Kneeling on the field during the National Anthem is no longer just about Colin Kaepernick or about criminal justice reform — it’s about whether or not you support President Trump calling kneeling players “sons of bitches.”
The situation has devolved into a triple irony.
The first irony is that Trump has added public support for the kneelers. Only Trump’s most loyal supporters believe he is justified in calling a fellow law-abiding American a “son of a bitch.” It’s simply not appropriate for the office. Before his Friday comments, it was a fairly small group of people actively supporting Kaepernick and those kneeling on the field; after the weekend, most Democrats and anti-Trumpers have now adopted it as their cause, growing the movement considerably.
But here’s the second irony: Very few, if any, of these new additions understand the motives for the protests in the first place. Following social media and conversations around the city, it’s clear people are standing with the NFL players for their right to protest and to oppose Trump’s attacks.
Do any of them actually know or care that Kaepernick’s protest was about police brutality and criminal justice reform?
Which leads to the third irony. Kaepernick and the kneelers have hurt the criminal justice movement with their poor choice of tactics. Before Kaepernick, many Republicans, Democrats, and independents were uniting behind the need for criminal justice reform and more transparency in policing. America has never been perfect, but progress was being made, as it always has over time.
Then Kaepernick protested by purposefully disrespecting the country. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” he said after a game where he sat. Notice he didn’t have any specific solutions. He just wanted to slam the entire country, despite most of us wanting to solve the root problems of his protest.
The problem is the flag and the anthem represent the progress America has made, including, and especially, for liberty for all Americans. The flag and anthem represent the hundreds of thousands who died to end American slavery; it represents progress from Jim Crow and into the Civil Rights movement. Countless soldiers lost their lives fighting to liberate Europe from fascism and oppression. The American economy has liberated billions of people from poverty worldwide.
When you disrespect the country, you disrespect that progress and prevent further progress.
And instead of Kaepernick’s protest becoming about equal justice, for the majority of Americans it became about whether or not rich NFL players should disrespect the flag. Certainly, he has the constitutional right to protest, but NFL owners also have a right to fire him.
The key to a successful protest is to keep the protest about the cause. Kaepernick and others could have chosen to link arms, wear certain clothes, raise their fists, or a host of other tactics to bring attention to what they believe. Any of these would have kept attention on their cause rather than on their tactic.
Now, few people know what the actual cause is. Democrats support it without knowing what it’s really about; Republicans oppose it because of the tactics.
This is not how to have a productive debate in politics. This is how you further divide America.
Ron Meyer (@Ron4VA) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is editor of Red Alert Politics (a sister publication to the Washington Examiner). This was originally published on Red Alert Politics.
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