After kneeling for no reason other than their teammates were doing it, some NFL players are now kneeling in protest to President Trump’s statements that they should be fired if they don’t stand for the national anthem. That’s nothing more than a BS justification. President Trump is nothing if not direct and provocative in his approach to just about any subject. That’s a welcome change from the previous administration which was more concerned with being politically correct than with addressing issues head-on, with the intent of solving them advantageously. Yet, on numerous occasions, President Trump’s provocateur-in-chief approach is less than effective. Some day, he will hopefully come to the realization that starting or engaging in a pissing contest solves nothing and simply gets the participants wet.
That’s obvious with his response to the kneeling NFL players. Rather than blasting them and calling for their firing, he would have been far better off with a less provocative approach. This was summed up very well in a post I recently saw on social media. It read, “President Trump should have simply expressed his disappointment that NFL players were using disrespect for our flag and national anthem as their means of protest. In fact, anyone who finds the “take a knee” protest disrespectful or insulting should look at the NFL as opposed to the players. This is the same organization that threatened to fine players who wanted to wear cleats to honor the victims of the 9/11 attacks and the police officers killed in Dallas. As employers, the NFL team owners, individually, and collectively as the NFL, can declare what is and isn’t acceptable conduct on the playing field. The fact that the majority of team owners and coaches have sanctioned their players’ conduct indicates the target at which NFL fans’ anger should be focused. The players have every right to protest, and as employers, the team owners have every right to dictate that such protests do not take place while the players are performing as employees.”
Also of note is the fact that many of the players, by their own admission, are kneeling in support of their fellow players. That is, “I don’t know why I’m kneeling, but my teammate is so I am too.” To further demonstrate the hypocrisy of the protests, few if any of the players are taking any significant action off the field. If they are truly concerned about social injustice, why aren’t we reading reports about individual players meeting with members of local law enforcement or judicial systems to explain their grievances?
The obvious answer is that they don’t really care about injustice. They are simply highly paid lemmings following other highly paid lemmings whose only concerns are themselves. But the real culprits are the owners and coaches who are either standing (or kneeling) idly by, or encouraging disrespect. By their actions, all the participants are demonstrating that they are not truly concerned about social injustice. Their only concern seems to be their mistaken belief that because they are highly paid professional athletes, they are entitled to disrespect the flag and what it represents.
