The flag is more than a piece of cloth, and the anthem is more than a song

Trump supporters like to wear their patriotism on their sleeves. Nothing wrong with that. The problem is that their patriotism, like President Trump's own, is often a hollow thing. It's what Samuel Johnson was talking about when, in the midst of an essay in praise of patriotism, he wrote that "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."

I heard a great deal about how much Mr. Trump loves his country during the last campaign. My response was always to point out that whether he loves it or not, he's the enemy of everything it stands for.  He goes on and on about how he'd like to restrict freedom of the press. He acts as if nobody has the right to disagree with or criticize him. His attitude toward minorities is appalling, and his commitment to equality before the law is at least suspect. He is a bully at the head of a nation founded on justice for the underdog. He has no concept whatsoever of what the Bill of Rights is about, and seems not to care.

That's why I couldn't support him last year even though I agreed with him on hot-button issues like abortion and the runaway activist courts, bent on remaking the Constitution in their own image without bothering with the amendment process.  Donald Trump may love America, but he hates what America is all about.  So do many, if not most of his followers. And that kind of patriotism is empty, vain, and when all is said and done a mockery of the word.

Harry S Truman was known to use a colorful word or two in his time, and I'm not as up-in-arms as some are about his  use of the term "son of a bitch" to refer to NFL players who protest the state of racial relations by "taking a knee" or not showing up for the playing of the national anthem (though if I were the commissioner of the NFL I'd order the anthem played again when they finally came onto the field!). People have a right to dissent, and while I don't agree with the various forms of protest NFL players have chosen to make during the playing of the national anthem none of them is as nearly an insult to the American flag as President Trump's use of their behavior as an excuse to once again demean those with whom he disagrees and spit upon the entire concept of freedom of speech.

Mr. Trump's infantile personality is dangerous in the extreme in the most powerful human on the planet, another reason why I could not support his election to the office he holds, one for which he almost daily demonstrates anew that he is utterly unfit.  But the most dangerous thing of all is that so many people in this country seem to share his impression that it's patriotic to attack people for exercising one of the most basic rights our flag stands for, a right which the men who have died for it down through the years have hallowed with their blood.

They died for neither a song nor a piece of cloth. They died for what Donald Trump and those who join him in the shallow patriotism that scorns the right of free speech are dragging through the mud in a far more shameful fashion than those who exercise it even in ways in which I and many others find distasteful.