Take for example the recent decision of the NFL in regards to players protesting the national anthem. On Wednesday the NFL said that it would fine any club that had players kneeling during the national anthem and if any players felt the need to protest, they could do so by staying in the locker room. Remember, the whole reason this started is that Colin Kaepernick wanted to show solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and protest the dismissive way the media and government treated the victims of police shootings and other state violence. So now, two years later, the NFL's official response is that anyone who wants to protest the erasure of black people's humanity when the state kills them must do so off camera, out of sight and out of mind. Irony is a doozie sometimes.
Of course, this was entirely predictable. There's nothing the NFL hates more than its image of the perfect American past time being punctured by the reality of how it behaves and manages its players, so of course their response would be to shunt any player who wanted to express their conscience into the darkest corner they could get away with. But there's a deeper part to this, which is why I'm focusing on a seemingly irrelevant thing like a sports league telling its athletes to know their place and stay in it.
In terms of cultural relevance, football as supplanted baseball as America's nationalistic sport. The NFL has done all it can to wrap itself in the symbols of America- namely, the flag and the military- at every opportunity to get fans to associate the feelings of loyalty, fealty, and admiration they have for the flag with the game itself. And it's been widely successful in doing so.
What the NFL is tapping into is something called the American civil religion, which, in a nutshell, treats the symbols of civil government with religious fervor. The Constitution is the bible as given to the holy disciples the Founding Fathers, the military are the priests with the rank of the soldier being equivalent to the rank in the church (i.e. a private is a local pastor, generals are cardinals), and the flag is the Crucifix.
So when Kaepernick takes a knee during the anthem, he isn't expressing a political point by exercising his 1st-amendment right, no, he's a heretic, a blasphemer, a vandal desecrating all that is sacred, forcing the faithful to take in all the gory details of his defilement. That is why the immediate reaction of all the people who buy into this type of brainwashing is to tell people "If you don't like it, get the hell out of America!" To them, there's no disconnect or hypocrisy in lauding America has the Greatest Country To Ever Exist because they can do things like criticize the government whenever they want to foaming at the mouth when someone actually uses that right to meaningfully criticize the government.
Because to them, and that mode of of thinking, the Bill of Rights aren't political franchises to be enthusiastically exercised, they're symbols of a magnanimous government handing them their freedoms, the best expression of which is for the citizenry to hand them right back, to agree not to exercise them or use those rights too diligently, because the government willing to grant those freedoms is proof enough that it is deserving of an unquestioning fealty. K
Because to them, and that mode of of thinking, the Bill of Rights aren't political franchises to be enthusiastically exercised, they're symbols of a magnanimous government handing them their freedoms, the best expression of which is for the citizenry to hand them right back, to agree not to exercise them or use those rights too diligently, because the government willing to grant those freedoms is proof enough that it is deserving of an unquestioning fealty. K
Kaepernick and anyone else who make a point of loudly and insistently proclaiming all the ways America chooses to fail its promises of liberty and justice for all are traitors, violators of the sacrament and has such must be shunned, discredited, or exiled so their heresy will not corrupt the faithful.
If this all seems too outlandish on my part, think about this: When the President said that any player who took a knee should be fired and called them sons of bitches, he got immediate cheering from a group of thousands. Think about how any time you've had a conversation about this there's always that one person who immediately and furiously insists that the protest is disrespectful to the flag and the military and refuses to consider any other opinion. And then think about how you would feel if someone started talking in derogatory terms about whatever faith you belong to and see if the feelings you have towards that imaginary person don't seem really familiar to those conversations about football.
The other thing that has my wheels spinning is the Trump administration's announcement that from here on out they'll be separating children from their parents if the family is found to be crossing the border illegally. The parents would be detained, prosecuted, and serve prison sentences if convicted while the children are whisked off to wherever the government can dump them.
The whole point of this, obviously, is to send the message to anyone thinking of coming here to stay home because if they get caught, we'll take their children away for years on end while they languish in prison and detention centers before they get booted back to wherever they came from. This is cruelty for cruelty's sake, to make the U.S. so barbaric a place to make anyone thinking they'll find a better life here seriously reconsider that. And, of course, his supporters love this.
Which brings me to a point that's been long-simmering in my mind. I've always been highly skeptical of remaining friendly or affable to Trump supporters and to act like they support him for reasons that don't involve bigotry. Economic anxiety got tossed around a lot in the early days, but when reporters talked to coal miners and other blue-collar workers that were supposedly swayed by Trump's economic message that they were left behind by uncaring elites and he would bring their jobs back, they were all decidedly nonplussed about that and were especially upfront about the fact that they never expected Trump to bring their jobs back and didn't expect anything to change for the better. So, if the people who were allegedly won over by Trump's economic populism are throwing cold water over that idea, what does that leave us with?
Well, as multiple studies have shown, the primary reason people voted for Trump was out of racial resentment and a loss of status. This is an important fact to reckon with because pretty much every strategy I've seen with people trying to win over Trump supporters is to get them to empathize with the targets of his bigotries or point out that his economic policies like the tax cuts and deregulation don't provide any material benefit to them.
Which brings me to a point that's been long-simmering in my mind. I've always been highly skeptical of remaining friendly or affable to Trump supporters and to act like they support him for reasons that don't involve bigotry. Economic anxiety got tossed around a lot in the early days, but when reporters talked to coal miners and other blue-collar workers that were supposedly swayed by Trump's economic message that they were left behind by uncaring elites and he would bring their jobs back, they were all decidedly nonplussed about that and were especially upfront about the fact that they never expected Trump to bring their jobs back and didn't expect anything to change for the better. So, if the people who were allegedly won over by Trump's economic populism are throwing cold water over that idea, what does that leave us with?
Well, as multiple studies have shown, the primary reason people voted for Trump was out of racial resentment and a loss of status. This is an important fact to reckon with because pretty much every strategy I've seen with people trying to win over Trump supporters is to get them to empathize with the targets of his bigotries or point out that his economic policies like the tax cuts and deregulation don't provide any material benefit to them.
As we've seen though, the economic aspect is irrelevant when push comes to shove, and asking his supporter's if they think he's going too far in his disparagement of black athletes, Hispanics, and all immigrants, well the answer, by default, is going to be "No."
All the things that any decent person would stop and think "Wow, these are terrible things to do/say about people" are exactly what his supporters want him to be doing. Obviously, this has a lot of implications for how we handle things right now, but gets even more troubling when you think about what it means going forward.
The biggest reason I've ever heard for trying to maintain relationships with Trump supporters is the refrain that he won't be President forever and we need to hold on to those people for the time after Trump. Again, I've always been dismissive of this because, in a word, there is no after. From the moment he came down that escalator and declared his intent to run for the Presidency, Trump has been held in awe of the Republican voter base. Currently, his approval rating among Republicans sits at 85%, and has floated up and down the 80's all through his presidency. So if his base voted for him out racial resentments, and overwhelmingly approve of what he's doing and how he's doing it, why, exactly, would anyone believe those attitudes would just disappear when he's no longer in office?
This delusion stems from something much deeper though, the lie that is at the heart of Trump's political career. It's not any of the multitudes that have come out of his mouth, no. Rather, it's one that we've told ourselves from the moment it became clear he would win the Republican nomination and one that is still carried over and repeated to this day.
All the things that any decent person would stop and think "Wow, these are terrible things to do/say about people" are exactly what his supporters want him to be doing. Obviously, this has a lot of implications for how we handle things right now, but gets even more troubling when you think about what it means going forward.
The biggest reason I've ever heard for trying to maintain relationships with Trump supporters is the refrain that he won't be President forever and we need to hold on to those people for the time after Trump. Again, I've always been dismissive of this because, in a word, there is no after. From the moment he came down that escalator and declared his intent to run for the Presidency, Trump has been held in awe of the Republican voter base. Currently, his approval rating among Republicans sits at 85%, and has floated up and down the 80's all through his presidency. So if his base voted for him out racial resentments, and overwhelmingly approve of what he's doing and how he's doing it, why, exactly, would anyone believe those attitudes would just disappear when he's no longer in office?
This delusion stems from something much deeper though, the lie that is at the heart of Trump's political career. It's not any of the multitudes that have come out of his mouth, no. Rather, it's one that we've told ourselves from the moment it became clear he would win the Republican nomination and one that is still carried over and repeated to this day.
That lie is that Trump is an aberration, an outlier, a corruption of what we stand for and what our politics is meant to accomplish. Which, as I've gone over more than once on this blog, just isn't true. Obama separated families that crossed the border illegally and kept them in abysmal prison condition with limited access to medical and legal services in an attempt to deter other Central American refugees to make the trek North, so, uh, points for being quiet about it, I guess? Also, it's hard to take seriously Trump's "unprecedented" assault on the press when Obama and Bush both locked up reporters and their sources when it came to damaging national security stories. Breaking the Iran deal is just another in the international laws we helped create that we then abandoned.
So, yeah, you can pretty easily argue that Trump is escalating some of the worst trends about how our government functions, but doing so means you have to admit that those problems existed before Trump and our main objections to the Trump era are driven more by our disgust at Trump's boorish personality than any deep-seated ethical concerns.
This is actually what I think is the most insidious aspect of Trump's legacy, that the country as a whole allows itself to be pulled into his narcissism and pretend that everything about his campaign and election win just materialized out of nowhere, has nothing to do with anything that's ever happened before, and is solely the result of Trump and Trump alone. And since there's nothing America loves doing more than letting itself off the hook for its bullshit, I think that's exactly what we're going to do and then be dumbfounded when it happens all over again. If we were more honest with ourselves, I'd consider that a tragedy, but, since we insist on being as dumb as humanly possible, well, I guess we'll just get what we deserve.
So, yeah, you can pretty easily argue that Trump is escalating some of the worst trends about how our government functions, but doing so means you have to admit that those problems existed before Trump and our main objections to the Trump era are driven more by our disgust at Trump's boorish personality than any deep-seated ethical concerns.
This is actually what I think is the most insidious aspect of Trump's legacy, that the country as a whole allows itself to be pulled into his narcissism and pretend that everything about his campaign and election win just materialized out of nowhere, has nothing to do with anything that's ever happened before, and is solely the result of Trump and Trump alone. And since there's nothing America loves doing more than letting itself off the hook for its bullshit, I think that's exactly what we're going to do and then be dumbfounded when it happens all over again. If we were more honest with ourselves, I'd consider that a tragedy, but, since we insist on being as dumb as humanly possible, well, I guess we'll just get what we deserve.
