I don’t understand this weird American obsession with flag. I was looking at some photos of Trump’s rallies. Flags everywhere - on shirts, hats, glasses etc. And this bizarre cult of the flag - “it cannot touch the ground” etc.
At the end of the day the flag is just a piece of cloth. If you worship any flag or take offense to any flag, you need to get a life.
If you want to get technical about it, it’s a symbol of a nation’s military. That was what national flags were originally for.
Not any more. You’re 100% right on the origin, but the symbol eventually became of the whole structure of power that [typically] includes the military.
That’s why for example even countries without an army or a navy still have flags.