, so I can understand why people were unhappy with it.

I generally like a lot of the vexillology flag ideas and am generally a proponent of flag reform. When it offers a good and memorable design, I think it serves as a great icon for a community.

But I think one of the issues is that they're deciding on flags by committee (or in NZ, by voting), and so you end up with bland, inoffensive, plain designs that don't take any risks -- and one of the big points for flag reform is specifically so different places can have distinct, interesting flags. Minnesota got to their flag by taking the blandest design and making it blander. That sea of light blue is just too bright.

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