This post contains profanity that some people may find offensive
It’s been interesting to watch the worlds of politics and sports in this country collide recently.
It started with a tweet by ESPN’s Jemele Hill claiming that President Donald Trump is a white supremacist and continued with Trump, speaking at a rally in the deeply conservative state of Alabama, referring to NFL players who kneel in protest during the National Anthem as “sons of bitches” and calling for team owners to fire them.
For good measure, Trump uninvited the NBA champion Golden State Warriors from visiting the White House after the team showed no particular interest in going there in the first place.
Thank God there’s nothing else going on – like possible nuclear war with North Korea, Russia hacking our elections or an assault on health care from the Right – so Trump has plenty of time to focus on these various sports issues.
Reports are that protests at various NFL games increased today in light of Trump’s statements. These including kneeling and locking arms. The entire Pittsburgh Steelers team didn’t come out for the National Anthem.
Surprised? Don’t be.
The apparent belief of the current administration is that African American men can be intimidated into falling in line, by the police, NFL owners or other people in authority, including the president himself. That’s a losing bet.
Trump is in the White House today in part because he exploited the basic prejudices and fears of a lot of whites in this country. His “law and order” message clearly was meant to signal that he was a man who could protect us from these alleged bad seeds.
Of course, our president didn’t stop there. He made sure our white population thought it was the true victim in today’s society, and he issued a clarion call against all those minority groups that he claimed threaten their happiness and prosperity, not to mention their very existence.
So this week Trump said jump and nobody jumped. And that’s good because there’s only one response when the federal government tries to strong arm you into giving up your right to free speech and peaceful protest. When it goes so far, as it did in the case of Hill and the NFL players, that it calls for them to lose their jobs over it.
What you do is you keep going.
This all started with Colin Kaepernick, a former NFL player good enough to quarterback a Super Bowl team a few years ago but apparently not good enough today to be even a backup in the league (It’s called blackballing). He came under fire last year for kneeling during the National Anthem to protest racial inequality and for making some controversial statements.
It’s been stated here previously that if I were advising Kaepernick I would have suggested he stand during the Star Spangled Banner for two reasons. One he risked the chance he would offend people, like the military, who he has no beef with.
Secondly, his opponents would use their criticism of his actions to drown out his perfectly legitimate message. And that’s what’s happened.
That being said, he has every right to do what he did. Period.
Personally, I’m at the point where it wouldn’t bother me if every player, coach and fan kneeled if that was their choice. It has nothing to do with disrespect for the military.
I’m not quite sure how executing the freedoms our military fought for is disrespectful. If it is, why fight for them in the first place?
What burns my ass is the intelligence-insulting level of hypocrisy in this country. And it’s everywhere.
It’s a president trying to be a voice of moral authority when he’s shown no morality or integrity whatsoever in his lifetime.
It’s a bought-and-paid for Republican Congress contending it wants to help the poor and middle class in this country when it has no intention of helping the poor and middle class in this country and doesn’t even care about the poor and middle class in this country.
It’s a religious community that claims to be based on the love of God, all the while spewing hate and condemnation in that name of that same God upon the LGBT community.
It’s the countless number of people who profess that they’re not racist or sexist or anti-immigrant, but were perfectly happy to vote for a presidential candidate who ran a campaign based on racism, sexism and hating immigrants.
It’s all those holier-than-though motherfuckers (I know, that’s not a nice word, but it fits) from politicians to clergymen to whoever, walking around lying right to our faces. Expecting us to be so stupid that we should believe them instead of what we see with our own eyes.
So go ahead and kneel, because those folks kneeling are the most honest ones in the bunch. Even if you think they’re wrong – and they’re not – they’re standing up for what they believe in. (Even though they’re not actually standing while they’re kneeling.)
As we wade through an almost endless sea of liars, charlatans and hypocrites, from Washington to our state legislatures to our neighborhoods to the church around the corner, it’s time we stopped being polite. It’s time we stopped giving them the benefit of the doubt or the respect they don’t deserve. It’s time we started calling them out, demanding the truth and spitting (maybe not literally) in their eye whenever they try to pull the wool over ours. The stakes are too high not to. This is our country we’re talking about.
Who cares who kneels or stands when our country is moving deeper into a dark soulless hole? Who cares about a piece of cloth when we fail as a nation to live up to the principles our country was founded on? Who cares about this and that when our ship is heading off the edge of a giant waterfall. Just grab the damn rudder for crying out loud.
One theory is that Trump’s comments were purposely meant to drive a deeper wedge into our country’s racial divide. When you think about it, Trump needs white votes and the more animosity he can gin up between the races the more white votes he’ll get if he runs in 2020.
But the protestors can’t think about that because if they counter by not protesting then Trump is controlling them and their message. You just have to do what’s right and let the chips fall where they may.
Trump played a lot of this country for suckers during the 2016 election. That’s on them.
If we fail to stand up for the truth and continue to play this stupid political parlor game that polite society thinks we should play, then that’s on the rest of us.
You can read all my posts at Musings of a Nobody
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