Excerpted from a great article by Michael Gerson for the Washington Post
It is often difficult to determine if President Trump’s offenses against national unity and presidential dignity are motivated by ignorance or malice. His current crusade against sideline activism at professional football games features both.
Protests by players during the singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” are misdirected, but their motivations are understandable. African Americans have a naturally complex relationship with a country in which 1 out of 7 seven human beings was once owned as property and robbed of his or her labor. A country with a founding promise that bypassed them.
[…]
We are a country where the reimposition of white supremacy following the Civil War involved not just segregation but also widespread violence. A country in which mass incarceration and heavy-handed police tactics now create a sense that some neighborhoods are occupied by a foreign force. A country in which wealth and opportunity remain, in significant part, segregated by race.
If white Americans can’t feel even a hint of this alienation and outrage, it is a fundamental failure of empathy and historical memory.
Trump seems ignorant of, or indifferent to, the unfolding drama of the civil rights movement – of President Abraham Lincoln’s firm hand signing the Emancipation Proclamation, of African American military heroism in defending the Union, of the stubborn courage displayed by protesters in the front of buses and at segregated lunch counters, of Bloody Sunday on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, repeated in many bloody versions. When the president looks at protesters, he cannot see what they are trying to be.
This ignorance is matched by malice. Trump must know that rallying his white base against young African American protesters is feeding racial tension and providing permission for bigotry. He is essentially accusing these athletes of disloyalty, just as he accused Mexicans of being rapists and Muslims of being threats. This is a pattern and habit of division by race, ethnicity and religion.
Stop and consider. This is a sobering historical moment. America has a racial demagogue as president.
How about a long conversation with this jackass about Respect for the Office of The President?
His snide and snotty comments about John McCain are beyond reprehensible. How dare him to actually say the failure of this health bill is completely the fault of McCain — the fault lies with the Republicans not writing a bill that is acceptable to the American public. Watching the disabled protestors being carried or dragged out of the hearing yesterday was revolting. Hatch yelling “shut up” at them…?!! Those disabled people deserve more respect than what they received. The police took a woman from her wheelchair, carried out to the hallway and laid her on the floor. Respectful? The whole thing was a horrifying scene. Shameful.
This disgusting president has turned our society back to the mid 60’s with his racist disrespect while demanding respect for himself and the flag is impeachable behavior. Let’s get on with it! ASAP.
Right on Murph! Demanding respect for the flag should indeed be an impeachable offense..maybe even hanging one. Of course..and this is a really wild guess..it never occurred to you that an NFL pre-game where one’s political attitudes are convoluted and entangled with most people’s feelings about the flag and that ignoring it’s symbolism might be counterproductive???
NFL players should have come together as far as they are a unified group in this demonstration and presented a plan of action and a point of view…they certainly have vast press access…no? Roger Goodell should have understood what Kapernik’s protest meant last year..and convened the owners and later the players and come too some kind of unified approach and message. Everything is changed at the community level…that’s what every gripe and posture should been turned towards.
Presenting one’s message during the National Anthem at an NFL game is not equivalent in any sense to what was done by Smith et al at the 1968 Olympic Games..those runners had everything to lose..the players demonstrating now have NOTHING to lose.
By the by…Kapernik “lost” nothing by demonstrating…he is an enormously erratic player who was half-witted enough to wear a Fidel Castro t-shirt to Miami when the Dolphins were interested. He is..and always will be…more trouble than he’s worth.
Greg, there are parts of your comments I completely agree with and other parts I do not. However, I suspect you may be Coach Pinelli’s son so out of respect, I will not debate any of it. I do appreciate your comments however.
Thank you for your comments.
“Stop and consider. This is a sobering historical moment. America has a racial demagogue as president.”
Trump in every way had shown himself to be the KKK’s titular head and it’s new Grand Wizard, the neo-Nazi’s self-annointed Fuhrer, and the White Supremacists’ ideological Godfather. No man in the last 75 years has done more to embolden and bring a sense of normalcy and acceptability to the views held by hate groups as has the current President of the United States.
No one should bother wondering whether his conduct or state of mind is other than “what you see is what you get.” He is, as the the overwhelming evidence demonstrates, a died in the whole racist and bigot that deep in his heart literally hates everyone who is not him (as to his own family members, I’ll leave that to each of you).
He is a destroyer of all things and many of them good. Much of what he touches ends up smelling like or turning to shit. Whether it’s casinos, his own brand, this country, his family members, the reputations of people who work for him, immigrants, NFL, and more.
Donald Trump is and shall remain known to the world as the greatest disgrace and loser America has ever produced, bar none.
“The Greatest Disgrace and Loser America Has Ever Produced”
(saving this as an epitaph)
Well said!
Perhaps the Star-Spangled Banner has long ago lost its original ties to honoring the armed forces when its used by the Department of Defense on what conservative senators call Paid Patriotism.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/defense-military-tributes-professional-sports_us_5639a04ce4b0411d306eda5e
In the 1940’s and 50’s, when America was Great, and sports teams were populated by whites with few resentments, singing the Star-Spangled Banner seemed just right. Equally so, Robert E. Lee statutes had comfortable spots for white America throughout the USA. But as America slowly lost its greatness with sports teams having mixed colors and American big cities being governed by people of color, attitudes changed towards the promise of hollow songs and monuments to those who fought to preserve slavery.
So, when athletes are willing to use the national limelight – at a cost to their station in life – as a place to protest the despicable conditions extant in the criminal justice system, from arrest to infliction of the death penalty, I’m with them. The benefits derived from bringing attention to the catastrophic conditions criminal justice system far outweigh the need to hear / sing a song without players protesting on their knees.
In fact, the idea that both of these actions could occur without presidential interference or criticism would exemplify what makes America great. Nevertheless, this president was too busy wagging the country distracting everybody with this NFL controversy in order to deflect the unfolding story that Ivanka Trump, Kushner, Bannon, and others had been using private email to conduct White House business.
So, let starts with Ivanka: Mr. President, should we lock her up?