In the late 1960s, when protests to the Vietnam War exploded, the flag became a symbol in support of that war & it took decades for me to regain the sense that this was my flag too. When patriotism becomes conflated with support for the present government, loyalty to America gets corrupted into allegiance to a partucular ideology, a aparticualr person or group of people, and I want no part of that. THAT is the exact opposite of patriotism.