Another fabulous piece by Charlie Pierce in Sports Illustrated, complete with a history of sports-related protests going back to Cleveland Indians pitcher Jim “Mudcat” Grant.
“In short, if you’re going to perform national anthems, you’re going to have politics. And if you have politics, you’re going to have political statements and, this being the United States of America, those statements are not always going to make everyone comfortable.”
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I’ve had several discussions with co-workers on this subject, as I guess many of us have. One thing that interested me is that the people most upset with this are the women I know who voted for Trump and to this day, still support him. They all tell me that this is about “supporting the troops”….and that even though they never liked Obama, they never treated him with this this much disrespect.
This tells me why Trump is doing this. It’s red meat for his base, what’s left of it, and it’s working.
For the rest, it’s been an interesting conversation as well. I ask them how they would feel if, after punching in for a day’s work, they had to swear allegiance to the USA, salute the flag, and, perhaps, wear a picture of the president just below their name tag with a “I support the president” ribbon beneath. They tell me that’s silly and they would not do it.
That’s when I tell them, but that’s what we’re asking these employees of the NFL to do.
The anthem is the Pandora’s box that brings with is the flag waving, and the political protests, and that’s how it needs to be.
Maybe the people you are talking to never treated Obama with that much disrespect, but overall he may go down as the most disrespected POTUS in history (well, until the current guy, but he so richly deserves it).
Personally, I think they are just lying when they said this, based on other comments I have heard them make over the years.
It’s an interesting point, worth exploring further: If the general acculturation for these people is to look down on black people in general, can anyone really be said to ‘disrespect’ one black person in particular, no matter the position he holds? In this they may not be ‘lying’…. Though, objectively, they are telling an untruth, for someone to be ‘lying’ depends upon a clear knowledge of the difference between their words and reality… But if they don’t think Barack Obama was legit to begin with, and thus not deserving of basic respect, they can’t ‘dis’-respect him: They can’t take back something that they weren’t going to give to begin with…
The same dynamic is seen in the present so-called ‘opiod crisis’: It’s just another way of saying that levels of misery that have long been accepted as normal for the black underclass have reached the white middle class. The misery for the black middle class was compounded by ‘tough on crime’ mentality and things like mandatory minimums and ‘welfare reform,’ whereas the misery for the white middle class is alleviated with calls for compassion and government intervention. Same dynamic. I could cite another dozen examples of the dynamic.
That’s why it’s important to understand the phrase ‘black lives matter.’ Just about everything else is trying to re-enforce the long held notion that they don’t matter…
A crucial point of both this piece bears repeating, in bold:
It’s mentioned again further into the piece (emphasis mine):
Props to doubleman, who posted a similarly eloquent explanation of what is really happening here.
In spite of what (white) supporters of Donald Trump assert, this is NOT about supporting the troops or any of that rubbish.
These protests are about white cops killing black men, women, boys and girls with impunity. Across America. AFTER the BLM protests. With all the publicity, ALL these killer-cops are either not prosecuted at all or are found “not guilty”.
We should not delude ourselves about this. These protests are about racism and about an American power structure that places ZERO value on black lives.
I remember when the whole point of national anthems and related exercises was to NOT be political – that regardless of our various political opinions and ideologies for the couple of minutes it takes to play the anthem and/or recite the Pledge we put that aside and stood to salute the flag as one people who value the freedoms we have and commit to making sure liberty and justice for all was a reality.
Christopher — you’re not old enough to remember one of the most famous exercises of political opinion during the national anthem, but surely you know enough history to remember the actions of John Carlos and Tommie Smith in 1968.
The Pledge… you mean this pledge:
I pledge allegiance to the flag,
AND TO the Republic, for which it stands
One Nation, under God,
Indivisibile,
with LIBERTY and JUSTICE for ALL.
That pledge. The one people mouth and don’t really take the time to think about what words like ‘Republic’ and ‘indivisible’ and ‘liberty and justice for all’ really mean?
I think Colin Kaepernick (sp?), and now the remainder of the NFL, was trying to do what Martin Luther King Jr tried to do: point out the difference between the words we use to describe the world we say we want and the actual world we live in…
For me those words DO mean something and I stand and salute as a public affirmation of my commitment to making the ideals expressed therein a reality.
At what point, Christopher, would any public affirmation go from being a pledge to remake a pitiable reality to an endorsement of a reality, no matter how pitiable? I get that you have not crossed that line…. but that’s not a good enough reason to say that line does not exist.
Flags have long existed as battle standards for use in identifying sides during war, which, as Clausewitz tells us, is “the continuation of politics by other means.”
Well, at the moment I’m not carrying it into battle, but I certainly hope that if it did come to that, the Stars and Stripes is the flag we would all choose, though ironically those who scream the loudest about flag outrages also seem willing to carry a certain other flag. The worst thing the left can do in this context is cede the flag to the right. We need to literally and figuratively stand up for it and the frankly very liberal values it is supposed to represent. We cannot get to the point where we have different salutes for different sides. We are one nation, indivisible, and now more than ever must act like it.
But if you stand for the anthem, the lyrics of which explicitly depicts a flag under attack in a battle, what difference does it make if you are or are not doing the thing at the moment…. ?you’re still saluting and respecting the doing of the thing. That’s not an eventuality you may some day come to… it’s an historical fact we respect.
You’re eliding the issue by suggesting some form of uncertainty to when a flag, or an anthem, is, or is not, political.
Christopher: ” I remember when the whole point of national anthems and related exercises was to NOT be political”
Clausewitz: “War is a continuation of politics by other means.”
Petr: “A flag is an artifact of war… . and if war is a continuation of politics, saluting it is an inherently political act. The same goes for the national anthem, ”
I see absolutely no contradiction between using the flag to represent our side in a battle with a foreign power and using it as a symbol of unity on the domestic front. In fact, the two uses are probably more mutually inclusive than exclusive.
And, so what?
Are we having the same conversation? You said, and I directly quote you, “I remember when the whole point of national anthems and related exercises was to NOT be political” And I said, essentially, that’s NEVER been true and never will be true.
I made no mention of inclusion or exclusion. I simply point out that a flag, for whichever use you put it, is always a political artifact and saluting it is always a political act.
And I disagree – there are times where it absolutely has been true and I stand by that.
I actually didn’t recognize the names, but confirmed my assumption that you were referring to the black power salute, so yeah, not completely unprecedented, but I stand by my contention that in the vast majority of cases most people, and certainly speaking for myself, try to see these exercises as almost anti-political/ideological.
Your mythological history is a comforting narrative, but it’s important to remember we didn’t have the Pledge in its current form until the late 50’s during the height of the Red Scare and we didn’t even have a formal anthem until the 1930’s. Both were reactions to the rise of communism and fascism, respectively, and a fear that our individualistic society with all its freedoms was at a disadvantage against collectivist societies and their stronger sense of nationalism.
We often forget that our founders were incredibly uncomfortable with titles, religious language in civic life, giving prominence to military leaders, and giving too much deference to the President. John Adams was ridiculed for calling the President “His Excellency” and wearing a ceremonial sword as Vice President.
Saluting the President didn’t start until Reagan began that precedence. Jefferson, Madison, and even Washington would have all been appalled at how monarchical our presidency has become and how our society reveres
…flags and symbols as sacred icons rather than the cherished ideals those symbols represent.
The fact that Trump gave his speech in a state infamous for defying and even treasoning against our national government in the name of white supremacy should tell you what it’s really about. This is all about making America white again.
Amen.
I remember when the phrase “under God” was added.
And, FWIW, my peers and I fought local and national battles about our rights to:
– Not say the pledge
– Not stand during the National Anthem
– Not salute the flag
The mythology that christopher cites was, in my experience, mostly uttered by authority figures trying to suppress such protests.
In my view, my generation established during the 1960s that when America is committing grave injustices and worse, true patriots protest in whatever way works — including the above items.
Of course, Noam Chomsky said it best.
The “mythology” for the vast majority of my life and experience was actual fact. If you were at an event and everyone stood and saluted, you never asked nor cared what the politics of the guy standing and saluting next to you was. SCOTUS has affirmed, rightly IMO, that you do in fact have the right not to participate. However, I am going to use my own first amendment rights to express the opinion that I wish everyone would. Doing so does not imply you think the country is perfect, just that you accept the ideals and values it was founded upon.
@ Christopher, … vast majority …: You wrote this:
“we put that aside and stood to salute the flag as one people who value the freedoms we have and commit to making sure liberty and justice for all was a reality.”
The only person you can confidently speak about is yourself. I don’t doubt that you internalized those events that way.
I ask you to consider that you may be overlooking several groups of people:
– People who actually didn’t stand at all.
– People who stood to “fit in”, and who thought to themselves “what utter bullshit”
– People who went through the motions because they were taught that going through the motions is just something you do — public courtesy, as it were.
I suggest that what protesters did in the 1960s, and are doing again now, is assertively challenge these other groups.
I view the pledge and the national anthem is something akin to how I view the Nicene Creed when I attend mass — and, for that matter, how I view much of the consecration language during the preparation of the sacraments.
I don’t actually “believe” any of the religious language. I think the pledge and the anthem reflect certain aspects of American values — they ignore a great many others. Something larger happens for me in church, in spite of our imperfect attempts at worship. I’m not sure what happens at these anthem ceremonies, or what we want to happen.
I don’t think there’s ever been a time when most people reacted to the national anthem the way you describe, and that’s why I joined jconway in describing your comment as “mythology”.
The fact is that most American families were NOT like the Cleavers (in “Leave it Beaver” or the Andersons in “Father Knows Best” or the Cartwrights in “Bonanza” or all the other icons that we paint to tell ourselves what we are “really” like.
I think the pledge, the anthem, and such things are very similar.
Well, your third group is in fact part of how I feel too. There is IMO something to be said for public ritual and standing in unison. Even I don’t always bother if I’m in the privacy of my own home and the anthem is played on TV or if I’m by myself in the teachers lounge at the start of a school day rather than with students. Even your second category even if they wonder why I think there’s merit to them going ahead and doing it anyway.
@ christopher “how I feel too”: I fear you are contradicting yourself.
You wrote “… we put that aside and stood to salute the flag as one people who value the freedoms we have and commit to making sure liberty and justice for all was a reality.”
But the people in my group 3 say to themselves, if they admit it, “I don’t believe any of this, but I do what I’m taught”.
It sounds as if perhaps you actually agree that the pledge and anthem never did actually mean very much. If someone is in my group 2 or 3, then that person does NOT “salute the flag as blah-blah-blah”.
Doing what I’ve been taught and standing like sheep when everybody else stands is NOT a statement of values or anything else. It’s little more than a gesture of conformity.
I certainly hope every American values liberty and justice for all, but sometimes we perform collective rituals for the sake of unity and I think that’s OK.
Um, the military saluting the President long predates Reagan and civilians never do. What Reagan began was saluting back. I’m generally a fan of presidential respect for his head of state role since we have no monarch (though the current guy does test my patience with that concept), and I like at here we have, “a Supreme Executive Magistrate, whose style shall be The Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and whose title shall be His Excellency.” Jefferson went too far the other direction when he greeted an ambassador one time in his bathrobe. I am of course fully aware of pledge and anthem history, but what is wrong with a country, especially one with no natural bonds like ethnicity, asking for a small expression of loyalty to its ideals at public events?
There is nothing wrong with that, in and of itself. But when that exact thing is being asked people are replying thusly: “Loyalty is a two way street and real, concrete, and measurable progress on our ideals in everyday life is a necessary pre-condition for any expression of loyalty.”
Saying ‘yabbut, you still have to make the gesture” kinda elides the underlying problem…. And, therefore, the expression of loyalty might be deemed towards the status quo and not the ideals…
I think loyalty to the ideals matters more than loyalty to a flag. At last nights game I had no problem holding my hat for a WWII vet who was a decorated soldier and camp liberator. The “original antifa” as my friend who I attended called it. He’s a vet too from a pretty conservative part of Maine, but he backs the black protestors since he knows this country has not always been loyal to them.
I think that’s an important conversation we need to be having. Racist police officers and soldiers defile our flag. Condemning blacks while defending Nazis defiles our flag. Honoring the traitors who fought to destroy our union and keep their fellow Americans enslaved defiles our flag. Doing jack shit to help 3 million Americans without power, medicine or food in Puerto Rico defiles our flag.
But it IS more than just the physical flag – that’s the whole point. Remember we pledge not only to the flag, but at least as importantly to the Republic for which it stands, further described as being an indivisible nation that values liberty and justice for all.
My experience has been that those who are most demanding of “loyalty” are those who least deserve it.
To answer your question literally requires reading your question literally.
What, precisely, do you mean by “asking”? What, precisely, IS “a small expression of loyalty to its ideals”?
What some factions of American culture have been doing since the 1960s is not “asking” but instead demanding. What many of the protesters are doing is offering a different “expression of loyalty”. For some, that “different expression” is very large.
I suggest that loyalty, like respect, is something that is earned rather than demanded. Similarly, “authority” is something we give someone rather than something an entity takes.
I am disgusted that we have become a culture that makes such a large issue out of such ultimately meaningless gestures.
Jefferson’s bathrobe ?
How about at the height of WWII while staying at the White House, a nude Winston Churchill, standing with brandy glass and cigar in hand, greeted Franklin Roosevelt who had burst into room after his bath, without missing a beat, proudly proclaimed :
” The people of Great Britain have nothing to hide from the President of the United States.”
Now that’s informal. 🙂
Let’s remember that Pres. Eisenhower in 1954 convinced the Congress to add the phrase “under God” to the Pledge. Many US citizens are not believers in a monotheistic Judaeo-Christian faith.
Just to build on that, many of the passionate Jews and Christians I’ve known find the inclusion of that phrase blasphemous — “give unto Caesar”, etc.
The phrase is exclusionary rather than inclusive. It’s primary impact, whether intended or not, is to drive people away rather than bring people together.
Nor is that God necessarily a Judeo-Christian God, though those of such faiths are free to take it that way. I recently read American Gospel by Jon Meacham, which presents the best explanation I have encountered for the God of our civic religion going back to the Founders.
The author of the pledge was also a socialist who didn’t intend for it to be required. I think we can pledge allegiance to the ideals without having to salute the imagery and symbolism. I would also posit the folks doing the protests are far more respectful of those ideals than the people telling them to shut up, stick to sports, or be grateful they get paid to bash their brains in week after week. The folks saying the masters should fire the help if they get too uppity. Every veteran I know and the veterans who told Kapernick to take a knee in the first place recognize this.
A great many Americans do not embrace monotheism.
They don’t have to, but even polytheistic religions generally have the concept of a divine spirit. I certainly have myself heard adherents of polytheistic religions use the term god as a shorthand for that spirit.
As a humanist, I’m one of them.
“… under God” explicitly asserts a concept that many of us find offensive and divisive.
I emphatically reject that the “god” worshiped by Roy Moore and Alabama voters who elect him time and again has anything to do with America, with Massachusetts, or with me.
The phrase being repeated today is being repeated by people alive TODAY. It has only coincidental relationship to whatever it was that Dwight Eisenhower and Congress had in mind more than sixty years years. It was divisive and exclusionary then, and it is MUCH more so now.
This meme is, in my view, one of most destructive and most divisive toxins permeating America and the world today.
This religiosity is a cancer spreading through America.
Then YOU are the one suggesting that the God of the Pledge is specifically Roy Moore’s God. I for one refuse to concede that to him. I think you need to dial it back regarding religiosity in general, which can also be a force for good. I take the opposite view – that “under God” in the Pledge or “in God we trust” on our currency is about as harmless an expression of religious sentiment as one can get. If you don’t want to utter the words, don’t – nobody is going to notice. However, it also isn’t going to hurt anyone.
Roy Moore just got elected pretty much entirely on his “faith”. His perverse brand of religiosity is the base around which his entire persona is constructed. And it is working.
You don’t care about the phrase in the pledge and neither do I. You and I are not the people who make this religiosity toxic.
We got into this exchange because a great many people take all this VERY seriously. The fact that Roy Moore is likely to be the next senator from Alabama is real and disgusting. James Inhofe, who practices a very similar religiosity, chairs the committee that sets policy towards climate change. Mr. Inhofe uses the same God-this and God-that language as Mr. Moore to paralyze our national response to climate change.
I’ll “dial back” my opposition to religiosity when the religious crazies start to lose ground in their influence over our daily lives.
Right now, we are in a Jihad driven by fundamentalist literalist extremists against the rest of us, and those bigots are winning.
Now is not the time to “dial back” opposition to religiosity. In fact, now is the time for people like YOU to realize that your broad-minded liberal view of what “God” and “Christianity” mean is a tiny blip next to the millions of Americans who bigots like Roy Moore are preaching to.
I say again, Christopher, that you REALLY need to spend some time in the south. You REALLY need to spend a month or two in Alabama, Mississippi, rural Georgia, whatever.
I really don’t think you realize what evil is being called forth by Roy Moore’s pandering.
I’m right there with you regarding Roy Moore, but for me the solution is to push back with progressive Christianity rather than state that religiosity is toxic without any qualifiers. HIS religiosity may be toxic, but I’d like to think mine isn’t.
I’m a pluralist who thinks the God references need to be removed. Pledges and currency are pretty low on my list of things wrong with America, but even I as a religious person, I dislike it. I think it’s a form of cheap grace, that assigns a bland, faceless God to invoke for all our nationalism. It’s a cheap form of patriotism too.
Actually following Christ involves sacrificing ones own privilege, power, and possessions in the name of the greater good. Our country’s faith is perverted by the heresy of the prosperity gospel and it’s secular adherents who feel might makes right, wealth makes wisdom, and greed is good.