If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: I deeply despise Donald Trump. I hate his guts and I believe he is the most diabolical monster roaming the earth today. I hate him because he is racist, sexist and xenophobic. I hate him because he is socially incompetent. I hate him because he is an artless, uneducated ruffian. I hate him because he brainwashed and divided my country. Today? I hate him because he made me give a rat's backside about sports.
I cannot, for the life of me, get into sports, because there are too many rules and I generally find them boring and confusing. This made life hell for me growing up in Pittsburgh, where people eat, breathe and sleep Steelers football. I have never cared about them. I do now.
This Sunday, the Steelers (most of them, anyway) and Coach Mike Tomlin remained in the locker room during the national anthem, following incendiary comments from the Genital-Wart-in-Chief at a rally in Alabama. Royal Orange One declared:
"Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, say, 'Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, out, he's fired!"
Twitler's little diatribe prompted a string of protests at several NFL games, all started, of course, last year by quarterback Colin Kaepernick. What started as a small, but mighty statement about police brutality and systematic racism became a large scale protest against a wicked, cruel leader, who calls a peaceful protestor like Kaepernick a "son of a bitch" but calls violent, tiki-torch wielding Nazis "very fine people."
I am proud of every player who took a knee on Sunday for exercising their first amendment rights. They are not disrespecting the flag or veterans that gave them the right in the first place, they're simply engaging in non-violent protest, which is all fine, dandy and within our constitutional rights.
Does this mean I am not proud of Alejandro Villanueva, the sole Steeler who ran out to the sideline for the anthem? No! I am just as proud of him as I am of Colin Kaepernick and company. It takes balls to stand up for what you believe in, literally or figuratively. It's better than having no stance at all, because in the age of Trump, your neutrality is your complicity.
I am ashamed, however, of all the conservative blatherskites, with their cries of "YOU LIBERAL COMMIES HATE AMERICA STAND FOR THE FLAG BECAUSE PEOPLE DIED FOR YOU OR GTFO!!!! MAGA!!"
Your ignorance totally rattles me. People have more rights than objects and ideas. True, men and women have died for our right to stand, but they also died for our right to sit. Our troops fight to protect us from evil forces that take our freedoms away. Don't confuse patriotism for blind trust. A true patriot loves their country enough to call her out on her BS.
The men and women who serve our country don't do it for the spectacle, they serve because they are selfless and want to make America (and the world) a better place. They don't ask for balloons, confetti and mindless groveling. I am not a veteran, but I know several, and the veterans I've met are some of the humblest, least boastful people I've known and I'm honored to be their friend.
If a corny song and a piece of fabric matter more to you than your fellow man, and you really want to live in a country where all citizens share in compulsory, fetishistic flag worship, move to North Korea. It's clear you don't really love America. You love power and control over others.
Besides, I always thought singing the anthem before a sporting event is a stupid tradition. In the grand scheme of things, there is no point to it and I refuse to let anyone tell me there is a point to it other than to fill a void. Instead, let's all sing a song that unites us as a species, like "Bohemian Rhapsody."
