If you haven’t yen seen CGP Grey’s new video in which he ranks the US state flags, please do so now. It is vintage Grey.
The DMV region is 2 for 3 in the good flag department: Maryland’s is in the so-bad-it’s-good category, DC’s is just a really good flag I’m proud to see fly every day. Virginia’s is… quite bad. The seal is good — I love to see Latin in the wild — but as Grey notes, plastering your seal over a blue background does not magically make a flag.
What would make for a good flag of Virginia is the black snake on yellow background design it’s put on its specialty license plates, but of course “Don’t tread on me” has been forever poisoned, and other than the plates it has no particular ties to Virginia. If anything, since Ben Franklin drew the original design Pennsylvania could have use it to replace its own vexicological abomination, but for the toxicity.
No, if Virginia is to lean into its herritage it should put a ball of cotton on the left, a leaf of tobacco on the right, and a congestion-priced highway right down the middle.