In his usual ham-fisted way – but such big fists, the biggest – Donald Trump has done the world a favour by highlighting the playing of national anthems at sporting contests.

At risk of striking a bum note: Why?

For international events, Olympics Games for instance, you might just make a case. Every team has a celebratory song, and Team America's is The Star-Spangled Banner, and so when they've put Burkina Faso or the Netherlands Antilles back in their place again, they have a pretext to belt it out.

But how many times is enough? It is possible that Kim Jong-un's beef with the US is not to do with Trump, but that infernal song. If you have been to an Olympic Games, you would understand that he might want to nuke it.

The US wins gold medals by the score, the fistful in fact. North Korea boasts only 16 in total, as it happens all won by Kim, not to mention the dozens he won that the Americans swindled from him. That's bad enough, but then they rub it in by inflicting their anthem on anyone within earshot.

In Major League Baseball, it makes even less sense. Cardinals v Cubs might be an appetising sporting contest, but it is a domestic fixture, Americans versus Americans. At an international level, the anthem symbolises what divides the contestants. At a domestic game, it symbolises what unites them. Go figure. If it is because baseball is the great American pastime, wouldn't every now and then be enough? Or do Americans keep forgetting? How could they, with all those flags to act as prompts?

It is not as if The Star-Spangled Banner is one of the great hits. The lyrics are unintelligible, the tune daggy. At JB Hi-Fi, it would be remaindered. Yet Trump thinks that if upon hearing the first bars, you don't leap to your feet, snap to attention, clutch at your shirt above your heart and burst forth, you are, oh, I don't know, disrespectful and unpatriotic, and probably black, and in any case, you should be fired, because that's his solution to everything, you sons-of-bitches.

Not that Australia has any high moral ground when it comes to anthems and flags. Whenever two or more Australians are gathered in our name, seemingly they are obliged to fly the flag and sing the song. Anzac Day, Anzac Day eve at the footy, the eve of Anzac Day eve at the footy, Australia Day, all the Australia Days, the lighting of a barbecue, the drop of a hat: let us never stop rejoicing.

But we're on even shakier ground than the Americans. Patriots and scoundrels insist that we spring upright, eyes glistening, salute at the ready, because good men died for this flag accompanied by this anthem in two world wars, except that they didn't. The flag wasn't gazetted until 1953, and the anthem until 1984 was God Save The Queen, the selfsame queen who is also queen of lots of other places, and the selfsame song that the Barmy Army uses as a taunt against Australia now when things take a turn for the worse in the Ashes.

As in the US, when trying to work out why and for whom we are singing, it all becomes a bit blurry. When two teams line up for the mumbling of the national anthem before a footy final, it cannot be as some form of celebration of a national cause, because nothing more is on the line than progress to the next round, and only half the country gives a toss anyway, and it has become de rigueur to use the moment to glower murderously at your opposite number, and so the national song can mean that us Australians are really going give it to you ... Australians.

Let's face it, musically, Advance Australia Fair has nothing on The Star-Spangled Banner, and lyrically is even more obtuse. So if you fail to stand and sing a saccharine song of obscure provenance, whose words your heroes appear barely to know, being played for no apparent reason, all the while thinking not of a land of nature's abundant gifts, so rich and rare, but whether Dusty's stare has Tex shaking in his boots, and how many beats remain until you can let forth your barrackers' roar at the finish, does that really make you a lesser patriot?

Personally, instead of a national anthem at the MCG this grand final day, I would ask the Riolis and Longs to perform a welcome to this particular country. They own it.