The Same Kinds of Saudi Jets Bombing Yemen Also Punctuate the U.S. National Anthem

     Iowa Republican Congressman Steve King has a problem with San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick's use of his First Amendment rights.  Kaepernick, in a preseason game against the Green Bay Packers, started a controversy when he wouldn't rise for the traditional pre-game performance of America's national anthem, a song written by a slaveowner in 1814 during a battle.  The song celebrates the "Star Spangled Banner," its endurance as British and American shells exploded and musket balls flew in the chaos of war.  Adapted from a drinking song, with changed lyrics, the anthem has become fetishized, like other American objects (the flag, the words "In God We Trust" on money, also with, at professional sporting contests, flyovers by U.S. military jets at the anthem's final notes).  The purpose of this patriotic fetishization is to give cover to those who endorse bloodshed and injustice while avoiding risk themselves.
     Colin Kaepernick, a quarterback of former dynamism who played, but lost, in a Super Bowl, is now the backup to another.  It's not like Tom Brady or Aaron Rogers, NFL superstars in other words, kneeled instead of stood during the national anthem.  Kaepernick, however, like many quarterbacks who have been in the limelight, has received corporate endorsements in the past.  By not standing during the anthem, as he did in that preseason game and in three regular season games following, he lost backers and gained enemies among the public and in the news media.  Bill O'Reilly, in high blood pressure mode, said he would send Kaepernick a copy of his new book about the U.S. defeat of Japan, Killing the Rising Sun, insisting that the upstart Black NFL player "read every word," including the table of contents and copyright information, I guess.  O'Reilly's point, easy to figure out since he's a rich man who's never actually risked his life or career for anything or anyone, would make us believe Colin Kaepernick is a spoiled ignoramus who should be grateful for what America has given him: fame and money, two things O'Reilly, a proud Roman Catholic, worships more than the selfless good works of St. Francis of Assisi, or the stance of Jesus of Nazareth when confronted with power while facing Pontius Pilate.  O'Reilly, a friend, colleague, and apologist for and of Roger Ailes, the sexual predator whose loathsome misogynist actions won Gretchen Carlson twenty million dollars in a recent lawsuit settlement, really gives a shit about a song, that song, rather than women's rights and the First Amendment rights of a Black quarterback.
     Kaepernick has been supported in his protest by other players taking a knee during the anthem.  It's become a "controversy."  In America it's not controversial or even much known that our government enables Saudi Arabia's continuing rape of Yemen, by now a more destructive crime against humanity than Saddam Hussein's invasion and occupation of Kuwait, which prompted so much blood and fire talk from the gung ho never-been-shot-at motherfuckers of a quarter century ago.  A man kneels during the national anthem and it's somehow worse than why he's kneeling.  Kaepernick's protest derives from his humanitarian objection to police brutality against the African American community.  Why should he honor an anthem that's played mechanically just because it's a tradition, while the ideal of "liberty and justice for all" isn't realized in a nation infected deeply with institutional racism?  In a nation where incarceration rates for Black men is much higher than incarceration rates for White men committing the same crimes?  In a nation with a prison industrial complex that profits from the cruel conditions of the War on Drugs, a failed campaign that has succeeded in supplying prisons with dark-skinned humans, causing a self-perpetuating system that only exists for itself, like the Department of Defense and many big city police departments?
     Kaepernick has risked his money (a formidable amount by most people's standards) and his character, the latter in the eyes of people like Bill O'Reilly and Congressman King, who said," I think Colin Kaepernick is representing the San Francisco 49ers when he puts on that uniform.  When he steps out on the stage, the world stage, he's taking advantage of that, and he's undermining patriotism.  I understand that he has an Islamic girlfriend and that this has changed him and has taken on some different political views along the way.  This is activism that's sympathetic to ISIS."
     Steve King is a member of the House of Representatives, supposedly a responsible government official.  Kaepernick denies he's converted to Islam, and added that his protest touches off Islamophobia in America.  King, by his own words, proves this.  His statements against Kaepernick tell much about himself, and nothing about the quarterback.  Kaepernick, according to King, represents his team on "the world stage,"--he's "taking advantage" of the 49ers, a team owned by John Edward "Jed" York, the thirty-six year old nephew of a former owner of the team, thus a participant in the literal definition of nepotism, a privilege of the rich.  San Francisco Examiner columnist Jay Mariotti in 2015 wrote of Jed York, "It should be obvious by now that everything Jed touches turns not to metallic gold, but to an unspeakable substance."  I'll write the word for him: he means "shit."
     By wearing that uniform on the world stage and not standing during the national anthem, King claims that Kaepernick is "undermining patriotism."  Patriotism is sometimes spoken about as if it's an entity, as is the flag.  Patriotism damaged, wounded, upset, angry, depressed, unable to function.  Can patriotism's foundation really be wobbled by a rich Black football player choosing to make a visual Constitutionally protected statement about a song written 202 years ago by a man who owned people the same color as the football player?
     King's next statement is truly a McCarthyite tactic: bringing up Kaepernick's "Islamic girlfriend" serves the purpose of making the football player's protest into part of a larger narrative, that of the War on Terror.  If I had Steve King sitting before me, I'd tell him this: "Colin Kaepernick has done the protests, not his girlfriend.  You needn't mention her, because she has nothing to do with it, in spite of your pure speculation that she's influenced him, infected him with 'Islamic' ideas which you then, without evidence, link to the philosophy and practices of ISIS, an organization so extreme in its views and violent that the overwhelming majority of Muslims reject and condemn it.  You call his taking a knee during the national anthem 'activism sympathetic to ISIS,' but in fact it's activism that carries out the principles of the Founding Fathers and the United States Constitution, which you, Mr. King, have sworn to protect as a Congressional Representative, not undermining it to serve your own purposes as you manipulate voters by passing off slander as fact.  Your objection to this whole matter is, in fact, un-American."
     To do an unpopular thing for a logical reason, to be consistent about it as well, is hardly an easy thing to do on such a widely viewed "stage" as NFL football, yet Colin Kaepernick has shown he has more guts and actual patriotism than any of the white rich assholes complaining about him.

                                                                               Vic Neptune