I watched the news with my mouth hanging open because watched Animal House in the theater. Frat boys are dumb-ass chads who care only about beer and booty. Then suddenly a bunch of them stood amid a rain of projectiles, holding the American flag up so it wouldn’t touch the ground.
The protest at Polk Place at the University of North Carolina was part of dozens that rocked the nation in recent weeks. It makes me happy to live in Alaska, where everybody is armed so riots are rare (Fairbanks had one back in 1972). College students across the country have been demanding the universities stop their support of Israel in its war against Hamas — first by refusing Jewish students and professors access to campus. Of course, these students (and the outside agitators that are supposedly ginning them up) represent a minority of the university population and of the country, but we’ve all held in thrall to their passions for weeks now.
Not Entirely
People who follow my writing might not be surprised to find that I wouldn’t be defending the United States flag in this way. I’ll write about my feelings on that subject sometime soon. But I admire when other people stand up for something they believe in. Ordinary people have been bullied into silence and acquiescence really since the Unloving Summer of “Love” of 2020. And apparently, the generation coming of age right now has decided to do something about it.
When demonstrators at UNC-Chapel Hill tried to pull down the American flag (and replace it with the Palestinian flag), the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity stepped into the fray. They rushed into the turmoil to stop the process and then, realizing the flag isn’t supposed to touch the ground, they stayed while the crowd screamed epithets and threats at them, pelted them with water bottles, bricks and other objects, and kept something they consider important to them from happening.
At the time, they probably weren’t expecting to be rewarded for their efforts, but billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman and some others have raised over $400,000 to throw them a kegger, so I guess it worked out okay for them.
The frat said it had been in touch with other fraternities who also defended flags on their own campuses against anti-Israel protesters seeking to replace the American flag with the Palestinian flag.
What Does It Matter?
I don’t worship the flag, which is why I wouldn’t volunteer to take a concussion to keep it off the ground, but it shows that some segment of Gen Z still cares about the country they live in and one of its symbols.
I didn’t catch his name, but one of the Pi Kappa Phi boys said his parents were immigrants and he rushed to support his frat brothers because he knows how important the freedoms America provides are because when his parents were his age, they didn’t have those freedoms until they came to America.
So maybe they’re not all chads or John Bellucci.
Amid the chaos, the antisemitism, the hatred of American and the flag that represents it, a body of young men stood up not just for the flag and their country, but for themselves.
So Are We Back?
I’m just barely old enough to remember the 1960s riots — college students fighting the establishment over another unpopular foreign war. My brother flew into California from his Navy posting and was met at LAX by protesters screaming he was killing babies and raping women — which he definitely wasn’t doing. At the time, he believed he was doing the right thing—defending our homeland. He was perhaps naive, but he didn’t deserve to be assaulted on his way back home.
And today, it’s not soldiers and sailors facing that sort of abuse, but young college students. A lot of them are Jews who can do nothing about what Israel is doing, but they’re faced with their fellow students threatening to kill them simply because they’re Jewish. And, they can’t defend themselves without going to jail, while those who wish them harm will probably face zero consequences. It would have been nice if the frat boys had stepped up earlier in this battle, but at least they finally chose a side.
I don’t know if that means the country can be saved. It feels like we’re gone way for down a really bad road, so maybe it’s not possible to pull it back. We definitely haven’t won the war. But maybe we’re starting to win some battles. Maybe ordinary people start to win in little rounds like this one—people, particularly young people, start pushing back and refuse to run away when things get rough.
We lost control of our society and government through a lot of incremental steps. People didn’t push back when someone demanded concessions that we knew weren’t good for the country. We compromised. And I think we’ve reached the point where we can no longer do that. We’re likely to win the culture back by a reverse of that method.
I’m not a fan of the flag, so my initial reaction upon hearing about this was “So, what difference does it make?” But then I thought about it for a while. What did the little snots who were throwing debris at these guys and seeing them not back down think as they slunk away later? Their violence didn’t bring about the expected effect. Someone risked their skin to stand up to them. The frat boys didn’t engage in violence themselves, but some of them admitted that if people had actually followed the debris they were throwing at them they would have “thrown hands.” The pro-Hamas crowd seem to be soy-boys and women wearing kefyias (with bare midriff shirts, which makes me confused), while the frat boys look like athletes, so “throwing hands” in self-defense might work out well for the frat boys.
And look at that picture above. That’s Ole Miss’s frat boys who faced a similar situation. They stood up for themselves and they look happy…and normal.
Lela Markham is an Alaska-based novelist and commenter who doesn’t usually post on weekends, but she couldn’t resist commenting on this events in American current affairs.
I suspect there are more ‘regular people’ out there than the media stereotypers would have you to believe. I lift a toast to you!