re: #83 Sir John Barron

re: #89 Targetpractice

I don’t think this is about coercing patriotism.

This is about “patriotism”—in the form of ritualized actions—being used as a convenient bludgeon to silence dissent. As such, there’s no incentive on the part of the accuser to ever acknowledge patriotism by the accused, or even to set a clear bar of “this is patriotism” to be cleared.

The trick here is the way National Anthem etiquette is being elided to “support the troops” and both are elided to “and therefore don’t respect the sacrificed lives that help protect the nation.” This isn’t an argument in good faith about patriotism, it’s cynical and bad-faith misdirection. The argument rests on a series of “therefore” claims, where the accuser ignores pertinent data (what each player has said about what they’re doing and why) and treats their subjective “read” of events as requiring no justification.

It’s kangaroo court bullshit fit for a Soviet show trial. It’s weaponizing sentiment the way abusive parents do. It is exactly the same rhetoric bait-and-switch that used to constantly move goalposts about when a minority is “assimilated.”

Privilege is all about being able to declare what is “normal” and “status quo” without reality testing, about subjective impressions and feelings treated as “true.” The first move made against Kapernick, et al, was to completely ignore what they said about their actions, and the second was to ignore the short- and long-term context*.

_{*and by long-term context, I mean going back as far as Douglass’ “What is the 4th of July to a slave?}