Like so many Americans, I’ve been periodically tuning in to the Olympic Games. I’m not a serious sports enthusiast, but I pay casual attention — and when I do, I, like you, instantly scan the screen for the American flag icon among the competitors so that I know which athlete to cheer on. This, no doubt, is one of the appealing qualities of the Olympics. In a world of “asymmetrical” threats and shifting geopolitics, Olympic fandom is a haven for the simpleton in all of us. That Old Glory icon next to an athlete’s name distills the games into the good-versus-bad terms that are so elusive in the real world.

And yet, as I’ve grown older, I find my “U.S.A.!”-chanting reflex increasingly interrupted by pangs of discomfort, and not because I’m ashamed of our country or our Olympians, but because the relationship between American nationalism and the Olympics has been slowly infused with a different — and politicized — meaning. In short, chanting the initials of our nation seems less like it did in 1984 than it has since 1992.

Those two Summer Games were the formative events of my — and so many others’ — Olympic fan psyche.

The former, held in Los Angeles, was a Cold War spectacle of hyper-patriotism deliberately orchestrated to give the big middle finger to the boycotting Soviets and their allies. As ESPN’s Michael Weinreb recounted, “Spectators quite literally wrapped themselves in the flag” and “chants of ‘U.S.A.!’ became so jarring for the foreigners present that IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch wrote a letter complaining about ABC’s unabashedly patriotic coverage of the games.”

“Oh, what we’ve done to the Olympics,” wrote Sports Illustrated’s Frank Deford at the time. “God only knows what the 2.5 billion people around the globe who are watching the games will think of a vain America, so bountiful and strong, with every advantage, including the home court, reveling in the role of Goliath, gracelessly trumpeting its own good fortune while rudely dismissing its guests.”

Such (legitimate and prescient) concerns aside, Weinreb notes, “This was precisely the purpose of the ’84 Olympics — it was a one-sided showcase of American superiority.” And as a child, I proudly joined in with the flag waving and fist pumping. In the heat of the Cold War, blatantly mixing sports enthusiasm with not-so-subtle saber rattling felt entirely legitimate and righteous — especially to my 9-year-old mind.

Then came the 1992 games — the first after the fall of the Berlin Wall. America was at its geopolitical and economic zenith, able to claim the title of “world’s sole superpower.” But instead of projecting a ray of humility in the “with-great-power-comes-great-responsibility” spirit, we instead used the Olympics to spike the ball in the end zone — or, more accurately, 360 windmill dunk over the rest of the planet. That was the year we used a change in Olympic rules to deploy what Sports Illustrated called “arguably the most dominant squad ever assembled in any sport” — the 1992 Dream Team.

While the NBA fan in me was certainly excited to see some of the greatest pro basketball players of all time play on one squad, I also felt that first twinge of doubt when the competition turned into an international version of the Globetrotters playing the Washington Generals. Why, I wondered, do we have to rub our strength in? Why, when we are so dominant, do we have to preen on the world stage in such cartoonish fashion?

Since those games two decades ago, those questions have transcended sport and become bigger than ever.

Whereas 1984 turned Julius Caesar’s “Veni, vidi, vici” into an Olympic posture and a comedic Ghostbusters riff, post-1992 has seen that posture and that comedic riff become both a grand self-image and a dead-serious foreign policy doctrine. From presidential taunts of “bring it on,” to televised “shock and awe” campaigns, to flag-draped statue spectacles, to “Top Gun”-style aircraft carrier celebrations, to the rip-roaring parties and pompous political declarations that accompany our escalation of foreign wars, we present ourselves as Caesars — but with none of Peter Venkman’s self-effacing cheekiness and all of the Dream Team’s arrogance.