The Царица was out driving yesterday (on May Day) and spotted the 1970s Eco Flag, flying ironically next to an American Flag.

“When was the last time you saw one of those?” she asked. Good question.

The flag was flying in a fairly upper middle class suburb quite East of Muscovy, and no doubt the chump flying it had no idea what it symbolizes.

Sure, the Wikipedia entry on it describes it lovingly as a patriotic symbol, devised off the American flag, with the star spanglings replaced by a morphed and stylized E and O (for environment and organism). Because when you think ecology, you think environment and organism, right?

Not quite. The Czar remembers when this flag appeared in 1970. The message was very clear at the time that the “theta” symbol comes from Θανατος, the Greek God of Death. Because it was a pro-communist anti-American protest flag intended to associate American imperialism with death.

“No Czar,” they tell me, “the theta represents the threat that mankind poses to the Earth. It was developed by a cartoonist in the 1960s—a Disney cartoonist—who was anything but communist.”

Okay. Here is the very cartoon in question:

See any explanation therein about the use of theta? No, because it is not there. The icon developed by cartoonist Ron Cobb in 1969 was never intended to be used as an anti-American symbol. However, the anti-American crowds grabbed his symbol and applied it as a threat…and because Cobb initially declared it copyright free, he could not regain control of its use.

Rob Cobb, by the way, has done some very cool stuff. One supposes he would rather not talk about his symbol’s perversion, although many of his pseudo-subversive political cartoons intended to paint the US in a pretty bad light.

So much so that in 1999, the flag was changed to eliminate the anti-American message by swapping the theta with a peace symbol in the canton.

Not surprisingly, the nice hippie version of the flag never caught on, and instead we still have some ignorant chump proudly displaying the down-with-America hippie version in his front yard.

Folks—they don’t hide this stuff as much as you might think. But much of today’s culture likes to use 1970s symbols because they seem cool, without understanding an iota of what they mean(t). Like the Che shirts…but that is another story.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.