Flag Fun

If you ever wanted to trash your chances of being elected to public office in the United States*, try saying that the American flag is ugly.
But let's face reality. The American flag has some real problems.
1. It isn't symmetrical and;
2. The design is very busy.

Old Glory.

To my eye, the image of the American flag comes very close to moire-ing.
So... I think that flags should
1.aesthetically not be very busy and
2. should be symmetrical. And under no circumstances should
3. there be freakin' writing on a flag, but that's a matter for countries with dumb flags that have writing on them to take up (the South Korean flag might be an exception). There's yet another flag-rule which should perhaps only be a "guide" but:
4. stay away from black color on your flag. Again, South Korea might have special dispensation.

Flag of South Korea.

Anyway, back to the good ol' US of A. If I were holed up with Betsy Ross in a bunker back in '76 I'd a been all like snapping my fingers and saying "Honey, stars or stripes! Pick one!"
I think if we'd gone the stars route we might have got something like the modern EU flag.

Flag of the European Union.

Which is nice, actually. Simple. Elegant. But of course that's gone for us now as the EU has taken it.
Now remember that back in the day we were weaning ourselves off of the British flag. The Great British have a nice looking flag. Funny thing about the British flag -- it's fairly busy, possibly as busy as you can get without being too busy. Other funny thing -- it isn't symmetrical. I hadn't realized that before today.

The Union Jack? The British Flag.

The lack of symmetry takes points off of what would otherwise be a fine looking flag.
The Japanese flag has a lot going for it. It's very simple and elegant. It's as simple as possible actually. A single dot.

Japanese Flag.

From here on out we get to some politically problematic flags.
Here's a fascist flag of Franco's Spain:

Fascist Espana.

We can feel good looking at that flag because it is ugly, way too busy, and not symmetrical. It also has writing on it. And a lot of black. So it violates all the rules of good-looking flags and represents Facist Spain which was run by a load of buttheads.
Unfortunately a nominally good-looking flag is the NAZI flag. It's symmetrical** (albeit "mirrored" rather than left-right, which makes it difficult for little neo-nazi's to scrawl on bathroom doors), simple, but it does have black:

And, of course, it instantly turns anyone who likes it into a raging asshole. So there's that.
Backing off the depths of political yukkitude we come up for a breath of fresh mud and that is: the Confederate Flag. Politically loathsome, but actually aesthetically fairly beautiful.

It's symmetrical. Not too busy. Apparently it's not a cross exactly because of the influence of Southern Jews. Which is interesting. But if ol' Betsy had come up with this design instead of the Stars 'n Stripes so the Reb's couldn't have used it for the flag which defended slavery, we'd have a pretty nice looking flag, no?
+++++
*This is not something which concerns me personally as I have elected myself King, but that is another matter.
**You know what? It's just not symmetrical.