American elections are always gravid with patriotic imagery. National flags are everywhere in abundance, anything and everything that be colored red, white, or blue has gotten the full treatment. Both major parties hire small armies of consultants to go over every last little image, inflection, word, and symbol they can to ensure that everything is “on message” (don’t forget that flag pin, Senator!). Huge sums of money are spent to make sure that all the semiotics have been attended to. That said, it’s interesting that the official site of the Republican Party is gop.COM, and that of the Democrats is democrats.ORG. More than coincidence?

Anyway, with all the attention paid to little details, it’s curious to note that the GOP log, displayed at the beginning of this post, uses white stars resting on a single point. Why is that curious? Well, in pretty much every other instance of contemporary American flag-related banners, graphics, garb, or kitsch, the star is seen in an “upright” position, resting on two points, as seen in these unimpeachably patriotic examples below: