Put out more flags? Hmmm....

I lived in the USA for a while, some years ago. As a nation, they're very fond of flags. Indeed, when you reached the 4th of July, flags seemed to be standard practice. As it were. And after the 11th September 2001? Well, naturally, you can imagine, it was flag central. In the UK, however, we're much more reticent. Euro 2004 brought them out, but only briefly, and, after England lost to Portugal, they disappeared with an almost unbelievable rapidity - to the extent that, the next morning, barely any were left, and those that were hung limply, their energy spent, whilst passers-by walked on, trying not to be embarrassed.
What can we learn from this? Sod all, to be frank. But I've had a few beers, and was in the mood to ramble.
I really dislike terms like 'national psyche' - implying that the 60million disparate individuals living in England can all be grouped together by a bunch of lazy-arsed journalists. Or that the millions of people who supported Ralph Nader's last presidential campaign in the USA can be lumped together on July 4th with the bible-bashing morons who helped get Dubya into power. National boundaries have an input to our character - how could they not, when everything we learn at school, see in the media and so on is determined by which country we live in - but they don't define us. I should write something here about the international working class, and such, but I gave up Marxism only a few years after I gave up more transcendentally-based religions. Still, it'd be nice to believe, wouldn't it? Wrong, but nice...