The NFL Protests

Weird, but true I guess. Respecting your country (whatever it’s faults) is somehow political speech.

My son, on his own initiative, substitutes ‘dog’ for ‘god’ in all patriotic songs or the morning pledge of allegiance.

One nation, under dog. Dog bless America.

I do hate the new version of the pledge, and preferred the old one.

Yeah imagine how many people might feel that way in this country in 1860, or maybe some citizens in Germany say in the late 1930s… or how many examples would you like?

We’re lucky if the reasons some have chosen not to stand for the national anthem as a peaceful and respectful way to protest what’s going on in this country is happening today because evidently we’re still in the talking phase of our problems.

Respecting my country involves respecting a nation that murdered and assassinated away democracies in Central America, leading to a Civil War that killed thousands in the country of my mother’s birth. It involves respecting a nation that butchered, marginalized, and stole from the original inhabitants of this land for centuries. It involves respecting a country that carpet bombs families out of existence in the MIddle East from the safety of a VR drone control station on a routine basis.

Yeah, that respect is political, because America is a political creature. Good or bad or somewhere in between, politics suffuses every part of it.

As legend has it, singing the national anthem at sporting events began during the 1918 World Series, when the nation was at war.

I think the biggest farce about the anthem being played at sporting events and people whining about the players is what is going on in the stands. What percentage of people in the stands are at attention, hands on hearts, hat off heads…probably not that many.

It is easy to pull out events out of history. Using that argument anything can be argued about anything. History is full of contradictory and argumentative events.

Again, an argument can be made to disrespect almost anything.

So tell me Armando, how do you feel about the US. Has it’s history tarnished it to the point to where you get sick to your stomach whenever July 4th rolls around? Is the US the root of all evil in the last 200+ years?

Within that post is the reason Trumpsters hate the left I think. America was never great, it was evil, we shouldn’t respect it…blah blah blah. Everything except an anti-Christianity statement is there. :)

You have done well sir.

It’s a good reminder that these past events, they’re not hundreds of years apart. There are frequently reasons why people challenge the government and the nation. If i said 1970 would that be better? I don’t have to go back 100 years. 2005 probably had a number of people not really appreciating our federal government too.

There is nothing easy about any of this. That’s why the NFL keeps fucking it up… They want easy. Addressing this was never going to be easy.

They want money, and they see a financial hit from their current fanbase if they have players expressing their views during the anthem. They don’t see the financial hit from forcing players to stop expressing those views. Yet. But that’s the only thing that’ll convince them. All about the money.

I had no idea there was a new one. Does it delete all references to sexual preference and religion?

I think it’s a good time to reflect on the difference between patriotism and nationalism. Fighting to protect the right and ideals upon which this country was founded is patriotic. Mandating blind acts of devotion to flags and anthems while suppressing freedom of speech is nationalistic.

I would agree. I understand what the players did, but it was the NFL that effed it up.

The pledge originally ended with “one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all”. “Under God” was shoehorned in during the Red Scare in 1954. Because commies are godless.

I like the original better too.

Commies and lberals, apparently. Or so the GOP wants their base to think. How very unamerican of them.

Okay, I knew that. I thought maybe they had made other changes. Been a long time since I had to recite the pledge.

I think we may have had a miscommuncation; I was primarily responding to the idea of whether or not patriotism is political, not whether or not it’s good or bad to respect America (though I did so through a lens of outlining why I am dubious about saying I Capital-L-Love our country).

But if you’re curious, I don’t think of America as an especially great nation in the grand scheme of things. A large and powerful one that kinda saved the world’s ass in WW2 to be sure, and a source of great innovation and change. . . but also an imminently self-interested and dangerous super power that as stolen, lied, and murdered its way through the world just as much as its helped and invented and saved. It’s a massive blotch of gray area spanning a stolen continent filled with brilliant and terrible and industrious and cruel and loving and horrifying people.

And yes, Christianity sucks donkey dongs :)

Not political at all

Yeah, the one adopted in in 1954 which added the words “under god”

“I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” sounds better and is a lot less arrogant.

My day today started with me taking a driving test in a car that looks like a giant cookie and then I got trapped in an elevator with someone dressed like an owl.

Now I’m applauding the Jets.

What was in my cereal?