Some of you need to get a grip on your sense of perspective.
Seriously.
The backup quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, Colin Kapernick, decided to sit for the playing of the National Anthem at a pre-season game.
He was within his rights to do so according to NFL rules, which recommend that players stand for the National Anthem, but do not require it.
There is a reason for why he decided not to stand, which he has articulated since the event. As a bi-racial UA-born adopted son of US parents, he has noticed the extent to which people of color have been discriminated against, and he did this as a protest.
Colin Kaepernick committed no crime. He did not threaten anybody, or foment disorder. (Reminder – there is also a section of the US Constitution that specifically allows people to petition peaceably for the redress of grievances).
However, you wouldn’t believe that based on the amount of sheer horseshit that has been uttered following his actions. And, sadly, some of you out there on my Facebook wall are among the baying mob uttering horseshit.
Telling me that Colin Kaepernick cannot claim to be repressed because he earned $11m last year? Sure. If you think that is what he said, you need to significantly increase either your reading comprehension or the quality of your bullshit dispenser. You know he was not talking about himself personally, so don’t try that line of bullcrap.
Those of you who think it is clever to call him Kaeper-dick?
You’re behaving like small children in elementary school playground. Knock it off. Grow up.
Those of you who think he should leave the USA?
Is that really the best argument that you have? Is that the best, most intellectually sound response you could think of?
Because if it is, you’re talking juvenile, unserious nonsense.
Shouting (use of ALL CAPS)? Capitalizing words does not magically convert nonsense to useful conversational contributions. It merely convinces me that your emotions have overwhelmed your brain, which likely means that you are talking unserious guff.
Calling Colin Kaepernick a “loser”? Sure, if you think that getting to the Superbowl as an NFL quarterback and earning $11m this season makes you a loser, you keep making that claim.
How about, you know, actually stopping to think for a while, instead of merely hurling verbal nonsense?
Or are you so hooked on the idea of the National Anthem as an opportunity for uncritical idolatry that you have no time to consider broader issues? Like the fact that the USA is less than perfect? (HINT- every country is less than perfect. Get used to it.)
For a nation that likes to frequently proclaim that it is the Best Country In the World, some of you sure seem to have thin skins and massive insecurities. If you were really secure about the USA, you wouldn’t be engaging in ratchet-jawing dickery right now about a professional athlete deciding not to stand for the National Anthem. And if you are that hot and bothered about people “disrespecting” the country, maybe your ranting and raving would have a lot more credibility if I also saw you complaining about all of those GOP partisans who are constantly whining about how the USA is a weak shambles of a country that needs to be made Great Again, because those people seem to me to be saying things that are every bit as bad as Colin Kaepernick’s complaints about discrimination.
Of course I won’t hear that from most of you. I won’t hear it because those are the Right Sort of Americans who are complaining. Colin Kaepernick is the Wrong Sort of American. He is a highly paid professional athlete who is supposed to, you know, be grateful for his salary, and shut the fuck up about anything other than Xs and Os. Of course, at more or less the same time that he made this protest, we found out that the Governor of Maine, Paul LePage, a walking talking exemplar of resentful nativist dickery, stated that he considers “people of color” to be the enemy of modern America. But there was no comparable shitstorm of outrage from most of you about that little utterance No sir.
To hell with that.
Colin Kaepernick has every right to stand or sit for the National Anthem. The only countries that I learned about in school that required children and adults to stand, recite loyalty oaths, salute flags and sing songs were totalitarian dictatorships. If we insist (formally or informally) on compulsory fealty to flags and other symbols, and require people to sing songs, we are no better than all of those tinpot dictatorships that we affect to despise.
If you don’t like Colin Kaepernick not standing for the National Anthem, so be it. But do us all a favor and stop the fake outrage, the childish insults and the intellectually bankrupt suggestions. It makes you look like you are so insecure about your country that you demand lockstep fealty to all of its symbols, and that your answer when people fail to show what you consider to be the required level of fealty is to behave like a collection of elementary school playground bullies, a baying pack of online hounds, utterly devoid of seriousness.