In the subsequent nearly 250 years, we Americans have debated – often fervently – the meaning of patriotism. During the Revolution, Patriots brutally chased Loyalists from New England and confiscated their property. During the Second World War, everyone from us kids to our elders picked our surroundings clean to support the national effort; reserved particular opprobrium for draft dodgers, profiteers, and hoarders; and rejoiced righteously when any of them went to prison. Fifty years ago – who can forget it? – the Vietnam War roiled us nationwide, and the meaning of patriotism again came up for debate. It’s likely that the protestors, flag-burners, and draft card mutilators had at least as much to do with ending that war as those who fought it all the way to the helicopter rescue flights from the roof of the embassy in Saigon. Nobody came out of it unscathed, from the returning troops, who often ran a gauntlet of disapproval, to the scruffy kids who demonstrated in the streets, to a friend of mine who burned himself to death on the steps in front of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s office.

The late Molly Ivins, in an update on Doctor Johnson’s criticism, commented on the hot debate over patriotism which raged at the time and, from my survey of the internet, flames on today. “I prefer someone who burns the flag and then wraps themselves up in the Constitution,” she wrote, “over someone who burns the Constitution and then wraps themselves up in the flag.”

Our recent past president, Barack Obama, doesn’t get credit for much from the patrons in the peanut gallery. I credit him with being, undeservedly, the stalking horse for the National Rifle Association, which was able to dog-whistle its devotees with fears of gun confiscation, and creating much wider national interest in the nuances of the Second Amendment. I credit our current leader with little but chaos and self-interest, except for a new focus on the rights guaranteed us by the First Amendment.

This boiled up recently in the protests of professional football players against perceived police brutality against black men in interactions escalating from broken taillights, double parking, and failing to signal a turn. Almost instantly the protest was hijacked, primarily by the president and his supporters, and transmuted into disrespect for the flag and the national anthem, making it a “patriotic” issue. During this past week, dominated by the observance of Memorial Day, the rhetoric has escalated. Various veterans, forgetting, perhaps, that Memorial Day is not about them (their day comes along in November), clearly equate display of the flag with loyalty to the nation, with not a mention to date that this is the occasion – once called Decoration Day – on which we clean and decorate the graves of servicemen and women.

Way back in 1947, when almost all our Scoutmasters were veterans of the European and Pacific theaters, we Scouts marched a whole lot more than kids do now, and were quizzed often on the proper display and treatment of the flag. It was clearly a much revered object. But as Ed Taylor, our assistant Scoutmaster, a Marine who’d made amphibious landings in the slog toward Tokyo, told us, “I didn’t fight for that flag; it’s just a piece of cloth. I fought under that flag for the country and freedoms it represents. So it’s pretty sacred to me, and I’d go back in a heartbeat and fight again if I had to.”

I have no brief for or against the protests of the football players, and think it probable that the team owners can, even with respect to the First Amendment guarantee of free speech, dictate the behavior of their employees on the field. The baloney about “patriotism” in that setting is clearly stolen passion, and deserves the dustbin treatment. What does concern me is whether the protests will translate into changes in the treatment of black citizens of the United States by those designated to protect and defend them.

The president, who has been so active – and, sadly, effective – in attacking the First Amendment, and in diverting attention from what the players are all about, should butt out of this one and leave it to those involved or those who know something about it. He’s so fanned the flames that his loyalists routinely decry the “outrage” of disrespect for the flag expressed by kneeling during the national anthem.

You want outrage? How about bikini bras and sweatbands made of the flag? How about waving it beside a Nazi banner? How about on-the-scene videos of packs of burly police officers beating the stuffing out of black people while sporting the American flag – my flag and yours – on their sleeves.