A white flag bearing a pine tree emblem – sound familiar? – has become a favorite (another favorite?) of the political far right.

The “Appeal to Heaven” flag, a relic of the Revolutionary War that is today being flown by Christian nationalists and Jan. 6 types, has also been raised outside the vacation home of conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, the office of Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson and the Northeast Harbor home of conservative megadonor Leonard Leo.

At a glance, it certainly resembles the design of the 1901 Maine state flag, a version of which will become the 2025 Maine state flag if voters lend it their support in November. 

That’s no reason for anybody in the Pine Tree State to think twice about choosing the pine tree flag.

Flags, symbols and other icons get politicized and co-opted every day. The American flag itself has come to mean completely different things to different people. The appetite for “politicization” nowadays – an unproductive waste of time that pulls attention away from the forces that should truly concern us – would seem to have no end.

Long before the “Appeal to Heaven” similarity came up, some Maine Republicans expressed resistance to a move away from the existing flag, suggesting that the desire to replace the current flag bearing the state seal was no more than a “woke” attempt – in the name of gender neutrality – to erase its two starring men (a husbandman leaning on a scythe and a seaman on an anchor) from the public eye.

For better or worse, readers of this newspaper have become acquainted with the term “vexillology,” the study of flags. A good flag, vexillologists say, is simple and thus recognizable. The 1901 flag is both, with versions of it embraced in recent years by Mainers up and down the state.

A good flag is also something to be proud of and rally around, not something people feel they must approach with scrutiny or suspicion.

A good flag is also … just a flag.