What Makes a Person Patriotic?

It’s so big that the people handling the flag can’t help stepping on it, which drives commenters nuts whenever they see photos or video on local news. The stars are bigger than my hand. The stripes are 28 inches wide. This is one of the five million United States flags that Eder Flag will manufacture in 2019. Eder, the largest producer of American flags and flagpoles, is one of only five companies that have received a “Made in the U.S.A.” certification from the Flag Manufacturers Association of America.

Eder also makes state flags, municipal flags, military flags, international flags and commemorative banners of all kinds. All of these, as well as the flagpole inventory, are produced in the company’s main office building. The American flags are produced across the street, in a cavernous workroom with sewing machines, industrial equipment and ceiling-high shelves stacked with cakes of nylon.

The company makes historical flags, too — all 27 official versions of the stars and stripes and a line of replicas that span North American history. In 2015, after the mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., left nine people dead, Eder Flag stopped manufacturing the ubiquitous Virginia Infantry flag that is widely mistaken for the official flag of the Confederate States of America. The company did it within days, not months, destroying the extant stock at a considerable financial loss. (Eder continues to produce other Civil War-era flags, including Robert E. Lee’s battle flag.)

Jodi Goglio, the chief operating officer of Eder, says that the money was less important the fact that as a wholesaler, she doesn’t know where the flags will end up. Or, put another way, Eder doesn’t ever want to find out that one of its flags was tacked to a mass shooter’s bedroom wall.

“I took that brunt for the company,” says Ms. Goglio, a sweet white woman with a gray and white bob. “It was a brutal couple of weeks.”

Some of the feedback was positive, she says, “but there was such hatred in there. I will never forget that, ever. Ever.”

This wasn’t a political decision, at least not in the way you might think. Because the flag industry is so driven by world events, Ms. Goglio says, the decisions Eder makes aren’t only about business. “It can sometimes be what’s right for the emotional aspect — of not just the people that work here, but for the citizens.”

There are two kinds of naturalization ceremonies, judicial and administrative — the difference is like having a courthouse wedding versus planning your own — but regardless they’re all different. Each judge has complete control over the ceremonies in their courtroom. They can seize their bully pulpit or stick to the essentials, extemporize about freedom or voting or their personal political leanings.

Today, 4,242 people across the country are becoming U.S. citizens. In this Milwaukee courtroom, Judge Lynn S. Adelman is presiding over the naturalizations of 72 people from 31 countries, and he begins with a roll call of the assembled nations.

“Where is Benin?” Judge Adelman says. “It’s … on the west side of Africa,” the man from Benin responds, and a laugh ripples through the room. A woman in a yellow cardigan, who had nodded to herself as Judge Adelman stressed the importance of voting, is from India. We could have a conversation about what’s happening in Kashmir, the contested Indian state, Judge Adelman says, but we’ll set it aside for now. A dozen people from Mexico raise their hands. Sudan, a woman in a pretty blouse with a butterfly pattern, responds with a raised arm and a loud “here,” a smile in her voice.

Becoming a citizen changes people’s lives. It also doesn’t. Any one of these new Americans might leave the courthouse and be told to go back to where they came from. It won’t matter to many of their neighbors that the dozen new Mexican-American citizens are the ones who “waited in line,” who “did it right.” I say this to my press escort from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services regional office. She shrugs. “Someone could tell me to go back to where I came from, too,” she says. She’s often mistaken for non-white.

That the immigration process is complex and arduous, and maybe even unfairly so, isn’t lost on people. Outside the courthouse, Sandy Weitz, down from Oshkosh with a group of friends to celebrate the naturalization of a friend’s friend’s wife, tells me that the man she sat next to went through the wringer to bring his wife here. Sixty thousand dollars and three separate trips to Vietnam, can you believe that? The hoops they put him through! I ask her if it helps her understand the critique that “waiting in line” is an inadequate solution. No, she says, shrugging. That’s just the way the system is.

We’re going to the Top Secret Inc. Upside Down White House. The digital sign says admission is $5, today only, but I suspect the sign says that every day.

Most are dressed casually, in T-shirts and baseball caps: Their voices are their sacred wardrobe. The women who sing with them stand in a semicircle behind them. Everywhere, women and girls in heavy jingle dresses bring the sounds of the bells with them as they pad in and out of the arena and visit friends in the bleachers. Every so often, the M.C. Larry Yazzie welcomes visitors from other tribal nations, U.S. states, and countries.

“There’s a young lady all the way from Hangzhou, China,” he says. “It’s her first time seeing real Indians, she says.” Mr. Yazzie, a Meskwaki and professional Fancy Dancer, returns to the settlement from his home in Minnesota for the powwow each year. People chat and catch up. Most leave their phones in purses or pockets. There’s funnel cake and fry bread tacos. This is the 105th Meskwaki Powwow.

The Meskwaki Nation, formally the Sac and Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa, is the only federally recognized tribe in the state. Their 8,000-acre settlement is a sovereign nation, not a federally designated reservation; the tribe bought the first 80 acres in 1857. The tribe has more than 1,400 enrolled members.

In the days leading up to the powwow, loss has shaken the community. Two women have died, one an elder, the other a young woman who left behind a daughter. The M.C. calls for a blanket dance to raise money for their families. Someone spreads out a blanket woven in rich purples and bright oranges, and dancers and visitors cover it with bills and coins. People give generously, lots of fives and 20s. A little kid who won $5 in a Tiny Tots dance comes over and adds his prize to the pile.

The several styles of competitive powwow dance are denoted partly by the performers’ regalia. Grass dancers, for example, wear ribbons and fringe across the span of their shirts and down their pants and dresses. There are also a handful of traditional dances, which originated throughout Indian Country. At the Meskwaki History Museum tent, Suzanne Buffalo proudly explains that tribes act as sacred custodians of other nations’ dances: The Meskwaki have long performed the Shawnee Dance, which was a gift from that tribe.

Powwows like these are complicated. They’re modern social events that began in the wake of decades of federal suppression of indigenous rituals, both expressions of defiance to assimilation and intercultural commercial entities. In 1923, when the Bureau of Indian Affairs issued a statement warning tribes against holding powwows or dances, the Meskwaki threw the biggest one yet and invited all of their white neighbors. The event attracted more than 12,000 people over four days.

It’s Veterans Day at the powwow, with dances for each branch of the armed forces, including the reserves and National Guard, but vets have pride of place throughout the weekend. Members of the settlement’s American Legion post raise and lower the flags and lead the twice-daily Grand Entry into the arena. The traditional Pipe Dance and Victory Dance, which began after World War I, honor their sacrifices. The tribe has more than 250 veterans of the U.S. military. During World War II, eight men and women served as code talkers, using the Meskwaki language to transmit tactical radio orders.

Why do so many Native Americans serve a country that for so long excluded them? It’s simple, one woman says: “This is our land.”

There are lots of confrontational T-shirts at the fair, their messages unprintable here. And then there are the Slipknot fans, dressed in tees that pledge their allegiance to heavy metal. The band is in Des Moines for its first hometown show in years. Obviously there’s a mosh pit.

We arrive at Coyote Run Farm late on a Sunday morning, the sky the kind of gray that makes every plant and flower look more alive.

When the freshmen enter the school and head for the gym, there’s a gantlet of icebreakers: Walk through a tunnel of smiling teachers and upperclassmen, screaming and waving their hands in front of your face; massage your neighbor’s shoulders; she-says-Lincoln-you-say-High; volunteer to pop balloons as fast as you can. Move your body, feel feelings — though not too much, or too many.

Emporia, Kan., has followed the Main Street revitalization plan that has swept distressed urban neighborhoods and rural towns alike. There’s a craft brewery, a bike shop, a remodeled movie palace turned concert hall, a monthly art walk and a farmers’ market, one more likely to be attended by actual farmers than in some other locales.

Downtown, a civic group has recently installed wireless speakers that broadcast music from a local radio station. Family Video, the last video rental chain standing, has a store here. In May, the company introduced CBD and hemp products in all of its locations, generating some competition for the CBD store across the street. The city’s economy is also anchored by a Hostess bakery, a state university, a two-year technical college and a Tyson meatpacking plant.

Three nights before the Lyon County Fair closes, there’s no gate fee; the place is packed with children begging their parents to buy more tickets for the dozen or so rides. In the arena, the antique tractors take a lap around the track so we can get a look at them all before the tractor pull starts. (There are three different tractor pulls during the 11-day fair.)

An older white man in an immaculate cowboy hat walks by and says, conversationally, “Gary’s going to pull it straight through to the beef barn.” That’s not exactly what happens, but Gary Watts still wins in the 3,000-pound weight class. An orange tractor shudders into silence just before Nate Myers is about to hook it to the load. A half dozen men watch him crank it and cheer when it roars back to life. “It’s only a hundred years old,” he says. “Sometimes she needs a little lovin’.” It dies again, and someone says, “Looks like Nate spent too much time working on everybody else’s tractor and not his own.”

Inside a handsome, recently renovated recreational building, community groups and small businesses are tabling. Representatives from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are giving away water safety swag, and a woman from Flint Hills Technical College is touting the school’s new robotics program. A local insurance agent is raffling off a side of beef.

The county Democratic Party folks have pads of sample ballots so they can explain ranked-choice voting. Kansas is traditionally a caucus state, but the state party has decided to adopt ranked-choice ballots for the May 2020 primary. (The Kansas G.O.P. may not have a primary at all.) Raymond Rogers, tabling for the group, says he’s excited to see how it goes. He’s a jolly white man with wire-rimmed glasses, about six inches of gray and white beard, and the kind of belly that suggests a life of good eating and drinking. He lets me cast a ballot, though I don’t want to taint the results. He tells me I should read “PrairyErth,” by William Least-Heat Moon, and writes the title on the back of a ballot so I won’t forget.

The Bravos and Indios are part of a circuit of Mexican-American fast-pitch softball teams, established in the central U.S. in the 1930s and ’40s, when the game was among the most popular amateur sports in the country. Banned from segregated recreation clubs and later discouraged from playing in mostly white Amateur Softball Association tournaments, Mexican-Americans founded their own, traveling for matches in Texas, Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Colorado — the Midwest and Plains states where Mexican immigrants had found jobs in agriculture and shipping in the years before World War I.

The Newton Mexican-American Athletic Club hosted the first Mexican-American tournament in 1946. July marked its 71st year. The game has been a multigenerational anchor for Latino communities across the region ever since. In Kansas City, Mo., the teams are dynasties, complete with beefs folks have been tending for decades. Mr. Hernandez is the third generation of one of the game’s ruling families. His grandfather Paul Sr., known as Waxie, was a star player for the Aztecas before becoming the legendary coach of the Amigos. Paul Jr. pitched and then coached for the Amigos, too. Mr. Vaca's grandfather was also an Azteca, and his dad was an Amigo.

Mr. Aguirre has a big smile and a big tattoo of Jesus on his forearm. It’s been a good season for the Bravos, he tells me. We’re standing side by side in right field, watching guys tossing balls around in pairs. They’re 3-2, and “the only thing that’s beat us this year is the rain,” he says.

Mr. Aguirre happened to play baseball as a kid, but now he’s a steward of fast pitch softball. In 2015, hoping to help keep the sport alive in Kansas City, Mr. Aguirre revived the Bravos, his dad’s old team, and organized a new annual tournament. Now people come to Kansas City for the Indios’ tournament in June and for theirs in July.

One of their pitchers is a guy who’s up from Argentina for the summer on a tourist visa. He started 15 games over the season, but not at N.M.A.A.C. The tournament requires that your pitcher is Mexican-American. Gabby Melendez took pitching duties and a tournament M.V.P. award for the second year in a row.

Mr. Diaz goes back and forth from practicing to coaching his son, also named Eddie, who is 7 and good at every sport he plays. The guys shout advice; Mariano does some batting practice with him.

Little Eddie’s bright future aside, they do worry about the future of Mexican-American fast pitch. In July, a major Texas tournament celebrated its 70th, and final, year. The guys in their 20s seem to prefer video games. The women’s leagues are defunct, and these days boys play baseball. It’s too bad: In this atmosphere of heightened anti-Mexican rhetoric, they need the community the sport creates more than ever.

I say so when I’m chatting with Mr. Olvera on the sidelines. He agrees. “The one benefit of all the negativity is that it’s brought us guys closer. This field, it’s our safe place.” They try not to dwell, but the politics do intrude. Once, Mr. Aguirre says, one of their guys, a pitcher from Mexico, was on the mound when he received a phone call informing him that his wife and children were in ICE custody in Texas.

The sun’s slipping away, the kids need to get to bed, and Mr. Aguirre’s shift starts soon. He won’t be at the tournament this weekend — he’s already missed too much work this summer. Sincere but self-conscious, he tries a pregame pep talk. “I almost wish they’d lose,” he says. Almost.

They’re still teasing each other as everyone packs up to head out. “I used to be a softball player, but now I’m a family man,” Mr. Hernandez says — a toddler and a newborn and Jamie, his very patient weekend softball widow. (He did skip a tournament the weekend the baby was born.) “They’re always saying they want the old Bubba back.” Everyone laughs. “No one’s been saying that,” Mr. Olvera says. If they have, they’d never tell.

They form something like a little Levittown, rows of houses differentiated by an architectural detail or two and set along curving cement sidewalks, or a Pacific Northwest subdivision for tiny-home-dwelling hipsters, picked up whole and set down on Troost Avenue in Kansas City.

Veterans’ Village is a transitional housing program for homeless veterans. Bryan Meyer, a founder, claps his hands. “Let’s do it,” he says, with the affect of a football coach or, you know, a former Marine. “Let’s take a walk.”

The houses, which are either 240 or 360 square feet, are the size of the tiny apartments New Yorkers pay thousands for. The project received national press when Brandonn Mixon, also a founder, appeared on Netflix’s “Queer Eye” earlier this year; the presidential primary candidate and veteran Pete Buttegieg visited the site in July.

A new community center, scheduled to open this fall, will include a computer lab, a barbershop and a veterinary clinic. Homeless pet owners often decline emergency shelters and transitional housing accommodations that don’t allow animals. Here, pets are welcome. The scale model in the Veterans Community Project office even has a dog figurine standing outside the door.

V.C.P. was founded in 2015 by four combat veterans seeking to provide what they call zero-barrier services to veterans, especially those who slip through the social safety net or can’t access federal benefits because their service records do not meet the Department of Defense’s eligibility calculus. They built the organization with the verve of soldiers committed to the mission, avoiding as much red tape as possible. V.C.P. is almost entirely privately funded and receives no federal funding.

The village has 49 homes, but any Kansas City veteran with a photo ID and an official discharge form can receive walk-in services across the street at the Veterans’ Service Center. There are food boxes and hygiene kits. Caseworkers provide job support, help clients navigate the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, and coordinate medical and mental health care for clients. (The organization does not directly provide medical, dental or mental health services.) The service center has given more than 4,000 bus passes since opening in 2017. But the tiny homes are what draw in supporters and funders.

Back in the office, we sit at an enormous conference table. Josh Henges, a social worker with a long career in homeless services, asks me about this project. I tell him that I’m interested in capturing expressions of patriotism. It’s not a word I’ve heard around here.

No, Mr. Henges says. He doesn’t like it. When people use it, they mostly mean “military first,” not “country first” — and that means violence. “Violence is, in many ways, why I’m comfortable right now,” he says. But valorizing that violence, which damages and isolates the men and women assigned to carrying it out, makes a poor foundation for building community and offering care. Helping people in their community live with what this country has asked them to do makes a pretty good one.

They lay out a series of rifles on shooting benches they’ve covered with beach towels. Rob’s brought his AK-47, which he’s decorated with pink glitter and Hello Kitty stickers. He sometimes brings a Super Soaker, too. Today he’s dressed like a cowboy, complete with a holstered revolver, because he’s really into the Lil Nas X song “Old Town Road” right now. (Missouri is an open-carry state.) There are roses embroidered on the yoke of his shirt and his sunglasses are heart-shaped.

Before we touch anything, we go over the rules of gun safety: always assume a gun is loaded, keep your finger off the guard and off trigger unless you’re about to fire, always wear protection, never aim at anything you don’t want to destroy. To this standard list they’ve added an additional principle: check your mental state. Don’t handle guns if you’re angry or agitated or depressed. Give your guns to others for safekeeping if needed.

Alan — white, with half-rim glasses, a tidy beard and a tech-fabric polo tucked into belted pants — is my guide. He shows me how to load and operate a .22-caliber rifle and two semi-automatics, one an AR-15. He says I’ll probably find the shotgun “pleasant to shoot.” Whenever I seem hesitant about handling one of the guns, he reminds me that I don’t have to try it if I don’t want to.

The group’s experience with firearms varies. Rob’s parents were “socialist weirdos living in the middle of nowhere,” and they did own guns. Renee, a redhead wearing a club shirt that simply says “John Brown” on the front and back, helped Rob start the group two years ago, when she first decided that she wanted to learn more about firearms. Carlyn and Alan both got involved at the first meeting.