Mergers and Acquisitions
The Cross, the Land, the Flag Undercut Jeep’s Milquetoast Call for Common Ground
The image an American flag carved into a map of the United States — the “lower 48,” as they’re known. The states are erased. The nation is whole, merged into flag. At its center, the nation’s center, is a cross and a heart. A cross that dwarfs land and flag. That makes it clear where allegiance lies. // Above it all is the phrase “Pray America.” A direct address. An imperative. An order. “Pray America,” as in America must pray. // The image is a divisive one, even if many see it as a symbol of unity. Part of a larger call to come together. To meet in the middle. // It is part of the visual rhetoric of an ad named “The Middle,” narrated by Bruce Springsteen. An image that appears early in the ad. An interior wall in a small chapel in Lebanon, Kansas. The direct center point of the continental United States. This is the middle, Springsteen tells us. // The image is one of many in the ad meant to evoke a mythic past. Echo “God Bless America” and “America the Beautiful.” We are to read it within the larger ad as inclusive. “All are welcome,” Springsteen says. // But the visual rhetoric says something different. Signals an exclusion that belies Springsteen’s narration. It is the rhetoric of the Christian Dominionist or Christian Nationalist. Movements that seek a union of church and state. That were driving elements of the Trump years. Of the Capitol Building violence. Movements that have been growing and spreading across the nation. // Christian Dominionists, writes Leroy Sykes, believe “that Christians can and must have political, social, and religious dominance in the world.” Christians. Not Jews. Not Muslims. Hindus. Sikhs. Not Buddhists or Athiests. Christians. In dominion. Literally in control. Power. // This is the underlying context. This cross in a small chapel at the exact center of the continental United States. The mythic middle. The over-praised center that too often is presented as what is most American about America. // This cross embedded on the flag and into the nation. Embedded and looming. A part of and bigger than. It tells us something. Proclaims a dangerous merger. The nation and the land. The land and the church. The church and the nation. // The image “gave me chills of persecution,” a Jewish friend says on Facebook. Me too. It should chill us all. //