Saturday, September 30, 2017

What I Am Thinking

As many of you who know me already are aware, I am a flag-waving, liberal-radical patriot who loves this country and what we have stood for over these 240+ years. I take off my hat and stand for the National Anthem and Stars and Stripes Forever sends chills up my spine. I follow the sentiment of the one-time Watertown, WI, Republican and Civil War veteran, Carl Schurz in
“My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.”
(Yes, this is about to be a post on the NFL protests and tempest in a teapot.)

My first reaction can be stated simply, but not without a little length:
  • No one protests or threatens to turn off the NFL when it is about
    • Domestic abusers and batterers getting a simple slap on the wrist;
    • An NFL superstar bumping and pushing an officer with his car in the Twin Cities;
    • A history of concussions and intentional "illegal" hits and tackles;
This doesn't even take into account the exorbitant ticket costs and millionaire players being paid by billionaire owners. That is simply American business practices.

But the past week or so the whole issue of players protesting
  • systematic racism
has exploded into a huge controversy threatening
  • boycotts, 
  • lower ticket sales, 
  • attacks on the right of free speech, 
  • threats of getting fired in NASCAR, and 
  • the President of the United States turning it into a firestorm by calling the protestors "sons of bitches" when he couldn't say anything about Nazi organizers but that they had some "good people."
One would think that the very foundation of our nation is being attacked.

And it is, but not by the protestors.

Suddenly it is claimed the protests are disgraceful behavior, disrespecting veterans, contempt for the flag, and an insult to the National Anthem. As if waving the confederate battle flag isn't disrespecting my great-uncle who died at the Battle of the Wilderness as a Union (United States) soldier. Oops..no, that's heritage.

Meanwhile the results of three hurricanes are causing suffering and illness to millions in three different parts of the USA and our people.

Meanwhile most of us white Americans have great difficulty seeing how our privilege, based on our color, doesn't allow for the growth opportunities for many who are not.

Meanwhile we are closing our borders and our minds to the freedom of religion, calling hateful actions by Nazis "free speech", and Colin Kaepernick's and the NFL's peaceful protests anti-American.
  • How have we managed to go so far downhill away from our values and promises? 
  • How have we managed to allow ourselves to be sold a bill of goods that being American is to be white and European only? 
  • How have we permitted attacks on racism to become attacks on the country?
  • How have many who call themselves Christian been lulled into thinking that hatred and prejudice and discrimination are answers to that question, "What would Jesus do?"
 I keep waiting to wake up and find it is all a nightmare or some dystopian vision of an American that could be, but isn't. I keep praying that it is not too late.

I stand for the Anthem. But as I do so I am standing for what the Anthem and the flag are all about: Freedom!

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