talkpolitics | Offended much?

The other day a woman told me that she and her veteran husband were offended by Kaepernick and the other football players kneeling. I asked how her husband could be offended since the players were exercising the rights her husband fought for. She said it wasn't that they were exercising their rights, but HOW they were doing it.

I asked what form of protest seeking justice would have been acceptable to her and her husband. She said something that honored the flag and didn't disrespect the troops. I asked if she and her veteran husband were equally offended by the neo-nazis marching and rioting in Charlottesville as they were of men quietly kneeling on a field? She blocked me.

This is what 45 has done, he had appropriated an action for justice and equality and bastardized it, making it not about the disenfranchised and those without a voice, but about a nonexistent insult to troops. He's pandering to his base, and taking a movement to help minorities and turn it into a call to arms for nationalists. This is NOT about the soldiers, this is not about a song, not about a piece of cloth, this is about who they represent, the American people, ALL the American people.

Rather than be inclusive, 45 has taken the movement to push further division and turned it into "patriot bashing." If he knew even a little history of the country he is now representing, Trump would know that those on their knees are the true American patriots, if the term ever really meant anything.

If you're more offended by someone kneeling to the anthem in protest to the mistreatment of minorities, than you are about neo-nazis marching and rioting on the streets and the president playing buddies with them, you're not a patriot - you're an asshole.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Don't forget head injury, crass consumerism, and jingoism...

I never do.

Kneeling during the anthem is an elegant and peaceful protest. Done.

I've been called an asshole a number of times before, by otherwise apparently rational people who worked themselves into a lather about protests of this or that form, simply by asking them increasingly uncomfortable questions until they panicked.

The lesson I've learned is this: These people are not interested in truth, they are interested in their own safety.

They're dumping abuse onto an easy target in order to make themselves part of the in-group. If you offer sympathy you're their in-group. If you ask questions you're The Enemy, trying to take them out of the in-group, and are blocked, ignored, unfriended, et cetera.

There is nooooooo point in engaging with them.