Having high exhaust velocities does not mean you will have the high thrusts required to get yourself out of the earth's atmosphere. Most current proposals for Nuclear Fusion powered ships involve an exhaust that is orders of magnitude more diffuse than that of chemical rockets.
They only come into their own once they are already in space or in orbit which returns us to the problem that we need to have launch assist infrastructure that can deal with that first step without resorting to those "flamethrowers" as you call them.
It's also not true at all that fusion is necessary to allow for clean energy (even ignoring that many of the near term fusion reactor designs still need to have radiation shielding to deal with dangerous neutron emissions). We could use a combination of renewable sources and nuclear fission to deal with the energy crisis now and then utilise fusion once it's finally matured to the point of usefulness. Indeed, we could use that orbital infrastructure to help construct a planetary cloud of solar collectors that can operate 24/7 and beam that energy down via microwave rectiner technology that is already capable of achieving greater than 85% energy conversion (keep in mind that we lose far more energy simply from the diffusion of sunlight through the atmosphere). This approach not only can power the earth but any off earth colonisation prospects with line of sight with our planetary cloud - without needing to haul the likely massive early generation fusion reactors.
Neither is fusion necessary for advanced space travel. It would be very useful but chiefly for travel to under-developed sectors of the solar system. solar reflectors scaled up enough can be used to speed up and slow down entire fleets of ships with far higher potential top speeds than even antimatter drives permit (since there is no requirement to have onboard propellant). They also double as handy point defense systems for dealing with both debris and ships that are attempting to turn themselves into relativistic kill missiles - remember that there is no such thing as an unarmed space ship, they are all potential weapons of mass destruction, especially once we reach the state where we have fusion drive powered ones.