COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY ANDREW HELMS IN THE GUARDIAN
How the anthem
protests split one small town
The sharp divisions of
the Trump era were laid bare in rural North Carolina when a rumor circulated
that the high school football team would be forced to kneel for the
Star-Spangled Banner
Nothing better highlights the bizarre qualities of
contemporary America than the NFL football players-kneeling controversy.
If you visit some alt-right Internet sites you will read the
most seething and angry comments over the simple fact that some football
players have chosen to protest by kneeling rather than standing during the
playing of the national anthem.
Playing the national anthem at the start of a paid entertainment
has always, always been inappropriate, but it is very “American.” The act
itself is a measure of American Patriotic excess, generating social pressure on
everyone to give a public quasi-religious response to music which doesn’t even
belong there.
And many British people may not know this, but back a decade
or so ago, the NFL players stayed inside for the anthem, only appearing on the
field when it was over.
The only reason they have appeared on the field during the
anthem since is because the American military started paying the NFL some
fairly big money to have the players stand there.
Why would it do that? To excite young men to join the
military when they see their sports heroes standing there.
How very inspiring.
So, who is it that really has been disrespectful to
America's symbols? The guys manipulating them to get recruits, the American
military in need of young bodies to send off to America's pointless colonial
wars.
Of course, at a "deeper" level, one perhaps not
appreciated by Trump or his trailer-park devotees, the very essence of being
American is supposed to have something to do with rights and freedoms,
including the right to protest injustice.
Not many months back, a police officer in Salt Lake City was
released without blame after he shot a young black man in the back and killed
him. The young man was running away, and a camera caught the entire sequence. Of
course, this was not a unique event, but it was a well-documented one.
Some who saw the video say the officer literally executed
the young man. Protests were immediate.
That's what the players are kneeling about. In my sense of
values, their protest is entirely fitting, and an even more demonstrative one
would be.
Ironically, the players protesting have been almost overly
respectful by going down on their knees, a gesture understood by most as respectful.
It is only a protest because the gesture is different than the expected one.
Just think of what Trump and his pick-up truck crowd would
be saying if these players instead were doing what some black American athletes
did at the Mexico City Olympics of 1968. They raised their arms high in the
black power salute while the anthem played. You should look back at the
American reactions to that if you want to read about something exceeding the
intensity of the current controversy.
This controversy has been ridiculous almost beyond telling.
With all the terrible problems in America, from violent police to terrible
ghettoes, and with all the wars and terror in the world, much of it
deliberately created by America, here is the President and other major figures
and commentators fiercely engaged over how football players pose during a piece
of music.
The utter stupidity is comparable only with the Russo-phobia
which has totally gripped the country for many months, a phenomenon comparable
in every way with some primitive wave of fear over demon-possession. Yet this
nonsense has engaged virtually all the country’s highest figures and its major
security institutions and news organizations.
“Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.”
