President Trump has picked the right argument in America’s Cultural War, but his BDS Movement against America’s protesting NFL, NBA, MLB athletes First Amendment ‘Freedom of Speech’ rights is totally wrong-headed. Henceforth, whenever any American athlete decides to protest during the playing of the national anthem to call attention to the nauseating extent of racism, prejudice, jingoism, sexism and xenophobia in American culture, Trump has come up with his own simplistic Boycott, Divestment & Sanction (BDS) movement to stop their mounting protests. This is in spite of the fact that the Governors of all 50 US states have already signed a declaration condemning the concept of the BDS Movement against Israel for its similar persecution of Palestinians as antithetical to American values. Trump nevertheless apparently feels such a boycott is valid when it comes to Americans, and especially Americans of color, who protest their treatment at the hands of America’s local, state, federal governments and police departments.
Trump has a suggestion for every true-blue American citizen sports fan who loves his or her country and doesn’t like it when an American athlete protests during the playing of the National Anthem by either taking a knee, sitting on the bench, raising a clenched fist, or simply standing beside a protesting team mate, with their hand resting on his or her shoulder, or locking arms, as a sign of solidarity and support. Trump says the true-blooded American fan should just immediately pack up and leave the stadium, “Just Pick Up and Leave”, he says.
Trump guarantees that if the American fans take such a simple BDS action all such protest and civil unrest will quickly stop. Trump must truly believe that in America only money talks and all other bullshit walks; that America’s troubles will end, all the discontent and heart-ache will be silenced, and things will simply return to the same old causes of all the racism, prejudice, jingoism, sexism and xenophobia that once, by Trump’s odd way of reckoning, made America great, continues to make it great and will make it even greater still again in the future.
Trump picked the right argument alright, but he’s on the losing side if he expects America to join his suggested BDS Movement against organized American sports. He may well instead have stirred up a hornet’s nest that will react in the exact opposite direction he hopes things will go.
Now, when American sports fans in the NFL, NBA and MLB see one of their respected athletes assuming some posture of non-violent protest during the playing of the national anthem, rather than leave the stadium they may instead choose to stay in the stands and – while the TV networks cameras are rolling for all America and the world to see – assume for themselves the same peaceful posture of protest in support of their brave, courageous athlete-idols on the field. As NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell recently stated, “The NFL and our players are at their best when we help create a sense of unity in our country and our culture.”
President Trump doesn’t get America. He either fails to understand or doesn’t care about the marked degree of discontent in the minds and hearts of many decent Americans over the direction he has chosen for the country; which continues to eat away at the soul of America and take it towards some dark, as yet unimaginable, hellish place to which no sane American patriot should ever want it to go.
Trump argues that if America’s athletes want the privilege of becoming multi-millionaires they shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds them, and instead toe the official line of the duly approved form of respect for what makes America and the American Flag the great things that they are and will make them even greater still. Trump’s only seemingly facile answer for those protestors who don’t is the same answer that fascists everywhere would like to give to every whistleblower in the corporate world and government, which is to say to them, “You’re Fired!”
Unwittingly, President Trump has now offered up, on a golden platter, to every patriotic, red-blooded American what they each can do to protest against everything that Trump and his mob stand for. Imagine the spectacle of the televised scene, as the band begins to play the Star Spangled Banner, with ‘Old Glory’ waving in the wind as jet fighters soar overhead, while one after another brave, courageous athlete on the field assumes whatever chosen posture of peaceful protest while half or more of the fans in the stands begin to do likewise, with the other half of the fans looking on in horror, with glaring contempt. The corporate media and alternative press will have a field day. The thought-provoking commentary that will ensue on all sides of America’s First Amendment ‘Freedom of Speech’ debate will achieve the reaction that NFL athletes like Colin Kaepernick and Michael Bennett, NBA players like LeBron James, Chris Paul and Stephen Curry and MLB players like Bruce Maxwell hope will soon follow their lead.
Which way will American Society & Sports ultimately go? Hold on to your hats for the Donnybrook that will happen in both the stands and on the field!
Jerome Irwin is a freelance writer and author of “The Wild Gentle Ones; A Turtle Island Odyssey” (www.turtle-island-odyssey.com), a three volume account of his travels as a spiritual sojourner, during the 1960’s, 70’s & 80’s, among Native American & First Nation peoples in North America. It encompasses the Indigenous Spiritual Renaissance & Liberation Movements that emerged throughout North America during the civil rights era. In addition to being a long-time activist and political organizer among his community of Lower Capilano in British Columbia, Canada, Irwin has authored over the years a number of environmental, political, cultural, spiritual articles with a special focus on Native Americans, First Nations, Australian aboriginals, Israel, Gaza, Palestine and Syria. Irwin also is the publisher of The Wild Gentle Press. jerome_irwin@yahoo.com
Colin was First. His personal timing was not strategic. It was personal only. He could not stand the song we played for power and conquest because it represented the victimization of his own race. Black americans have become the canaries in our own human coal mine. If they are not free then no one is free. FREEDOM starts here. If we of US Inc. cannot face this one and come up with Justice on top we shall, and have up to now, failed as a society. We are a grandiose slave ship sailing into the New World Order of control and manipulation and kleptocracy. We are destroying our unions, comparing our wages for a sustainable and humane life time of work with poverty stricken lands whose histories are rampant with racism sexism and monolithic rule by dictatorial elites.
In a democracy the people arrange for good education, good health care, and their own welfare as they see it should be. We do not need fascists to tell us how to live. The fact is, black players’ lives do matter. America is in the process of proving that. Next step? The spread of a consciousness where each and every man, woman, and child has opportunity, education, and credit to advance in their own inimitable fashion.
And where a man is not shot for selling cigarettes on the street, or for shouting back at belligerent cops, or for begging not to be tazed, or for running away. Or (a woman) for forgetting to fix her tail light, and being left in a cell with plastic bags that could be strung up like rope…even if you believe she did hang herself all by herself. I don’t. In any case, the jailor has to take responsibility for the life and well being of all prisoners under his control–even if the jail is a vast as a nation.
And if the US of INC. is a national jail with prisoners and overseers, that is reason for revolution and evolution of a new world society of humankind.
Colin was not the first in sport nor in this nation only the first in Football. If he can play any better than you or I is not the point–his name will go down in history as well as john Carlos, Jackie Robinson, and Jim Thorpe, Babe Didrickson Zaharius, Jessie Owens, Bobby Seale, Malcolm X., MLK, Larry Doby, Chripus Attucks, Paul Robeson, and so many others, like Rosa Parks, who have made their move for freedom and faded from memory. this fight is just beginning becauseit is always, ALWAYS, beginning.
We have many dual Israel/American citizens in our U.S. Legislature and Senate. Recently they tried to pass a law that would make supporting boycotting of Israel a crime, a felony, with up to 20 year prison sentence. Now think about that all it reflects and dispels. We are not a free society anymore, and most of our rights ripped away at 9/11 and the people involved with that are now involved with Trump and the states now prohibiting BDS. Trumps son-in-law works as his adviser, when he has no foreign relations experience, and has a building at 666 Fifth Ave, NYC and in that building there is a business that is in the RFID business. Now the future of America is apparent if we do nothing. The Jews declared war on Germany in 1933 and their economy was hurting and they were then confined in camps. But they were never murdered, gassed or cremated. There now have been at least five history revisionists who have researched this thoroughly and it has been determined that no more than 70,000 died in the camps, not 6 million, and from starvation as the rails and roads were bombed and no food could be delivered, and from typhus which the Jews were sprayed to kill the lice that carried typhus. That was the gas shower that they were confused about. The human skin lamps are a hoax and so are the shrunken heads. David Irving is one of the most renowned revisionist and you can find his videos on You Tube and he has written books. All revisionists have been imprisoned for publishing and speaking about their findings. Do you know any historians who have published new details on slavery, the civil war or the slaughter of the native people when it was settled? No, I don’t. The truth is a crime in Zionism. Trump is playing right into their hands because his daughters married Jews. Hope he would form an alliance with Putin. He does not know who his friends are. But America is about to go if you all ignore the signs