Indicative.

I'm going to vent and I apologize because I know that this might be offensive and that people might take it the wrong way. I just got totally flamed on a Survivor" board for mentioning that one of the players "is great, even with the obnoxious flag"- a player makes a huge deal out of his US flag and I find it a little annoying. I'm not saying the flag is obnoxious, I don't hate the US flag, but in this case it was annoying. How GRINGO is it (using gringo in the most negative sense possible, or howabout instead of gringo, "ARROGANT") that when I say "flag" and "obnoxious" in the same sentence, I am suddenly in poor taste and a bad american. I don't care if it was a picture of the guy's kid or the chilean flag or whatever, I stand by my words. It's being presented in an obnoxious way. The verb of the presentation of the flag is obnoxious NOT the subject being the flag.

I'm not even against patriotism. Really I'm not. But if a national flag is a recognized SYMBOL, then isn't it highly possible to use that symbol to irritate people, thus making the symbol annoying? Can I be American and still find that there are ways of using the US flag that are distasteful? And why does admitting that this is even possible make me the bad guy??