Heroes - When it's Convenient

The latest chapter of the Colin Kaepernick kneeling saga began a few days ago, when Nike made him the face of its latest ad campaign.  If you haven't seen the ad in question, here's a link where you can take a look.  Predictably, the ad sparked a backlash, signs of which you could see in the news and on social media: photos and videos of people destroying their Nike merchandise, the standard amount of anti-Kaepernick vitriol, and so on.  It was a new twist on a familiar tune: Kaepernick is being unpatriotic and disrespectful to the troops and the flag by kneeling, etc etc etc. Basically the same old stuff. 

For the sake of argument, let's assume that it is disrespectful (I don't think it is, but I don't presume to speak for all military personnel). If kneeling during the national anthem gets people angry enough to torch their Nike shoes, how angry would they get over the government suppressing a report about contaminated drinking water on military bases? Or appallingly poor medical care at VA clinics? Homeless veterans? Deep cuts to educational benefits? Or how about the biggest one in recent memory: the Bush Administration's unnecessary and completely botched war in Iraq? Even if you believe the WMD intelligence was legitimate (hint: it wasn't), Bush and his team screwed up every significant decision at the start of the war, from ignoring the looting to not sending enough troops to secure the country to the Ba'athist purges.

So if someone cared about the troops not being disrespected, there are much bigger things to get angry about. Yet I'd speculate that there's not a huge amount of overlap in the Venn Diagram of "people who are angry about what Kaepernick's doing" and "people who are angry about all that other stuff."

Curious, isn't it? It's as if some people only care about "the troops" to use them as a political prop, and then forget all about them when it comes to things that really matter.

Like I said, I don't presume to speak for all military personnel.  But I'll just give my $.02.  At the risk of sounding self-righteous, I'll say that I detest shallow patriotism, and that people angry about Kaepernick and the Nike ad campaign are a classic example of that. Caring about the troops is about more than a coupon at a restaurant or priority boarding at the airport, or flashy parades and magnetic yellow ribbons. It's about taking the time to read up on the challenges they face: the far-flung corners of the world they're sent to, the various missions they're made to undertake, and the difficulties they face when they eventually re-enter the civilian world.

And it is definitely not about allowing the military and the flag to be used as a rhetorical club to hit a particular segment of society. If that's your idea of patriotism, you have a lot to learn.

A Few Thoughts on Weaponized Patriotism

So, it's been a long time since my last post.  Sorry about that, it's been hard to write anything lately.  I haven't had the time to crank anything out, or to mull ideas over the way I like to as part of my creative process.  Also, and this may surprise you, but I haven't had many blog-worthy ideas the past few weeks.  I finally came up with something worth writing about, though; so here we go.

The NFL/national anthem/kneeling controversy was back in the news about a week ago.  It coincidentally resurfaced a few days before Memorial Day, when there's an uptick in patriotic displays.  In a way, I find that convenient, because I see the holiday and the debate over kneeling as being somewhat related.  Memorial Day is meant to acknowledge and honor this country's fallen servicemen and servicewomen, and one of the main criticisms of kneeling during the national anthem is that is disrespectful to those same fallen.

Anyway, the issue made headlines again because the NFL recently released its revised policy concerning kneeling and other forms of protest during the playing of the anthem.  Naturally, President Trump weighed in and the media ran with it, because neither of them can pass up an opportunity to generate sensational clickbait.  I posted a link and a few sentences about it on Facebook (see the screenshot below), but I'd like to expand on it a little.

 

Here are my thoughts.

First, if your opinion resembles Trump's on this issue (or just about any issue, really), you may want to rethink that opinion.  Trump has no concept of things like selflessness, sacrifice, loyalty, duty, courage, or any of the other qualities that make a good soldier; and he doesn't have any interest in showing any respect to the armed forces. (Trump isn't a good human being for that matter, and if someone can't figure that out after ten seconds of hearing him speak, that person is a horrible judge of character.) He has made that clear on countless occasions: he belittled a POW, he disrespected a Gold Star Widow, he still hasn't visited any troops in active combat zones, he made his commencement speech at the 2017 Coast Guard Academy graduation ceremony about him--to name a few examples.  He does not give two shits about the flag, the troops, or the country, so he's not someone anybody should look to when it comes to what is or isn't patriotic.  Which leads me to my next point.

Second, anybody who tries to frame patriotism as an in- vs out-group thing should be treated with skepticism.  They usually have an ulterior motive.  It could be an attempt to derail a discussion--calling someone unpatriotic tends to put them on the defensive and reframe the debate really quick. For example, remember the backlash against the Dixie Chicks after they criticized former president Bush in 2003? Or how Joe McCarthy exploited anti-Communist fervor for political gain? You'd think this would be obvious, but there seem to be a lot of people out there who don't get it.  

Third (and last), here are two things that patriotism should not be.  It should not be coercive, and it should not be unquestioning.  You can express your patriotism however you wish, but you should not expect others to express it in the same way.  You should also not shy away from asking the hard questions--particularly to how the armed forces are employed, since "respecting the troops" is at the core of this debate.  Disagreement is not disloyalty, and citizens should be automatically skeptical when the civilian leadership calls for the troops to be committed somewhere around the globe.  American troops are deployed in a number of places that, despite doing work to improve the local conditions, have very little to do with protecting America and its citizens.  Why, for example, are we in Afghanistan some seventeen years later? And how does getting involved in the Syrian civil war make us all safer? These are the questions people need to ask - no, demand - of their elected representatives, and it's not unpatriotic to do so.  

That's all I've got.  I hope everyone had a good Memorial Day weekend, and is enjoying what remains of it.