The Super
Patriotic Draft Dodger’s Rag: “Fire the
Son-of-a-Bitch”
By Edward Curtin
So I
wish you well, Sarge, give ’em Hell!
Kill me a thousand or so
And if you ever get a war without blood and gore
I’ll be the first to go
—
Phil Ochs, The
Draft Dodger’s Rag
“Guess
that makes me a proud bitch.”
—
Teresa Kaepernick, Colin Kaepernick’s
mother’s response to Trump’s comment about her
son.
September
29, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- In the true spirit of patriotic opposition, Colin
Kaepernick took a courageous knee when he protested
the current and historical treatment of black
Americans and people of color during the playing of
the National Anthem. For his patriotism, the NFL
has made sure he remains unemployed, and now, when
our reality-television president urges NFL teams to
fire any “son-of-a-bitch” who dares follow
Kaepernick’s example, the NFL Commissioner Roger
Goodell releases a sanctimonious statement calling
Trump’s demented words “divisive comments,”
revealing an “unfortunate lack of respect” for NFL
players. NFL owners and others chimed in with the
word of the day – “divisive.” Exactly who is being
divided from whom is left to speculation?
The
hypocrisies of this lurid spectacle continue to
mount daily.
Kaepernick
knelt on principle during the Obama presidency. His
was a lonely act. Now that the buffoonish Trump
tweets and speaks his grotesqueries, it has become
easy to emerge from the woodwork and join the crowd
in supporting the man who made his solitary
witness. Cheap grace, the German theologian and
pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer termed the desire for
“salvation” without paying a price. He said this
before being executed by Hitler for his opposition
to Nazism.
Who among
those kneeling today in solidarity with Kaepernick
are willing to pay a price? What’s the NFL’s price?
The Tycoons who own the teams? Who among them
agrees with a man who gave his life for black
liberation, Dr. Martin Luther King, who made it
emphatically clear that the fight against racism
involved opposing a trinity of devils when he said:
We must
recognize that we can’t solve our problem now
until there is a radical redistribution of
economic and political power… this means a
revolution of values and other things. We
must see now that the evils of racism, economic
exploitation and militarism are all tied
together… you can’t really get rid of one
without getting rid of the others… the
whole structure of American life must be
changed. America is a hypocritical nation and
[we] must put [our] own house in order.
Colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, racism – this
is U.S. history, not the myths proffered by
mythmakers, politicians, and schools. The system of
exploitation is old and enduring, and the point of
its spear is war. It is great that many players
join in solidarity with Kaepernick. Racism must be
opposed and freedom of speech exercised and
defended. But it would be better indeed if more of
those who rightly oppose Trump’s disgusting comments
and support Kaepernick speak out about the triple
devils King warned about. The system of racial
exploitation does not stand alone; never has. Nor
will it fall alone.
The Star
Spangled Banner is a celebration of war, meant to
stir martial emotions. It also contains racist
lyrics. And football is the war sport par
excellence, extremely violent, and deeply tied to
the spectacle of cruelty that dominates American
society today and that has caused so much suffering
for black people and other people of color for
centuries. In the 1960s, Brazilian television, in an
effort to distinguish football (soccer) from
American football, aptly termed it “military
football.” And while it, like other sports, has
been an avenue to wealth and “success” for some
black Americans (a tiny minority), its war-like
structure and violent nature is noted with a nod and
a wink. Heck, it’s fun to play and exciting to
watch, and is just a colorful spectacle that we
can’t do without, despite all the concussions, pain
killers, and crippling life-long injuries. Lasting
effects similar to those suffered by veterans
returned from war zones. The gridiron is a war
zone.
That the
NFL is a conditioning agent for the love of war and
violent aggression is usually passed over. Its
language, like all good linguistic mind control,
becomes powerfully invisible.
Colin
Kaepernick, like all quarterbacks, is the field
general who throws bombs to flankers as he tries to
avoid the blitz. Each team defends and conquers the
enemy’s territory, pushing its opponent back through
frontal assaults and pounding the enemy’s line.
This is mixed with deceptive formations and aerial
assaults behind the opponent’s line. When none of
this works and the enemy goes on the offensive, a
different platoon is brought in to defend one’s
territory. One’s front line must then defend against
a frontal assault and hit back hard.
The
analogies are everywhere, and as with many aspects
of “everywhere,” what’s everywhere is nowhere – its
familiarity making it invisible and therefore all
the more powerful.
In a
society of the spectacle, NFL football is the most
spectacular and entertaining mass hypnotic induction
into the love of war and violence that we have.
Goodell says that “the NFL and our players are at
our best when we help create a sense of unity in our
country and our culture.” These are swell sounding
words that were essentially forced out of his mouth
by Trump’s mad rantings. Words involving a
double-entendre as well: The good of being united
against racism on one hand, if that is what Goodell
meant; the bad of being united to promote patriotic
militarism, violence, and war on the other.
Hypocritical contradictions, at best.
And where
in all this is Colin Kaepernick, the forgotten man?
Has he decided to study war no more, but to study
Dr. King’s true legacy and his naming of the three
demons that must be confronted and exorcised if
MLK’s “Beloved Community” is to be established?
Great
ironies abound here. Who among Kaepernick’s current
supporters said one word when the mixed-race,
neo-liberal Democrat, Barack Obama, suavely mass
murdered his way around the world with seven wars,
while showing his “cool” skills on the basketball
court? Coolness works. Obama was given a free
ride. More than that; he was treated like a rock
star by the entertainment/sports complex. And now
that he is cashing in with speeches to Wall Street,
who calls him out on that? Obama, while always
standing front stage, was all about operating back
stage, very CIA-like. “One may smile, and smile,
and be a villain,” wrote Shakespeare, who was quite
an expert on acting.
Trump is
the obverse. His back stage is his front stage. He
is an easy target. He makes himself one; thinks
coolness is to generate heat and draw audience
attention to it. It is an aspect of his celebrity
reality-TV mindset: create buzz around your “brand,”
make it hot, whether good or bad, it doesn’t matter.
Titillate, provoke, tweet garbage sure to arouse
passions. Agitate the audience. He is an expert at
feeding the beast that is America’s entertainment
circus, the spectacle of con-men and
prestidigitators extraordinaire. Flip Trump and you
have Obama. Flip Obama and you have George W.
Bush. Flip George and you have Bill Clinton. Flip
Bill and you have the tail that wags the dog –
Hillary. Or the reverse. Rotating little people
going round and round, in and out, disappearing and
appearing on a cuckoo clock with terrible music and
mockingbird sounds.
There’s
only one coin in these United States, and it’s
counterfeit.
Trump goes
to the United Nations and says he is “ready,
willing, and able to totally destroy North Korea”
and its 25 million people. Who will take a knee for
the North Korean people threatened by the public
ranting of a man willing to commit genocide?
No
Advertising
- No
Government
Grants -
This Is
Independent
Media
|
Who took a
knee for the world when Obama announced a 1 trillion
dollar nuclear weapons upgrade? When he savagely
attacked Libya, Somalia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq,
Syria, and Pakistan; sent drones worldwide in search
of victims? Did the NFL issue a statement of
condemnation on the deaths of innocent children at
the receiving end of American bombs?
Who is
linking arms for all the innocent victims killed by
Trump in eight months? What communities are the NFL
Commissioner and team owners referring to when they
say the league and the players are forces for good
in our communities? Does “ours” mean a small circle
of friends, outside of which the enemies lurk who
should be annihilated? Over there, over there, send
the bombs, send the bombs, over there. Far from our
“communities.” Is that the theme song? Is that the
distinction?
What about
Dr. King’s “Beloved Community”?
Our
goal is to create a beloved community and this
will require a qualitative change in our
souls as well as a quantitative change in our
lives.
Who will
take a knee for a radical redistribution of economic
and political power? Who will link arms for the end
to capitalist exploitation and the amassing of
obscene wealth by a few at the expense of the many?
Who will refuse to support war and war-making? Who
will tell it like it is and say that the demon of
racism can only be eliminated if the others are?
Liberals won’t. Conservatives won’t. Who will? Who
will pay a price?
MLK paid
the ultimate price for confronting these demons.
When U.S. government forces killed him in Memphis,
he had taken a knee for all the exploited and
oppressed people of the world community, the beloved
community.
“America is
a hypocritical nation and [we] must put [our] own
house in order,” he told us. Hypocritical comes from
the Greek hypokrites, a stage actor;
pretender, dissembler. There are too many actors on
this stage of moral outrage – far too may
hypocrites. For years many NFL teams accepted
Pentagon money to pimp for the war makers, but their
pimping days started long before and continue to the
present day, even if they say they no longer accept
their client’s payoff. What do the owners stand
for? Capital accumulation? Exploitation? War? And
all the liberals jumping on the moral outrage train
of racism? Obama was okay as he killed, maimed, and
exploited – wasn’t that their silent mantra? So
Trump is a conservative? What kind of true
conservative would threaten foreign wars and tweet
absurdities?
Welcome to
the phony circus, where the man on the hire wire,
the daring one, Colin Kaepernick, is home studying
American history and learning about all the
confidence men.
So I hope
and pray.
Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared
widely. He teaches sociology at Massachusetts
College of Liberal Arts. His website is
http://edwardcurtin.com/
|