It's taken me a week to respond to Trump's rant about players kneeling at football games. I've read and listened to people talk about it. I've had lots of thoughts, that didn't really seem to have any organization, until today. I've finally figured it out. So, here we go.
Last week, Trump laid out a trap. In order to distract Americans from the crap going on in his administration, and to divide Americans from each other, he decided we needed to have a fight over how football players act during the national anthem. The real trap, though, was getting people to agree that he could decide on what patriotism is. And way too many people fell for it.
A little football history in chronological order. Prior to 2009, football players stayed in their locker room unil after the national anthem. That year, the Department of Defense started paying the NFL to have their players outside during the anthem. At that moment, it became political. Why is the government paying for this? It's propaganda of the highest order. The fact that the government is paying for this directly implies politics. There is no longer any separation of the game from the events in our country. Why the Democrats and the Obama administration didn't remove this is a major failure, but the storm that would have been unleashed would have eclipsed the attempt at economic recovery. We love our jingoism here.
In August, 2016 (who was president?), Colin Kaepernick sat down during the national anthem in the hope of brining attention to the oppression of blacks and other people of color. NFL player and former Green Beret Nate Boyer wrote an open letter to Kaepernick criticizing the decision to sit. After the two of them met, Kaepernick chose to kneel instead. As Boyer stated:
"[Kaepernick] reached out and we were able to sit down together for a couple of hours before the last preseason game last year. It was really cool to hear him just listen, too, and be very open-minded, too, and [say] “Look, I don’t want to hurt you, I don’t want to hurt your brothers and sisters.” I showed him text messages of friends of mine and some of them were saying I was a disgrace to the Green Berets ’cause I was even meeting with him. And some of them were like, “I’m with you man but it really hurts me to see that.”
So when I talked to them, it was mutual. Me, him, and Eric Reid [said] “I think maybe taking a knee would be a little more respectful. It’s still a demonstration. You’re still saying something but, people take a knee to pray. So for me it was a common ground, at least, to start from."
The protests polarized people, but they were limited. And, being Americans, they soon ended up in the background. Kaepernick lost his spot in the NFL, and is currently not on any team.
Then, right after the failure to repeal the ACA, and in the midst of one of the most destructive hurricane seasons, Trump goes on his rant about fooball players. What exactly prompted it? The real answer is he needs half of America angry at the other half. And in the process he got those people to agree that he gets to define what patriotism is. How it's defined as standing up during the anthem is beyond me. How not standing during the anthem is somehow an affront to those who pledge to defend the Constitution of the United States, not a flag, is an insult to this veteran.
It's also an insult to other veterans. I can't speak for them all, but I have read enough veterans who believe that the players have every right to kneel. The best one has to be John Middlemas, a 97 year old WW2 Veteran:
Not only did he think they have the right to kneel - "those kids have every right to protest" - he got down on his knee as well. There are plenty of others, they're not hard to find.
As for the NFL, Trump didn't lay a trap, he drew a line in the sand. He basically told the NFL owners that they needed to do something about their property. Even the NFL - the sport that owns a day of the week, that can get cities to cough up land and tax breaks on a whim - knows that the team owners don't own players. And that's why the players and owners in every game last week had to demonstrate. Had they not, it would have been seen as giving into Trump, giving into Trump's idea of what America looks like.
We cannot let Trump define patriotism, and we cannot let Trump divide us. He doesn't rule us, he works for us. Patriotism is definitely not whether you stand for the anthem. Honestly, most people stand for the anthem, not because they are patriots, but because it's what they've been trained to do; they'd be worried the people near them would judge them harshly, which hardly sounds patriotic. My definition is any action people take in order to make this country better, especially when it's hard to do. But, whatever your definition is, the president doesn't get to define it. Leaders that try to define patriotism are those that want to rule, and that never works out.
Trump cannot be allowed to define who is important and who is not in this country. No single person is any more or less important than any other person. Football players, soldiers, Puerto Ricans, farmers, software engineers, doctors, mechanics, hair dressers, all Americans. Heck, he works for us. He ultimately wants to divide whites from the rest of the country, and so do many of his followers (and they are followers, in the worst sense of the word). I refuse to let that happen. I hope to not get distracted by his antics and see them for what they are, a way to take us back to the 50s (1950 or 1850).
It's time to end this idea that symbols like the flag, and the anthem, represent this country. We definitely need to get over the notion that our troops will be affected by how many people are standing during the national anthem. Take the flag away, our country is still here, and our soldiers and sailors are just as strong. Take away the people, on the other hand, and the flag is meaningless. There's a reason the ten commandments prohibits idols: They eventually take the place of the thing they represent, and diminish the value of the original subject. No flag, no anthem, is worth more than any individual.
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