American flags are everywhere this weekend. But the symbol has become politicized to a degree unseen before.

Partisans at each end of the political spectrum use the flag to disparage the patriotism of the other side. Politicians on the right literally wrap themselves in the banner to proclaim their love of country. And protesters on the left wave the flag at mass demonstrations as a rallying cry to protect or expand American rights.

“It makes me sad,” said Bill LeBeau, 62, Massachusetts adjutant of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. “When I was growing up, this was never a thing. Everybody in the country knew what the flag was.”

For many at that time, the flag symbolized a transcendent sense of broad national purpose, even if large swaths of the population still struggled to claim their rights or bitterly criticized the government.

This Fourth of July, even flying the flag at home can have political, demographic, and racial overtones.

About 70 percent of Republicans, and 60 percent of Americans ages 60 and older, fly the flag at least during national holidays, according to an April survey by The Associated Press and the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.

Conversely, about 60 percent of Democrats and independents said they never fly the flag, including about 75 percent of Democrats under 45, the survey showed. In addition, only about 30 percent of Black adults said they ever display the banner.

Leading up to this year’s landmark anniversary, a range of interviews by the Globe revealed a complicated relationship with the nation’s symbol, one that mixed nostalgia for simpler times, a yearning for shared values, and a recognition that even the flag now can be divisive.

Spectators watch the Independence Day Parade.Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff

For Peter Drummey, an Army veteran of the Vietnam War and retired chief historian at the Massachusetts Historical Society, one’s relationship with the flag comes from individual perspective and experience. Not everyone has the same takeaway when they see the banner, he said, and that’s understandable.

Even during the Revolution, the Founders took their time before settling in 1777 on the basic elements that the country still uses today.

“It seems odd to go through a couple of years of the Revolution before they have what seems to be this logical and essential symbol” of 13 stars and 13 stripes, which represented the rebellious Colonies, Drummey said.

“People can agree what a symbol is, but not what it is symbolizing,” he added. “What it symbolizes to me is this question of free speech and equal rights for the people under it.”

Other veterans spoke of the flag as a profound reminder of comrades who served, why they did so, and the casualties that occurred along the way.

“It has a very special place for veterans,” said Jack Hammond, a retired Army brigadier general and chief executive at Home Base, a Boston organization with a global reach that treats the invisible wounds of war.

“When I was serving overseas, we weren’t supposed to be putting American flags up, but we did it,” said Hammond, who logged multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. “But after coming back to the base after a firefight in Fallujah, you knew you were home.”

Spectators watch confetti fill the fall during the Independence Day Parade.Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff

For LeBeau, an Army veteran of the Gulf War, the flag summons memories of “rolling into town and seeing refugees in the highways,” and bringing them food, water, and protection.

“I saw firsthand how people in the world look at us differently when they see that American flag,” LeBeau said. “And they don’t cower from it in most cases.”

To him, the flag is a neutral signifier of broad American rights.

“I don’t look at the flag as a right-wing symbol, and I don’t think it represents the other side, either, where it’s OK to burn the flag,” LeBeau said. “It’s just the polarization and extremists on both sides. I think most of us are in the same place, in the middle.”

Locally, the run-up to the Fourth has been a kaleidoscope of color and celebration. At Dorchester Heights in South Boston, where rebel cannon forced the British to evacuate Boston in 1776, the neighborhood has been awash in American flags hung from street poles and house porches.

Carl Easton, 50, who grew up in the area, said he’s noticed more flags lately, and that makes him proud. He also feels disappointment that the country represented by those flags is increasingly fractious.

“It means so much to me, because there’s so many great things that happen here that don’t happen anywhere else in the world,” Easton said. “Especially for the underprivileged, and the marginalized, the minorities.

“If you’re great here, you can make it,” he added. “But it’s really challenging right now. It just feels like all the checks and balances are gone.”

On a sidewalk in Roxbury, Ibrahim Cherif, 34, stood outside his merchandise truck, adorned with a large American flag on the back. For this Liberian immigrant, the flag represents a land of golden possibility.

“The American flag, when it’s waved around the world, it’s like you want to be there because it represents freedom,” Cherif said. “Growing up back home as a child soldier, that flag was another life.”

The political division he sees here doesn’t change its meaning.

“The president doesn’t represent the flag. It’s the people,” Cherif said. “The flag is not about one individual. It’s about the people that I see on the street.”

Steven and Renee McCaughan, of Luray, Virginia, cheer following the reading of the Declaration of Independence from the Old State House Balcony.Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff

Hammond lamented what he sees as the politicization of the flag. The takeaways from that messaging, he added, might dissuade otherwise patriotic Americans from hanging one from their home.

“In some ways, it’s been co-opted by the hard right,” Hammond said. “For some folks who would want to hang a flag, there’s a fear that there will be a misperception that their political identity is in another direction.”

That’s a possibility that disheartens Joanne Carlson, 67, of Fort Point, for whom the flag represents “freedom, democracy, the US, the Constitution, the ability to vote for your elected representation.”

However, she said, the flag also “has become much more of a political symbol. I’ll just say it: more MAGA. So, maybe people are less willing to display for that reason.”

Parsing the politics of waving the flag was central to a recent Republican Party statement on the US Senate race in Maine between Republican incumbent Susan Collins and her Democratic opponent, Graham Platner.

In a press release titled “Democrats don’t fly the American flag,” Republican National Committee spokeswoman Kristen Cianci wrote that “most Americans will be celebrating 250 years of freedom by downing hot dogs, launching fireworks, and flying the stars and stripes. Not Democrats like Graham Platner.”

Platner, a Marine veteran of Iraq, has fiercely criticized the Iraq War and the politicians who voted to authorize that conflict, including Collins.

Hammond, LeBeau, and other veterans said the broad majority of everyday people do not use the flag as a cudgel. Instead, they argued, most citizens appreciate the flag for what it is: a representation of what the country has been, is, and should be.

Even during the turmoil of the Vietnam War, Drummey said, the flag retained its resonance.

“There were many hard things going on here at home, but I thought of it as a symbol of what we were aspiring to and still remain,” Drummey said. “There has to be room in a society to live together with different beliefs.”

The flag should not be a litmus test for patriotism, Hammond added, but rather a source of pride for the country’s overarching values, no matter one’s political affiliation.

“I think it’s incumbent upon those who actually believe in the values of this country, regardless of which party they belong to, to be loud and proud about that,” Hammond said.

“Nobody co-opts the flag of this nation. This is the tapestry of all of us.”

Brian MacQuarrie can be reached at [email protected]. Audrey Tomlin can be reached at [email protected].