Powered By Blogger

Publius Speaks

Publius Speaks
Become A Follower

9/29/2017

Player Protest Not Aimed at Flag

Donald Trump has unwittingly raised issues about patriotism that he doesn’t seem to understand when he tweets about honoring the flag and the national anthem.  Along with many others, Trump appears to believe that the flag in and of itself contains some sort of intrinsic value.  A patriotic symbol is just that – a symbol.  It stands for something, but does not possess worth, nor deserve honoring on its own merit.  It has no life.  It has no inner or outer value or status.  Flags and anthems do not themselves have records of community service or military service or patriotic sacrifice, although they may represent such.


The flag and the anthem do represent some of our history, our deeds and our life as a nation.  Much of that life deserves to be honored and perhaps revered.  But a flag is not that which it represents; it is at most a reminder of that which makes a nation worthy of respect, honor, praise and celebration, even of sacrifice.  To imbue and infuse the flag or the national anthem with an intrinsic power, value or life, is to make animated idolatrous objects of inanimate objects, transforming them into something they are not able to be. 
What makes such idolatry a problem is exactly what Donald Trump has done in attempting to punish or disparage people who will not “respect” (“worship?”) those lifeless objects. For that very reason, it is appropriate to call Trump to account for undermining a fundamental right of all Americans granted under the First Amendment:  the “right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances.” 
There seems to be a tendency in this country to make patriotic symbols, songs, and relics into something they are not meant to be: a test of patriotism.  One problem: symbols mean different things to different citizens, and people with different backgrounds.  Trump wants the flag and the anthem to represent something that he considers patriotic.  He wants the flag to symbolize victory in wars, a history full of triumphs, and certainly the bravery and courage of men and women (maybe?) in the military.  He certainly wants it to represent unfettered capitalism, earning of much profit, the triumph of making contracts and developing land into thriving businesses and enterprises.  Perhaps he even believes that the flag represents the freedoms and liberties that he enjoys as a rich white man.  Clearly, Trump does not recognize that national symbols may represent a much different reality to others.  He obviously cannot relate to many of the players in the NFL who have negative feelings about some of the history that the flag represents to them, not all of it in the past. 
Another problem is the inadequacy of a symbol itself to inspire.  Take the national anthem.  It supposedly represents bravery and honor in battle, and the inspiration of seeing the flag survive the “rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air.” Our national anthem is one more attempt to make the flag into an idol, a living breathing entity with power to inspire even though it has nothing to offer except its inanimate presence.  In contrast, those embroiled in the background battle itself receive no mention.  Further, our national anthem makes no mention of American humanitarianism, our many worthwhile institutions, or our beautiful land.  Our anthem glorifies an object that survives a battle, and glorifies war as somehow positive and uplifting.  ‘America’ and ‘America the Beautiful’ are much more reflective of the national character than what was chosen as our “national anthem.”
Right there is my argument with the Donald and many of his followers.  The focus of this nation’s patriotism needs to be on the People, not on the flag or the anthem, nor on statues, slogans, fables, or even on the wars we have fought and sometimes won.  We need to stop making war and victory in war the over-whelming theme of our symbols, but instead, need to emphasize our constitutional mission of making life better for people -- ourselves and others.  When our symbols of national pride fail to represent our national character, and our fundamental democratic and humanitarian values, they deserve to be questioned as to their validity.  But more to the point of the current protests, it is our government that needs to be called to account for those actions and policies that undermine that character and that Mission.   
So, here we are in a conflict that is as old and as enduring as our country.  And it comes down to racial attitudes, for that is what has blemished our history from our beginnings through 241 years right up until this very moment in time.  Whether we like it or not, our progress and our underlying values; our victories and our feats of strength and bravery do not erase our failures and our flaws, or the facts of history.
We have still within our systems and our institutions a built-in discrimination against certain groups and certain beliefs.  And we not only maintain those institutional and moral flaws, we are, as a nation, being led down a road that embraces discrimination, unequal justice, lack of equal opportunity, and built-in restrictions for those who are of different ethnic, religious, and racial backgrounds, or sexual orientation; plus those with physical or mental limitations or characteristics that we consider ‘not normal’ or ‘unacceptable.’  Like it or not, we are still a nation full of biases, discriminatory attitudes, and values, even hatreds, that belong to a slave-owning mentality.  And Donald Trump is leading us to “make American great again by using the bully pulpit (and his Twitter Tweets) to support and characterize neo-fascists, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis as “good people” and as part of his ‘base.’
We have made progress in certain areas, but we are finding, under Trump, that we have reverted to a neo-fascist, white supremacist, nationalistic fervor and fever that has been kept underground for some time. You may be, as I was, shocked to learn that the Southern Poverty Law Center has identified more than 915 groups classified as ‘hate groups’ in the United States, and this number is growing. We are also finding that discrimination is still evident in our systems and institutions where extremists are not necessarily present, but where ordinary white folk and others keep alive in our culture and its organizations and institutions -- by their denial, their apathy and their aversion to change -- the very discriminatory rules and attitudes that we think we are overcoming (like allowing failing schools in inner cities). We aren’t, we haven’t, but we must.
There is a deep divide in this country about race, immigration and justice (as there has always been) between people of color and those classified as “white.”  That divide has manifested itself in many ways, but began its awful journey with the institution of slavery under which we developed concepts that have never left us, such as:
§  Superiority of one race (white) over other races (mainly dark-skinned)
§  The smug and subtle concept that black and brown are colors associated with dirt, unworthiness (blackballed, black-listed, black-hearted), ignorance, animalistic nature, and that such black people will never progress beyond a certain level (welfare queens).

§  The equally subtle constuct that darkness bespeaks a criminal nature; white supremacists declare that these are people who are lawless, who will commit crimes as part of their predatory, animalistic nature.  And our criminal justice system backs that up with harassment, violent handling of demonstrators of color, unjustified killing of black or brown persons who threaten the person or authority of police, and the unequal treatment received in the courts where African American men are sentenced far more severely than their white counterparts, often for the same crime.

§  Central to white supremacists is the axiom that black and brown people are less than full persons or citizens and they should be denied the vote whenever and wherever possible, or their votes should be minimized by gerrymandering them into small districts that have little clout anywhere
§  The preservation of symbols of oppression that keep “history” alive: from guns to the confederate flag, to statues of generals on horseback to the arousal caused by the singing of “Dixie” –  some are protesting their existence and want then taken down; others are fighting to keep them displayed somewhere so that Southern history is preserved. But “the history” lives on in the removal of the confederate flag from the statehouse by Governor Nikki Haley of South Carolina touted as something that might bind-up the wounds of the past, while ignoring all the statistics that showed clearly that state’s neglect of African Americans in almost every meaningful category of life (see my Blog titled: “Flag Removed: One More Detour?” posted on 7/12/2015).
Well, I’m all for preserving history, but not if that history leaves out a slew of basics, like:

§  the Civil War was fought over maintaining slavery of Africans who were bought and sold at market-places; or, that

§  the economy of the South was built on the backs of those slaves who experienced horrendously de-humanizing conditions, like having their families split apart, being refused an education, being whipped for the slightest ‘offense,’ slave women being used as concubines, men being made into “boys”, and finally, the listing of slaves as 3/5’s of a person so they could be counted in the U.S. census without being declared citizens. 

§  after the Emancipation Proclamation was put into effect, the growth of Jim Crow laws did everything possible to keep former slaves from becoming full citizens who could vote, own property, attend good schools.  Those freedmen could easily get lynched for whatever the white establishment declared to be an offense against (their) society and their Jim Crow laws (many of which were unwritten but nonetheless ‘enforced’ by the KKK and others).   
So, let us come back to where we started: the denunciation of the protests of NFL Players ‘taking a knee’ during the national anthem and pledge of allegiance to the flag.  Trump wants them fired for showing such disrespect to those symbols.  And so do others, according to some recent polls.

I come down on a side that we hear little about.  I want the players, and all the rest of us to be able to protest injustice and bigotry, an over-abundance of violence, the killing of innocent people and the denigration of democratic values and principles such as free speech and freedom of the press, without threats of reprisal.  I personally want the right to express grievances in peaceful demonstrations but still have the support of others for the citizenship, patriotism and personhood of those who are protesting in the spirit of our American Revolution and our Constitution.    
In other words, let us give up the absurdity that there is only one way to react patriotically to the facts of our history, and to our behavior as a nation and as a community.  Like so many of our Founding Fathers, I want the choice and the right to be a revolutionary, a protestor of the loss of primacy of law replaced by the whims of leaders who worship power and control (otherwise known as ‘Law & Order”), and the cult of ‘might makes right’. 

I am not in favor of making idols out of flags, statuary and symbols.  The NFL players are not disrespecting the flag or the anthem; they are expressing a grievance and displeasure with the failure of this administration (and others of the past) to address inequality, lack of equal opportunity, police violence and the patent injustices of the justice system.  They believe that ‘Black Lives Matter’ and that those lives should not be allowed to be snuffed out or devastated by police or by ordinary citizens who keep covert rules and norms alive in our institutions that extend all the way back to slavery. 

Kneeling is a sign of respect.  The player protest grows out of a respect for their brothers and sisters, and mothers and fathers, who have had their lives made less than whole by people who still pledge their allegiance to follow that “partly human” - ‘3/5’s of a person’ – phrase in the Constitution as applied to slaves of the past and to people of color in the present.    Player protests (and many others) are not against the flag and its pledge of allegiance, or about the national anthem.  It is about the 240+ years of bigotry and racism that has plagued our nation’s character and behavior.  It is about lives that matter but that have been, and are still being, singled-out for disruption and punishment beyond the norm for the white establishment. 
Let us at least get it straight that protests are not against inanimate objects; they are against human entities that ignore, challenge and deny the basic rights of a group of citizens simply because they are not of European ancestry.  It is a protest against government that consciously rewards rich white people, and that consciously and concurrently denies travel to this country from Muslim countries, bans trans-gender people from the armed forces, retracts hundreds of regulations that protect citizens (such as young women on college campuses), leaving them with no avenues of appeal.  It is about the violence displayed by neo-Nazis and white supremacists against peaceful protestors in Charlottesville; it is all about the delay in bringing to justice the young white male who drove his car into that city’s crowd of protestors killing a young woman.  It is about not just the attempted repeal of Obamacare, but about the attempt to wipe away coverage for millions of people who now have health care under Obamacare but will be without it under any brand of ‘Trumpcare', because the Republican Party is all about radical Right-wing ideology and not about healthcare for poor people.
This protest is mainly about unequal and destructive treatment of people of color. Trump talks a good game, but his actions speak louder than words:  like not going to Puerto Rico until weeks after the devastation there; like not calling for immediate justice for the Nazi executioner driving that death car in Charlottesville; like not condemning the perpetrators of violence in other cities and suburbs like Ferguson and East St. Louis; instead always coming down on the side of law and order which means on the side of whites while condemning the criminal character of the inner cities and of certain immigrants (Mexicans for one). 

The destructive treatment goes on and on, with little done about any of it, except to excuse those who spend their time promoting such bias and discrimination.  Those that kill innocent black men (and women) keep getting away with those killings, and Donald Trump sits idly by ready to tweet something about the NFL player protest which he may have purposefully planned to divert public attention and anger over his stance on DACA, and his ‘threats’ to North Korea.  He Tweets, but does not act to overcome the deaths and denigration of people of color. 
The player protest is also one of sorrow that there are still many people of color who have given up on voting because they cannot see what good it will do to keep electing people who will not do what needs to be done; to vote for people who do not care about them. 
The protests are against representatives of the people, not against inanimate objects that in themselves have no power to do anything but be symbols.  If Trump and his minions want citizens to respect the flag, the pledge, the anthem and our Constitution, then he and his administration, including Congress, must take actions that correct the overt wrongs, violence and inequities, the overt discriminatory acts and behaviors, as well as the covert acts of restriction, denigration and denial that exist within our institutions.  Let us insist that legislators and administrators ‘take a knee’ to reclaim and rejuvenate their oaths of office to protect all the People (including protestors) and to secure the People's Welfare, with equal justice for all as our patriotic Mission.