Flags at Full Staff, Discourse at Half-Mast: How Trump’s Inauguration Turned Protocol into Protest

It's January 2025, and we're all talking about flags.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered state flags raised to full-staff for Donald Trump's inauguration on January 20th, defying federal protocol requiring flags remain at half-staff through January 28th to honor former President Jimmy Carter's passing.

The directive followed Trump's social media complaints about flags being lowered during his inauguration, despite this exact scenario having occurred before during Nixon's 1972 swearing-in after Truman's death. Trump's own Mar-a-Lago property had already raised its flags ahead of schedule, turning what might have been a minor breach of protocol into another battlefield in America's endless, pointless culture war.

But why? Why are we talking about flagpoles? When did the vertical position of a piece of cloth become a measure of patriotic devotion?

Like much of what happens in Trumpworld, it's a game of performative signaling. Abbott's order demonstrates loyalty to Trump, broadcasts defiance of federal (and therefore, Democrat) authority, and frames respect for Carter as subordinate to celebrating Trump's return to power. The technical violation of flag protocol is a feature rather than a bug; and it allows Abbott to position himself as a bold defender of Trump against an entirely imagined conspiracy of Democratic flag-lowerers.

The strategy relies on the blend of victimhood and dominance that has become Trump's signature. By portraying the standard mourning protocol as a Democratic plot to diminish his inauguration, Trump turns a mundane ceremony into evidence of persecution. His followers then get to participate in an act of symbolic rebellion by raising their flags.

This works precisely because the actual height of flags means so little to most Americans. Like the proper fork to use for salad or the correct way to address a duchess, flag protocol belongs to that category of rules whose primary purpose is the observation of tradition. But Trump has an knack for turning hollow symbols into powerful tribal markers.

It's worth noting the hypocrisy. The same political faction that typically insists on rigid adherence to The Flag now celebrates its violation as an act of patriotic resistance. The underlying logic seems to be that respect for symbols matters absolutely until it conflicts with loyalty to Trump, at which point it becomes evidence of elite persecution.

It's become the broader pattern of right-wing grievance politics. The constant assertion of victimhood requires a steady supply of fresh outrages, but the waning of the Biden administration makes these hard to manufacture. So we get this bizarre spectacle where following long-established protocols for honoring a deceased president becomes evidence of anti-Trump persecution.

Conservatism has an odd relationship with institutional authority. The movement simultaneously demands strict adherence to traditional forms while reserving the right to discard those same forms whenever politically convenient. It's a kind of quantum superposition of reverence and contempt for established rules, collapsing into one state or the other depending on whether a given tradition serves immediate tactical needs.

Rather than deriving authority from correct performance of established rituals, modern political tribes increasingly assert their authority by demonstrating power to override or rewrite those rituals.

Abbott's flag directive reads less like simple Trump loyalty and more like a bid to participate in a power display. By publicly choosing Trump's authority over federal protocol, he positions himself within a hierarchy where personal loyalty trumps institutional tradition. The actual height of the flags matters far less than the demonstration that he has the power to raise them.

The order lets Texas Republicans participate in a coordinated act of protocol violation, strengthening group identity through collective defiance. The more arbitrary and technical the rule being broken, the better it serves this purpose – precisely because the violation can't be justified on practical grounds, it becomes a purer test of loyalty.

Meanwhile, Democrats find themselves in the awkward position of defending flag protocol – something that would have seemed incongruous just a few years ago. But this too reveals how thoroughly Trump has reshaped political battle lines, forcing his opponents to become defenders of institutional norms that most people should never have to even consider.  

This has nothing to do with disrespect to Carter or the violation of flag protocols – it's the continued degradation of public discourse into increasingly absurd theatrical performances. We're trapped in an endless cycle where every norm violation generates outrage, which generates counter-outrage, which justifies further norm violations, until the original meaning of the symbols being fought over has been completely lost.

The emptier the symbol, the better it serves as a test of loyalty. And what could be emptier than fighting over how high to raise a flag?