Keep Your Eye On the Grand Flying Flag

I was looking up something online about Tim Walz and his time as governor of Minnesota and I found this interesting flag design that, I learned, is the new state flag of Minnesota.

What? How did that happen?

It's part of a new trend among some of the states where their flags are increasingly seen as boring to redesign them and make them look more like national flags.  Most state flags have the state seal on them and little diversity or variety in colors.  Kansas, Oklahoma and Oregon have their names in really big letters on their flags to make sure that everyone Gets It.  The new Minnesota state flag, which replaced one of those old boring single-color flags with the state seal on it, shows a dark blue field representing the night skies, a light blue field representing the state's abundant waters, and an eight-pointed star representing the North Star.  

The Minnesota state flag, adopted in May 2024, was adopted two months after Utah got rid of its boring flag with the state seal against a single-color backdrop, showing a beehive in the middle of the flag to represent industry and to allude to the Mormon homeland's original proposed name, Deseret, which Brigham Young insisted was a word used by the ancient Israelite peoples of the Americas to mean, "honeybee," the bee being a symbol in Mormonism of hard work.  This is why Utah is officially nicknamed "The Beehive State" and its state motto is "Industry."  

Thus the state flags of Minnesota and Utah join interesting flags from other states, like Alaska . . . 

. . . Arizona . . .

. . . and, of course, Ohio.

And of course, I can't forget the flag of Tennessee . . .

. . . or the flag of Texas . . . 

. . . which I sometimes confuse with the national flag of Chile.

And, in keeping with the trend of new state flags, I understand that Florida may have a new flag soon.

Yes,  I went there. 

The Great Salt Lake Crisis

I've often referred to Utah as America's Israel, and not just because it is a religious homeland for an historically persecuted sect.   The landscape of Utah very much resembles that of Israel, with its vast expanses of desert and also the fertile valleys that sustain human settlement  and agriculture, and it even has a river emanating from freshwater lake.  That river, like its biblical counterpart, is also called the Jordan, though it flows north from Utah Lake rather than south, as the biblical Jordan River flows from the Sea of Galilee. Mormon pioneers who arrived in the Wasatch Valley noted the incredible similarity to the river that flowed from Utah Lake into the an oversalinated lake just as the the Jordan River in Israel flowed from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea. It only convinced them more that they had found their own promised land and influenced their decision to name the river after its biblical counterpart.    

The body of water the Jordan River of Utah flows into, of course, is the Great Salt Lake, which has come to symbolize Utah and its proto-Zionist culture.  However, water levels in the lake have been declining thanks to an ongoing, climate-change-induced drought in the West and Utahns' overreliance on water not just from the Jordan but from other rivers that feed the lake.  

The Great Salt Lake, ironically a shrunken remnant of a larger ancient lake, has supported numerous waterfowl, brine shrimp, and shorebirds like the California gull, the state bird and, according to Mormon legend, the savior of the Mormon settlement (it was said that a large flock of gulls that descended upon and ate a swarm of crickets that threatened the settlers' corn crop in 1848).  But not only could the wildlife be in danger of the lake continues to dry up, so could the people of Salt Lake City and its environs.  Much of the sediment of the lake built up over time is toxic, coming mainly from mining runoff but also from minerals from rivers that feed it.  If the Great Salt Lake disappears entirely - which some scientists say could happen as early as 2028 - the dust from the toxic sediment could blow in the wind toward the Salt Lake City metropolitan area.

Efforts are now being made to regulate water usage, allow more water to flow into the lake, and stress conservation.  Utahns are well aware of the consequences - albeit rather late - of this lake running dry.  It hasn't been this low since 1963, but a more reliable climate and less water usage back then restored it.  Now it's up to humans to restore the lake, for if they don't, the chosen people of Jesus who founded their Zion in the American West may, like the Jews before them, wander once again to look for a new homeland.   

How the West Was Lost

Donald Trump rolled back land protections granted by the Clinton and Obama administrations to acreage in Utah under the 1906 Antiquities Act.  He announced that the two national monuments would be downsized to allow the state to take over the land for - you guessed it - commercial purposes.  The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, which includes Broken Bow Arch (below), will have its area reduced by half, but the Bears Ears National Monument will be reduced in size by as much as 85 percent. 

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke made the recommendations, and Trump can easily say he's merely following the advice of an expert.  Right.  Zinke is a former Montana congressman, and like most hack politicians from the West, his only expertise is in opening up more federal land to drilling, timber clearing, and in the case of Utah, mining and fossil-fuel extraction.  Hardly surprisingly, Utah's all-Republican (and all-Mormon) congressional delegation enthusiastically supports the move. 

There's nothing new about the western states wanting to do what they please with federal land and opposing the federal government's attempts to regulate it.  But what is new in this case is that Trump is reversing the monument protection established by his predecessors in such a brazen, sweeping manner.  There are few examples of the land preservation rollback that Trump has pulled.  Some of America's most beautiful and most ecologically sensitive landscapes could be lost forever, now that the monument declaration for much of the land has been rescinded. 

The land is also the site of ancient Native American artifacts and sacred burial grounds, mostly of the Navajo tribe. Navajo and other Indians of the region have wanted to ensure the land's preservation, but the white men who represent Utah in Congress (and Utah's Representative Mia Love, the only black woman in the House Republican caucus) can't be bothered with such concerns.  Representative Robert Bishop, who represents Utah's First House District, not only is among the staunchest opponents of the Antiquities Act, he also advocates for the repeal of the Endangered Species Act of 1973, saying that he "would love to invalidate" the law to spur economic development in his district.

I once called Utah, because of its landscape and because of its historic role as the Mormon homeland, America's Israel.  I didn't realize how right I was; just as the Israelis have built their Zion on the land taken from the Palestinians without regard to their culture, so the Mormons have built a Zion indifferent to the cultural concerns of  the Navajo and Ute tribes that populated the land first. 

Trump's land grab could set a dangerous precedent for future repeals of Antiquities Act protections - not just by his own administration (rumor has it that he's eyeing the rollback of a national marine monument in Hawaii declared by President George W. Bush) but by future administrations.  Because some legal experts say the only Congress can modify a presidential declaration of a national monument, this rollback is going to be challenged in court. Yvon Chouinard, the founding CEO of the Patagonia outdoor gear company, laid down the gauntlet for everyone against this rollback.

"I think the only thing this administration understands is lawsuits," the 79-year-old Chouinard said in an interview with CNN. "We're losing this planet, and we have an evil government. And not just the federal government, but wacko politicians out of Utah and places. I mean, it's evil. And I'm not going to stand back and just let evil win."

Evil.  Wacko.  Whoa, you better watch out when you start calling Mormons epithets like that.

Patagonia is already suing.  Go get 'em, Mr. Chouinard. :-)