Our house came with an American flag.

It seemed to complement our Small Town, U.S.A., zeitgeist. So we let it fly, enjoying its snap and rustle.

Because it was old, however, it quickly grew tattered and moldy and had to be taken down. Fearing that my new South Jersey neighbors would think I was with ISIS, I waited until dark of night to remove it.

We went flag-less for five years until July 4, when we put up a new Old Glory gifted to us by my brother-in-law, Alec, who explained that people on the political left like him “are patriots, too.”

I figured we’d keep it waving at least through the Olympics. Our water polo athletes need all the support they can get.

As we set about attaching the flag to its pole, I got to thinking about Alec’s words and realized that this was no inconsequential act: Showing the Stars and Stripes can be fraught business these days.

The flag has grown politicized, more specifically linked in the public square, rightly or wrongly, to Donald Trump and people who follow him.

As the New York Times, currently in a spat on social media for expressing thoughts about the flag, observed, “Today, flying the flag … is increasingly seen as a clue … to a person’s political affiliation in a deeply divided nation.”

Because I’m a reporter, I’m not supposed to declare a Donkey/Elephant allegiance: no lawn signs for a candidate, no bumper stickers touting a cause. But as an American, I get to vote. And as a person who loves his country — while remaining aware of its myriad blemishes and deficiencies — I’ll put up my brother-in-law’s flag.

One detractor, however, is my daughter.

She’s a smart 17-year-old who was born in Guatemala, a country that endured a 30-year civil war fomented in part by the CIA. My girl, who has a mix of Indigenous American, Latina, and Black blood, got a final grade of 100 in honors 11th-grade American history, so she knows some stuff.

She’s been ambivalent about the emblem on the porch. “I’m not saying there aren’t great things in this country that I appreciate,” she told me. “But we still live with racism and sexism and other things. There are lots of ways to show you’re patriotic other than flying a flag: Donate to charity, fight for equality, be a kind citizen.”

I get all that. But I’m still a flag man.

What I tell my daughter is that I can still love the symbol of America without condoning all of its flaws. Uncle Sam is like many other family members who can do you proud and do you dirty, often in the same weekend.

To comprehend this country, you need to be able to simultaneously hold within your head endless lists of contradictory actions and attitudes:

The nation that was settled by pioneers who endured deathly conditions made a genocidal science of eliminating much of the Indigenous population.

The country conceived in “liberty and equality” by rich gentry declared freedom from an aging empire in one breath while enslaving, raping, and killing Africans to build a new republic in the next.

The other day, my wife and I were watching the news and talking about the state of the union. What popped into my head was, of all things, a line from the film Jerry Maguire, in which Renée Zellweger says she loves Tom Cruise “for the man he almost is.”

Ultimately, for me, the flag is the embodiment of an ideal — a kind of promise, both solemn and sacred — of a country that’s yet to be: the America on the horizon, the America of our dreams.

Alfred Lubrano is a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter. © 2021 The Philadelphia Inquirer. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.