People are up in arms because protestors in Los Angeles are waving Mexican and Salvadoran flags instead of American ones. I don’t carry a flag myself; I’ve never found salvation in a piece of cloth. But let’s be clear: the outrage here is not about symbols. It’s about who is allowed to grieve, to demand dignity, to be visible.

If you’re more offended by a foreign flag than by children held in detention, or by police swinging batons at demonstrators, your priorities are showing.

This country has always made it dangerous to be poor, brown, or undocumented. ICE didn’t invent that, but it enforces it with devastating efficiency. I’m tempted to scream, “SS! _______ GESTAPO!” But we don’t need to make wild historical comparisons to understand what it means when a government dehumanizes people and then punishes them for asserting their humanity. We’ve been here before. The justifications change. The logic of cruelty stays the same.

Nationalism insists there’s only one right kind of pain, one right kind of protest. But people don’t stop being human just because they crossed an invisible line. If a flag makes you angrier than injustice, the problem isn’t a flag, it’s what you’ve allowed it to stand for.