Or maybe I’m just noticing them, but it seems like I’m seeing them on car decals, hats, shirts, etc more and more often. Is it just a passing fashion trend?
It tends to come and go. I did notice a guy at the grocery store this morning with a flag on a sweatshirt along with ‘Home of the Brave - Land of the Free’ text. Possibly the political turmoil is behind any recent change. Could appeal to any political viewpoint.
The right has been promoting the flag for many years and doubled-down on it during the Trump era. The crowds at a Trump rally wear flags on everything.
The Democrats took back patriotism at their convention so I wouldn’t be surprised if a thousand vendors started pushing flags on leftists immediately afterward.
I hung a flag on my house when Trump got elected as a protest to show that flying a flag doesn’t mean you’re a MAGA supporter, it means you’re a proud American. Others may have done the same thing.
The United States Flag Code advises against using the flag as apparel, which I think is entirely sensible. I certainly don’t think that I would be honoring the symbol of our country by squeezing my enormous ass into a pair of flag shorts.
In days of yore this was taken quite seriously. In 1970, Abbie Hoffman appeared on the Merv Griffin talk show wearing a shirt with a flag on it (or a shirt made out of a flag; reports vary). The network broadcast the show but actually blacked out the part of the screen showing Hoffman “to avoid legal problems that might arise from possible charges of desecration of the flag and to avoid affronting many of the network’s viewers”. Presumably the offended viewers would mostly be on the right of the political spectrum. Today it seems no one on the right has the slightest qualms about using an image of the flag as part of their clothing, despite what the US Flag Code might say.