jack gets mail

I got one of those Fwd:Fwd:Fwd chain emails, you know, the kind that peg the old Bogosity Meter before you even read a few lines. I often want to reply to these with a brief lecture on BCC and how the sender may not really want to pass Aunt Edna's email address along to hundreds of near-strangers. These sorts of things invariably include a long list email addresses available for mischief.

This email was a mashup of jingoism and religion, mostly having to do with the Christian Trinitarian symbolism in the way the flag is folded at military funerals.

I always want to respond to these things, and snarkily expose all the errant nonsense for what it is. But I usually fear offending someone. That's foolish, and shows how much I've internalized the feelings of entitlement usually exhibited by the religious. An acquaintance has every right to send me bombastic claptrap, but I'm not allowed to respond with rationality and poke a little fun where it's asked for.

So I answered this one, reproduced as follows.

Meaning of Flag Draped Coffin

What a load of hooey, as my Aunt Hattie would say. And I think they lost an article or two there somewhere.

I think it's high time Americans get re-educated about this Nation's history.

Indeed. And with a couple minutes spent with Google you can learn a lot.

Do you know that at military funerals, the 21-gun salute stands for the sum of the numbers in the year 1776?

No, I don't. But that's probably because it doesn't. Firing guns as a salute is as old as firing guns, having much to do with showing that one meant no harm by exhausing one's powder. But most of the ceremonial practice of multiples of seven and threes comes to us from the British Navy and dates to the middle of the 17th century, A good hundred years or so before the Articles of Confederation.

Have you ever noticed the honor guard pays meticulous attention to correctly folding the United States of America flag 13 times? You probably thought it was to symbolize the original 13 colonies, but we learn something new every day!

We do! I was taught how to fold the flag in grade school by strict Catholic nuns, so you can bet your sweet ass I paid meticulous attention to all thirteen folds, but I sure wasn't thinking about numerology.

With the help of illustrations, strange capitalization, and blinking GIFs it goes on to explain the meaning of each of the thirteen folds, like this:

The 1st fold of the flag is a symbol of life.
The 2nd fold is a symbol of the belief in eternal life.
...
The 4th fold represents the weaker nature, for as American citizens trusting in God, it is to Him we turn in times of peace as well as in time of war for His divine guidance.
...
The 13th fold, or when the flag is completely folded, the stars are uppermost reminding them of their nations motto,'In God We Trust.'

But this whole thing smells of bullshit, so I turned to the grandaddy of all internet fact-checkers, Snopes.com.

It turns out that the thirteen folds are an inevitable result of geometry, and symbolize neither colonies nor Trinitarian Christian doctrine. But that's not to say that people haven't attached meanings after the fact. There is a tradition of reading thirteen meanings at military ceremonies. Snopes quotes a U.S. Navy spokesperson:

There is no shortage of scripts available that can be read during a flag folding, but many of those scripts are religous in nature and and also ascribe meanings to the individual folds put into the flag. One of the oldest scripts is attributed to an anonymous chaplain of the U.S. Air Force Academy.

... But the reality is that neither Congress, nor federal laws related to the flag, assign any special meaning to the individual folds.

This particular thirteen meanings business was disavowed by the Department of Defence about two years ago and specifically excluded from uniform military funeral ceremonies by service members. It turns out that there are people of faith who aren't exactly comfortable with their government going on about "God the Father, the Son and Holy Ghost," or "the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob." Go figure.

There's lots more ripe for debunking here, especially the whiffs of Christian-nation myth like

Our founding fathers used GOD's word and teachings to establish our Great Nation.

Please. Washington was a deist, perhaps, at most. Franklin was a deist, most certainly. Adams a unitarian universalist . Jefferson was a theist, but not a Christian by any stretch. Adams was certainly a deist. Paine a self-proclaimed atheist. The Declaration of Independence and Constitution owe far more to Hume, Hobbes and Locke than Moses. You won't find a single reference to the Bible in the entire Federalist Papers.

MAYBE THE SUPREME COURT SHOULD READ THIS EXPLANATION BEFORE THEY RENDER THEIR DECISION ON THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE.

Oh oh. All-Caps Alert. Here the shouting signals a non sequitur. Presumably it's a reference to the "under God" words that were added to the Pledge in 1954 and the surrounding controversies. What that has to do with flag-folding and numerology I've no idea. But it dates the original of this screed to a few years ago. The Supreme Court dismissed that pledge case, holding that the plaintiff lacked standing.

But never mind all that. I just get annoyed. Jingoists and zealots give patriotism a bad name.