A Day In The Anti-Life - Kneeling Power!

The Crackpot-In-Chief has done it again. In an effort to distract the public attention from his myriad and profound inadequacies, he has thrown out the vitriolic red meat his sycophants so enjoy to chew on. I suppose he thought he was on pretty safe ground with his fans when he tried to twist the controversial protests around the national anthem in the NFL and elsewhere to serve his immediate  needs. But this one didn't turn out quite like he expected, though I suspect he's still pretty satisfied with the sheer spectacle and the fact he's once again at the center of a new media controversy.

Colin Kaepernick has succeeded beyond his wildest imaginings I have to think, despite the current unwillingness to add him to a roster. When he opted to take a knee during the national anthem, an act of protest intended to be sympathetic to the Black Lives Matter protests in the streets and elsewhere around the nation, he was making a move which has captured the collective imaginations of the country. Folks were supportive or they were not, but as far as I can tell, few folks don't have an opinion. His protest was at once a poke in the eye of game which tries to have it both ways when it comes to race. An industry in which almost exclusively white men employ a large cadre of black men to work for them is a showcase for the ruptures of race relations in this country. It reeks of the classic plantation and despite the large sums which many garner, it can never not be about men of color sacrificing their bodies (and as we are learning their minds) so that white men can make a profit.

It's a perfect place for Kaepernick's protest and the reaction to that protest points up many of the conflicts in the country. I keep hearing mealy-mouthed folks suggest they are in sympathy with Kaepernick's cause but wish he'd have found some other means to make his point. But they miss the point and purpose of protest, to leverage whatever power one might have to make a larger point by inconveniencing others so that they will pay some small attention. Marching in a street and blocking traffic for some measure of time, shouting slogans and upsetting the public quiet for a bit, whatever the means, it must make some folks uncomfortable or it's not going to have much effect. Kaepernick's protest afflicts many who want their sports to be free of politics, but fail to realize that the insertion of the anthem at the sporting event is in itself a political act.

Our "so-called" President is a racist. I don't mince my words on that point, as it's been demonstrated many times over. Folks don't want to admit that simple fact, but that doesn't make it any less true. When he's under stress his racist attitudes emerge as a natural impulse to fend off those people he feels threaten him. It is his racism which makes him comfortable waging this new tempest he's picked out, which speaks to a base which is itself peopled by racists and folks who are intentionally ignorant of  how power is distributed in this country.  This latest brouhaha will blow over just as most of his little ploys do, but the defiance demonstrated by the NFL has to sting a little bit, even as it serves his larger purposes.

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