Two years ago, Mainers spent — and, in the end, wasted — a lot of time talking about whether the Maine state flag should feature a realistic looking pine tree or one that looks like a literal cookie cutter.

Today I have to ask: Did we give adequate attention as to whether Chuck Norris, who died Thursday at age 86, should have been incorporated into the design? Could that have made a difference in the vote to restore a version of the state’s 1901 Pine Tree Flag?

As the martial artist, actor and meme inspiration is being memorialized online with a whole genre of jokes based on his macho persona, Mainers seeking a personal connection to the icon only have to look to our state’s recent history.

Among the more than 400 submissions in a 2024 state-run contest to determine the design of the proposed new flag was one that featured Norris, in full denim with a glistening chest and literal and figurative guns out.

The image, from his 1985 action film “Invasion U.S.A,” was photoshopped in front of that cookie-cutter pine tree. Could that feature have been the issue for Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, who clearly can’t get enough of the more realistic pine she chose, now stamped on the new license plates of anyone who can stand it?

Or could it be that she had a problem with Norris himself? Perhaps a question that should be raised in an upcoming gubernatorial debate.

Frankly, a chance to vote on a Chuck Norris flag might have flipped the results of the referendum, rejected by 56% of voters, considering some conservative opponents saw the question as part of a push by the “woke left” to erase white men from history (a sailor and farmer flank a shield in the center of our official flag).

It seems fair to say that even the more progressive Mainers might have been OK with a new white man on the flag — if that white man was Chuck Norris.