Not the Anthem, Not the Flag: This is About Labor Rights

And of course racism.  If professional hockey players were kneeling, the Orange Loser would give them all the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Dave Zirin at The Nation:

In what has to rank among the worst ideas in the history of the National Football League—alongside decisions to cover up concussion research and ignore the issue of violence against women—NFL owners have come up with a new proposal to deal with players who protest police violence and racial inequity during the National Anthem. According to Sports Illustratedfootball scribe Albert Breer, “Per sources, one anthem idea being discussed: Leaving it up to home team on whether teams come out for the anthem; if teams do come out for the anthem, potential that teams could be assessed 15-yard penalties for kneeling.”

This idea is so terrible that one wonders if it was leaked by another owner as a way of preemptively humiliating whoever proposed it from ever uttering the notion again. One can only imagine an official saying, “Exercising of constitutional rights. On the kicking team. Fifteen-yard penalty. First down.” That the idea is almost The Onion–worthy is not the only reason why penalizing players for protest is a nonstarter. NFL players have had the space to protest during the anthem not out of the noblesse oblige of ownership but because it is enshrined in the Collective Bargaining Agreement with the union.

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The idea that some owners would even propose this without speaking to the union is a sign of how drastically out of touch this group of aged billionaires is from the players in their league.

Charlie Pierce has another theory:

Or maybe none of this is about the anthem, but about fans being reminded—for less than two minutes—about how maybe the country isn't all great before they get to watch The Big Game. Maybe it has something to do with the complexion of most of those protesting, and the fact they've made many millions of dollars more than most of those watching will in their lifetimes—and they're still not "grateful." And maybe the owners are worried that embracing the social consciousness of their employees might cost them some money. So, after all, would closing the concession stands. The most important freedom in America is the free flow of dollar bills.

Patriots

Divine Irony:

Patriots always talk of dying for their country, and never of killing for their country.

Bertrand Russell (via philosophybits)

↵ REBLOGGED FROM PHILOSOPHYBITS
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Molly Knew

Via Political Animal:

Colin Kaepernick Deserves a Medal

The Muhammed Ali Speaking Patriotic And Racial Truth to Power Medal.  With Telling Jingoistic NFL Greedheads to Fuck Off and Die Cluster.

Think Progress:

On Saturday night, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick remained seated as the national anthem was played during the team’s preseason game against the Green Bay Packers.

“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” the 28-year-old told reporters after the game.

His action — or, rather, inaction — sent shockwaves throughout the NFL community. In the past 48 hours, Kaepernick has been called “unappreciative” and “ignorant” by former NFL players; others, including a former teammate of his, have said that he was disrespecting the military and being downright unpatriotic.

And in a league that has extremely close ties with the military and nationalism, there are few things worse than being perceived as anti-American.

But while Kaepernick might not be displaying the one-size-fits-all patriotism that the NFL likes to heavily promote, he is showing patriotism nonetheless.

“I have great respect for the men and women that have fought for this country. I have family, I have friends that have gone and fought for this country,” Kaepernick told reporters on Sunday. “And they fight for freedom, they fight for the people, they fight for liberty and justice, for everyone.”

Kaepernick’s desire is for liberty and justice to be applied uniformly to all American citizens. He is willing to lose his job and lose endorsements in order to speak up for those that he does not feel are getting a fair shake in his country. That is his version of patriotism.

Compare that to the NFL, which treats patriotism as a brand.

Last year, it was revealed that the Department of Defense had paid NFL teams $6.1 million between 2012–2015 for military tributes at games, including the field-sized American flags, flyovers, and fireworks. (The NFL announced in May that it was returning $724,000 of that.)

While the league stages and heavily promotes military family reunions without providing full context, it also fines players, such as former Carolina Panther Josh Norman, for wearing patriotic cleats that do not fit into the NFL’s very strict uniform guidelines.

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All in all, Kaepernick fits the official definition of patriot — “a person who regards himself or herself as a defender, especially of individual rights, against presumed interference by the federal government” — far more than than the NFL does.

“This stand wasn’t for me. This stand wasn’t because I feel like I’m being put down in any kind of way,” Kaepernick said. “This is because I’m seeing things happen to people that don’t have a voice, people that don’t have a platform to talk and have their voices heard, and effect change. So I’m in the position where I can do that and I’m going to do that for people that can’t.”

Of course, that doesn’t mean that Kaepernick hasn’t experienced racism. On Sunday he spoke about helping a friend move, only to have cops come and point guns at him and another black friend, assuming they were intruders. When he was named the starting quarterback for the 49ers, there wasracially-charged criticism of his tattoos and leadership skills.

But Kaepernick knows that compared to most, he has it good. He sat during the national anthem because black Americans are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by the police. Unarmed black Americans are five times as likely as unarmed white Americans to be shot and killed by police. And far too often, there is no punishment for police officers committing these murders.

Kaepernick might not have a spot on an NFL roster for much longer — there are rumors that the 49ers will release him for “football reasons” — but as long as he has a platform, he plans to follow in the footsteps of athlete activists before him, most notably Muhammad Ali.

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For his part, Kaepernick plans to continue to sit during the national anthem until he sees significant progress.

“This country stands for freedom, liberty, justice for all, and it’s not happening for all right now,” Kaepernick said. “To me this is something that has to change, and when there’s significant change and I feels like that flag represents what it’s supposed to represent and this country is representing people the way it’s supposed to, I’ll stand.”

You know who is the most fanatic about making empty jingoistic gestures like standing for the anthem and saluting the flag?  Traitors, that's who.  Spies. Terrorists.  Because they know that pretending patriotism is the easiest thing in the world, and will guarantee them a pass from suspicion.

Real Patriots Pay Taxes

After racism, this is the biggest divide between Americans: we who define patriotism as working to create and strengthen the common good vs those who define patriotism as working to enrich and strengthen selfish individualism.

Crooks and Liars:

Former Clinton Labor Secretary, Robert Reich has teamed up with MoveOn.org to celebrate our 240th birthday this Fourth of July. He understands that it's very important to not only love your country, but be aware of the responsibilities of a truly patriotic American.

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Reich outlines five basic principles of true patriotism. His definition praises the country that we love, without demonizing the institution of government.

1. First: It's not simply about waiving the American flag and it's not mostly about securing our borders putting up walls keeping others out. It's about coming together for the common good.
2. Second: Patriotism 'isn't cheap.' As such, a real American patriot pays his fair share of taxes to fund services, utilities, roadways, social programs, education, healthcare and the most expensive military on the planet. The Presumptive Republican Apricot nominee has yet to reveal his tax returns,and it's widely believed they would divulge some rather 'creative accounting', possibly to the degree that he hardly pays anything back for all the benefits he's received from this nation, the country he claims to love.
3. Third: Patriotism is about preserving fortifying and protecting our democracy, not intimidating it with big money and buying off politicians.
Trump has bragged about his own history of buying politicians who, as he so delicately pronounced, "kiss my ass."

4. Fourth: True patriots don't hate the government of the United States, they're proud of their country. They know the government is a tool to help solve our problems together.. They may not like everything it does and they justifiably worry when special interests came too much power but true patriots work to improve our government not destroy it *cough cough, like the GOP* The Conservative SCOTUS justices responsible for Citizens United decision unequivocally prove that the GOP was best served by this blatant selling of Democracy to the highest bidder.
5. Finally: Patriots don't pander to devisiveness - they don't feel racist or religious or ethnic divisions. They aren't homophobic or sexist or racist. AMEN!

One Nation, bifurcated

Divine Irony:

Whom We're Deporting

Digby's right; this is a disgrace. 

Private First Class Andres De Leon, 72, signed up for the U.S. Army to fight in Vietnam when he turned 18-years-old at a time many were trying to avoid the war. He served for 12 years and spent two full years overseas before being honorably discharged. Like many veterans, he suffers from depression, that spiraled out of control when his mother passed away. But unlike most veterans, his depression led to him being deported.

De Leon may have moved to Madera, California with his family legally when he was 12-years-old but he was deported when he became addicted to heroin to medicate his depression and was eventually arrested for possession. Section 237 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (I.N.A.) lists this as a valid reason for deportation and three years into his sentence at Soledad State Prison, ICE came knocking.

By 2009, an immigration judge ordered De Leon back to Mexico where he hasn’t lived for over 50 years. He’s living in Tijuana today in a one room apartment after spending his first few weeks homeless and on the streets. With no friends or family and certainly no veterans benefits, his sister fears that his type-2 diabetes isn’t being taken care of.

“I got no choice,” he told a local TV station Fox40 back home. “I have to stay here but I’m doing the best I can.”

His story is sad enough and you would think that there aren’t many like him, but you’d be wrong. Once back in Mexico he met Hector Barajas, a former paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne who told De Leon there were dozens like them. In 2013, Barajas started a safe house for veterans from the United States that are deported to Mexico.

“We believe none of these men should be left behind,” he said. “We talk about supporting the troops, let’s keep supporting these men. Treat these men with honor.”

One in six veterans who served in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq suffer from a substance abuse issue. Those veterans who seek treatment for PTSD report alcohol-use disorders to the tune of 60 to 80 percent, according to the National Center for PTSD.

De Leon, Barajas and their friends are victims of cracks in a complicated system. Justice For Vets is an organization that works to help veterans that end up in the courts because of drug and alcohol abuse. They work with veteran treatment courts that require mandatory treatment and court appearances to help incentivize veterans to get clean and sober. But immigrants aren’t eligible if they break the law. They’re simply deported

OK, all you warmongering, military-felating "patriots:" where do you stand on honorable veterans being thrown out of the country like common criminals?  Why do you hate America's veterans?

Loving America ... and Kentucky

Looks like the theme for the 2016 elections is going to be "Democrats Hate America; Real Americans Vote Republican."

Here's an old but still relevant response:

"We[Liberals] love America just as much as they[Conservatives] do. But in a different way. You see, they love America like a 4-year-old loves his mommy. Liberals love America like grown-ups. To a 4-year-old, everything Mommy does is wonderful and anyone who criticizes Mommy is bad. Grown-up love means actually understanding what you love, taking the good with the bad and helping your loved one grow. Love takes attention and work and is the best thing in the world. That’s why we liberals want America to do the right thing. We know America is the hope of the world, and we love it and want it to do well."

-- Al Franken

The Other Anti-American Flag KY Has Not Taken Down

It still flies under every U.S. and Kentucky flag in the Commonwealth, over post offices and state government buildings and veteran cemeteries, to the eternal shame of every jingoistic motherfucker propagating its lies.

It's the POW/MIA (sic) flag, and it needs to come down now. 45 years of lies is enough.

Rick  Perlstein at TPM:

You know that racist flag? The one that supposedly honors history but actually spreads a pernicious myth? And is useful only to venal right-wing politicians who wish to exploit hatred by calling it heritage? It’s past time to pull it down.

Oh, wait. You thought I was referring to the Confederate flag. Actually, I’m talking about this.

I told the story in the first chapter of my 2014 book The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan: how Richard Nixon invented the cult of the “POW/MIA” in order to justify the carnage in Vietnam in a way that rendered the United States as its sole victim.

It began, as cultural historian H. Bruce Franklin has documented, with an opportunistic shift in terminology. Downed pilots whose bodies were not recovered—which, in the dense jungle of a place like Vietnam meant most pilots—had once been classified “Killed in Action/Body Unrecovered.” During the Nixon years, the Pentagon moved them into a newly invented “Missing in Action” column. That proved convenient, for, after years of playing down the existence of American prisoners in Vietnam, in 1969, the new president suddenly decided to play them up. He declared their treatment, and the enemy’s refusal to provide a list of their names, violations of the Geneva Conventions—the better to paint the North Vietnamese as uniquely cruel and inhumane. He also demanded the release of American prisoners as a precondition to ending the war.

This was bullshit four times over: First, because in every other conflict in human history, the release of prisoners had been something settled at the close of a war; second, because these prisoners only existed because of America’s antecedent violations of the Geneva Conventions in bombing civilians in an undeclared war; and third, because, as bad as their torture of prisoners was, rather than representing some species of Oriental despotism, the Vietnam Communists were only borrowing techniques practiced on them by their French colonists (and incidentally paid forward by us in places like Abu Ghraib): see this as-told-to memoir by POW and future senator Jeremiah Denton.

And finally, our South Vietnamese allies’ treatment of their prisoners, who lived manacled to the floors in crippling underground bamboo “tiger cages” in prison camps built by us, was far worse than the torture our personnel suffered. (Time magazine quoted one South Vietnamese official who was confronted with stories of released prisoners moving “like crabs, skittering across the floor on buttocks and palms,” and responded with incredulity that such survivors even existed: “No one ever comes from the tiger cages alive.”)

Be that as it may: it worked. American citizens enacted a bizarre psychic reversal. A man from Virginia Beach, Virginia, described to a reporter the supposed treatment of American prisoners in North Vietnam: “they just dig holes in the ground and drop them in. They throw food down to them, and let them live there in their own waste.” In fact, that was how prisoners were treated in South Vietnam—as recently revealed in a shocking Life magazine exposé.

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Actually, as I document in The Invisible Bridge, it’s more complicated than that: many of the prisoners were antiwar activists. One member of the “Peace Committee” within the POW camps, Abel Larry Kavanaugh, was harassed into suicide after his return to the U.S. by the likes of Admiral James Stockdale, who tried to get Peace Committee members hanged for treason. Stockade would become one of the nation’s most celebrated former POWs and a vice-presidential candidate. Kavanaugh took his life in his father in law’s basement in Commerce City, Colorado, in June 1973. Americans would agree that one of them—Stockdale or Kavanaugh—is not a hero—though they would disagree about which one is which.

That damned flag: it’s a shroud. It smothers the complexity, the reality, of what really happened in Vietnam.

We’ve come to our senses about that other banner of lies. It’s time to do the same with this.

Fascism in Defense of Jingoism

It's demoralizing to see how public displays of worship toward national symbols have displaced public service and loyal dissent as proof of patriotism.

People who truly hated this country, who truly want to see its democratic government torn down and replaced by plutocratic and Dominionist rule would protect themselves with the most blatant demonstrations of symbol-worship.

Those are the dangerous ones.

Digby:

Here's some of that tolerance on display:

"I attempted to get up to use the restroom, rather urgently, during the 7th inning stretch as God Bless America was beginning. As I attempted to walk down the aisle and exit my section into the tunnel, I was stopped by a police officer. He informed me that I had to wait until the song was over. I responded that I had to use the restroom and that I did not care about God Bless America.

"As soon as the latter came out of my mouth, my right arm was twisted violently behind my back and I was informed that I was being escorted out of the stadium. A second officer then joined in and twisted my left arm, also in an excessively forceful manner, behind my back. I informed them they were violating my First Amendment rights and that I had done nothing wrong, with no response from them.

"I was sitting in the Tier Level, and of course this is the highest level of the stadium and I was escorted in this painful manner down the entire length of the stadium. About halfway down, I informed them that they were hurting me, repeated that I had done nothing wrong, and that I was not resisting nor talking back to them. One of them said something to the effect that if I continued to speak, he would find a way to hurt me more.

"When we reached the exit of the stadium, they confiscated my ticket and the first officer shoved me through the turnstiles, saying 'Get the hell out of my country if you don't like it.'

I think we all know what happened to those Dixie Chicks when they dared say they were ashamed of the president.

So really, all this whining about liberal intolerance and Stalinist authoritarianism because a couple of cretinous bigots want to be able to refuse to serve gays is just a teensy bit over the top considering the furious reaction one gets for saying anything the right doesn't like about guns, God or the flag around these people.

American Sucker

We'll be rid of racism before we're rid of jingoism.

Rude Pundit:

American Sniper is a film about stupid people who were brainwashed into doing something stupid and it justifies their stupidity so that the stupid people watching can feel good about themselves. See, the one thing you can't separate out from the film is history. It tries to elide over history, but just because it isn't mentioned doesn't mean it isn't there. Because of that, the overwhelming feeling the Rude Pundit had was pity, not pride.

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So, in the end, American Sniper is the story of a dumb man who wrecked himself for a worthless cause and about all the young men (and it is all, mostly white, men in it) who were sacrificed for nothing.

It's not the film that tells us it's nothing. We know it was for nothing. We know that one of the great crimes of the new century is the invasion of Iraq for absolutely no rational, demonstrable reason. We know that all those "savages," as Kyle calls the Iraqis, that we killed were for nothing. We know that all those Americans who died lost their lives for nothing. Our military was protecting us from nothing. Our freedoms weren't at risk from Iraq.

And the lie many soldiers from Iraq cling to and the lie we tell ourselves, and the lie that so many have worked so hard to maintain, is that as long as we don't discuss that it was for nothing, as long as we pretend that the fact that soldiers fought when they were told to fight and, mostly, did so nobly, we don't have to face the truly gut-wrenching reality of our national complicity in the crime.

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We're supposed to feel proud that men like Kyle defend us.  We should instead feel intensely angry that they died in vain.

"The one constant in an uncertain world"

Cthulu!  A display of jingoism by the one empire in an uncertain world is not going to save the dems in November, Mr. President.



Full transcript here.

Don't Say the Pledge

Did you know it originally came with a stiff-arm salute like the Nazis? That it dates only from 1982, not 1776?  That it celebrated the 400th anniversary of Columbus' arrival the start of the Great American Genocide? That it was promoted by a magazine marketer as a way to instill patriotism brainwash children and sell flags? That it is probably right now being copied by ISIS motherfuckers because it just fits their mindset so perfectly?

PZ Myers:

It is true that the American Humanists have launched a campaign to get the discriminatory religious message out of the pledge (I’m all for getting rid of it altogether — why do we make kids recite a loyalty oath?), but it seems to me like a fairly calm, rational argument that they are making.

The Proper Response to Freakazoid Extortion

Because that's what it is: extortion.  When they say "do it our way or else," that's extortion.

And if you cave and agree, or even if you try to be reasonable, they will double down and demand human sacrifices, too.

So the only proper response is "Fuck you, we're doing it the OPPOSITE of your way, times a thousand."

Steve Benen:

It came as something of a surprise, though, to learn the RNC has also taken an interest in high-school students’ advanced-placement exams. Caitlin MacNeal reported yesterday:

The Republican National Committee on Friday denounced the College Board’s new framework for the AP U.S. History exam for its “consistently negative view of American history.”

 

The committee adopted a resolution during its summer meeting in Chicago condemning the exam’s new framework, according to Education Week.

 

In the resolution, the RNC slams the College Board’s “radically revisionist view of American history that emphasizes negative aspects of our nation’s history while omitting or minimizing positive aspects.”

By way of an example, the RNC believes the AP framework portrays early U.S. colonists as “oppressors and exploiters while ignoring the dreamers and innovators who built our country.”

In other words, the Republican National Committee wants these advanced-placement classes to put a more positive, more deliberately patriotic spin on history.

Repugs and conservatards don't give a flying fuck about the AP History exam.  They care about bashing liberals and making them defy facts and science to kow-tow to jingoistic stupidity.

So instead of having a bunch of history professors trying to rationally explain that the AP history textbook actually does reflect the non-existent Greatness of Murka, this is what the AP should tell the RNC:

"You don't like the current test?  Fine, the new test will be based completely and exclusively on Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States."  (Also known as "How to Force Socialism Down Your Children's Throats.") Now kindly fuck off and die in a fire. Slowly. And painfully."

Jingoism Jumps the Shark

I make a point of ignoring Princess Dumbass of the Northwoods, as Charlie Pierce calls her, but this quote via Ed Kilgore at Political Animal just so perfectly illustrates the fundamental ignorance and stupidity of blind jingoism I have to post it:

* And in know-nothing news, Sarah Palin attacks Bowe Bergdahl for allegedly learning native languages while in captivity, instead of “speaking KickAss against those who would destroy the red, white, and blue.”