![]() Colin Kaepernick is the poster boy for what is wrong with our national psyche. It is sad that we have several generations of Americans who counter-demonstrate their patriotism under the shadow of misinformed certitude. I don't blame him for disrespecting every American soldier who laid down their life so he could demonstrate his youthful ignorance. I blame our culture that has become so insular and selfish, that is more interested in sports and entertainment, in making tons of money so we can indulge our egos in consumption, so we can express our childish angers and fears in ways that mischaracterize, and embarrass the legacy of the leader of the free world, our homeland and the flag that represents it. So we can go to Brazil, dominate the competition for gold medals, then pee on the business of one of our hosts while drunk and headed out of town. We built this 21st century counter culture, and we deserve what we are getting. I don't think he, or most of the extreme left-leaning radicalized youth of America, who have decided that their homeland is the problem with the world, that America is a bigoted, racist and authoritarian enclave that 'represses' blacks and the poor, want anything but the best for America. So he says that unless or until he sees what he considers 'improvement' in the nation's social and law enforcement agencies and policies, he will continue to sit during the National Anthem, to demonstrate his ideological anger at America. That is his right. Collin is a product of fifty years of leftist ideological indoctrination vis-a-vis our schools, our media and our celebrity culture. This is exactly what socialists and communists, those who lost the Cold War, have worked diligently to achieve. There is a coordinated, a well designed campaign to redefine the legacy, the iconic image of America. The leftists of the world could not win the hearts and minds of people with their egalitarian social schemes, their authoritarian controls, or their wars. When they were dismissed to the ash-bin of history during the Reagan Administration, when the Berlin Wall was demolished, and when the Soviet Union was reconstructed post Communist control, leftist puppet masters found refuge in the union-protected, serene and vulnerable campuses of the altruistic and independent family of American academics. They then began a lifelong crusade to defeat capitalism from within. After a half a century of unchecked expansion of union controls, and fraternal academic inbreeding, and the unrelenting assault of political correctness, America is suddenly seeing the impact of this movement, this silent erosion and redefinition of our unique American culture, sometimes referred to as Americanism. As a graduate of the University of Nevada, Kaepernick was passively exposed to four years of ideological indoctrination, aided by modern media slants and an administration that tilts decidedly left. He didn't come up with his resentment in a vacuum. Kaepernick is a product of the results of a massive cultural deconstruction of the ideals of "The Pledge of Allegiance". He is just reflecting the deeply flawed Marxist views that have been inculcated in our kids. Few people are self assured enough, at 18 or 19 years old, to pass through the halls of advanced education in America, without being affected by the progressive philosophy of anti-Americanism. If you have college age children, you undoubtedly have noticed a dramatic change in their attitudes about Americanism when they come home and engage in discussions of public policy, of 'Black Lives Matter' and of presidential politics. It is from that foundation that our news organizations are now staffed with like-minded progressives who have no shame in promoting their philosophy through the suppossedly unbiased distribution of the news. So I do not blame Kaepernick for acting childishly. I blame us. My generation, the Boomers, for abandoning the pure patriotic energy of our parents. The unfettered pride in being apart of the great social experiment in human freedom that is the legacy of Americanism. We Boomers got sidetracked by the idealism of the sixties. We got stoned, we got naked and held sit-ins, we demonstrated for women's and minority rights, we campaigned against irrational wars, and the military industrial complex usurpation of public control of our armed services. We were so hell bent on reinventing everything, making all wrongs right, and building an idealized nirvana state, we forgot to pay attention to the realities of the rest of the world. About how few inhabitants of this planet actually enjoy any of the freedoms that we Americans take for granted. We were immersed in love, peace and rock and roll. As helicopter-parents we have over-protected our kids, teaching them that they are especially innocent and unsafe. We have scared them into a state of dependence on having someone looking out for them. We have raised a generation of young people with arrested development. As a result, we forget how much of our American family's blood was shed, voluntarily, just so our children would have the same opportunities and freedoms that we were afforded. Our culture makes it cool to be oblivious to the machinations of politics, of the responsibilities of civic engagement, of avoiding participating in community management, policy decisions, and helping the poor and underrepresented. We have handed all of that off to officials to achieve social justice by proxy. And when they fall short, our children wail about how unfair it all is. And finally, I lament the fact that so few of us really understand the National Anthem, and what it says about diversity, about inclusion, about self doubt of our idealism, and how much humility it takes to try to provide the kind of military protections required to nourish liberty on a worldwide basis. It is an anthem to a belief in a higher power, in an admission that though we are powerful, we are not perfect. It is a tribute to the effort to be the leader of the free world, as imprecise and sometimes clumsy as that might be. Though America, and Americanism isn't perfect, a lot of Americans have made the ultimate sacrifice trying to make it so. Colin, who was adopted, has a deep and abiding faith in God, and who has been gifted with a unique talent that has made him a multimillionaire, has decided he can make a difference in the world outside of football. A noble idea. But I contend, if he were better informed about what the National Anthem actually speaks to, and what Americanism tries to accomplish, instead of sitting in a disrespectful pout during the celebration of our exceptionalism, he would be the poster boy for Americanism. "And where is that band who so vauntingly swore That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion, A home and a country, should leave us no more? Their blood has wash'd out their foul footsteps' pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave: And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave, O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave." No other country in the history of the Earth has ever accomplished anything like America, so pardon me and many other Americans if we struggle with anger over Colin's actions. We simply want to shake some sense into the young man, because we are so frustrated that his misinformed certitude is so tragically wrong. |
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