I see it as a programming of the overall consciousness to give value to material items. When those said material items (flag) become soiled, decimated, burned, etc. it triggers a subconscious program to surface at the conscious level and run in the background. This program seeds anger, fear, and hate in the form of nuerochemicals to the forward thoughts (present time, the now). The emotion itself is triggered from subconscious programming compiled from years of propaganda (main stream media).
Simply seeing the burning of the flag creates a nuerochemical reaction resulting in the rise of heart rate and blood pressure. A feeling of anxiety that pings in gut, tension and stress come unbound. This is all caused without our knowledge and I have known a great deal of educated individuals who could not grasp onto this concept and instead would escalate their anger even more to try to disprove me. We are only human.
"If you swim in the middle you will never get caught in the shallows or lost in the deep, deep dark..."
Peace,
The Last Sage