My Thoughts on Kneeling for the National Anthem

 Good morning, all.  I originally wrote this email on September 18, 2019, but I did not post on my blog until today.

We are approaching the start of the fourth NFL season since then-backup 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick first knelt for the “Star Spangled Banner” before his team’s final preseason game of the 2016 season.  Since Kaepernick first knelt, we have seen many other NFL players, soccer player Megan Rapinoe, and even (in the past few weeks) an American fencer kneel for the anthem.  It bothers me that many people create a false binary that there are only two options in viewing these protests: Either you are in favor of the protest, or you are a racist.  Well, I fall into neither category.  I have disagreed with the protest from the day Kaepernick first knelt, and I have six reasons why.  I wish to share those with you now.

1)     I, like many, believe that kneeling for the anthem is a sign that a) you are ashamed to live in the United States of America and b) you do not respect the men and women who have fought to allow us to have the freedoms that we have in the United States.  Kaepernick and others might claim that they are not ashamed of the country and/or that they do respect veterans, but the kneeling makes me think otherwise.  This leads me to my second reason to disagree with the protest.

 

2)     This is not the 1960s, when athletes had no platform on which to speak after leaving the field.  With social media, athletes have the ability to make political statements 24/7 when they are off the field.  In 2016, Kaepernick could have posted on social media that he feels there is systemic racism in the police force and that he felt it was a joke that our two presidential candidates were Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, two beliefs that he has stated.  In regard to the second part, most Americans – myself included – would have agreed!  As for the first part, my personal belief is that, while there are a few individually racist police officers in this large country (just as there are a few bad apples in any profession), the police system itself is not racist.  The burden of proof in any “systemic racism” charge lies with the person who is making the claim, but I am happy to listen to anyone who tries to show proof of systemic racism.  Additionally, if I feel that a person has truly shown me proof of systemic racism, I am happy to fight alongside that person for change. 

 

Let me next though note that we have seen plenty of athletes make political statements and, unlike with Kaepernick, face no public backlash.  Lebron James has spoken out against President Trump; the 2014 St. Louis Rams wore practice shirts that said, “Hands up; don’t shoot” (even though the Department of Justice report found that Michael Brown was killed after assaulting a police officer and reaching for the officer’s gun); and Spurs coach Gregg Popovich regularly speaks out against President Donald Trump.  Sure, there are plenty of people who do not like any of these comments or actions, but that number is tiny compared to the number of people who disapprove of kneeling.

 

Thus, given that players and coaches have public forums where they may espouse political views, why would people like Kaepernick kneel for the anthem?  If he had issues with the country in 2016 (or now), he could have (and can) use social media to do so.  This would have allowed Kaepernick to avoid making people like me think that he is ashamed of the country or does not respect those who have fought for the country.

 

3)     Kaepernick and the fencer have talked about “wanting to start a conversation” with their kneeling.  This is probably as preposterous as it gets when it comes to a rationale for kneeling.  Do you remember the summer of 2016?  The big topic all summer (outside of the presidential election and the antics of d-bag Ryan Lochte in Rio) was the relationship between police officers and minority communities.  That summer saw the murder of Philando Castile by police and the murders of five Dallas police officers.  By the time Kaepernick kneeled on September 1, the whole country had spent months having the conversation Kaepernick was allegedly starting.  The only conversation Kaepernick started was about whether or not kneeling is an acceptable means of protest. 

 

Granted, that ironic turn of events is not as comical as a fencer trying to start a conversation in 2019.  With social media being what it is and the increasing polarization of Democrats and Republicans, what conversation is there that we are not already having?  Oh wait, there is one, and that conversation is that we should try to seek common ground with our political adversaries, but somehow I doubt that is the message the fencer was seeking.  Plus, with all due respect to Paul Rudd’s great character in “I Love You, Man”; I do not think a fencer really moves the needle on any social discussion.  As for Megan Rapinoe, she has essentially said that she wants to discuss politics with only those who agree with her.  Plus, her kneeling and that of the fencer are worse than Kaepernick’s because the former two have done so while playing for United States national teams.  If you are wearing a USA jersey, you should not be allowed to kneel for the anthem.  Period.  Now, switching gears to Reason #4…

 

4)     As fans, sports are our escape.  We can find political content 24/7 on TV, on social media, or in conversations with our friends and family.  Therefore, to have politics encroach on our Sunday afternoons of watching football (in the form of kneeling) has been quite bothersome.  This also returns to my premise on why people are more accepting of Lebron’s and Popovich’s political commentary than they are of Kaepernick’s kneeling.  When we watch a game involving Team LeBron (whatever team that might be in a given year), we enjoy the great athlete who is LeBron James.  If we want to hear his political commentary, we can tune in outside of game time for that.  The analogous goes for Gregg Popovich, who speaks out in post-game press conferences but is not making political speeches mid-game.  These people have allowed the games themselves to be sanctuaries from politics, and it is annoying to me and to others that kneelers have brought politics into the sanctuary.

 

I should also add that I have heard people discuss another false binary of “How can fans think Kaepernick is a worse person than the domestic abusers in the NFL?”  Truthfully, I do not know anyone who thinks that Greg Hardy or Tyreek Hill (to name two such abusers) is a better person than Colin Kaepernick.  However, people spend more time venting about the kneeling than domestic abuse because we see the kneeling, not the bulk of the domestic abuse, on TV.  With the very notable exceptions of Ray Rice and Kareem Hunt, we do not see what happens when the athletes are out of the public eye.  Therefore, fans do not spend much time thinking about players’ personal lives.  That said, Kaepernick remains a much better person than anyone who commits domestic abuse.

 

5)     In team sports, players do not like to see their teammates doing things for selfish reasons.  Team sports are all about a bunch of people pushing together toward a common goal.  The athlete and former coach in me do not like seeing a player distracting from the team’s efforts by kneeling for the anthem.  Not only did Kaepernick’s kneeling draw attention away from his teammates and onto him, but it also made his teammates have to spend time answering questions about the kneeling.  That does not exactly bring a team together.  It is especially bad for a team when a backup quarterback is the cause of all of the attention.  I know that many people act like Kaepernick strode directly from a tough Super Bowl loss to the Ravens into that preseason game in which he started kneeling.  However, the truth is that Kaepernick was not good in his last two pre-kneeling seasons, and he had lost his job to Blaine Gabbert in the season before kneeling.  Blaine Gabbert is a terrible quarterback.  Furthermore, in the offseason prior to him kneeling, many had begun to question how much Kaepernick still desired to play football.  Ultimately, once Gabbert had won the quarterback job in 2016, Kaepernick began kneeling.  Very interesting timing there if you ask me….

 

This, of course, shows why the whole collusion premise with Kaepernick was ridiculous.  Kaepernick ended up playing some in 2016 and did not play very well.  Therefore, why would any team want the next season to bring in a backup quarterback who had played poorly for 2-3 seasons in a row and who would be a polarizing, distracting figure?  No coach or GM ever wants his team to spend countless hours answering questions with the media about a backup QB.  Thus, 32 teams all looked at the prospect of signing Kaep and decided that the cost far outweighs the benefit. 

 

I should add though that the NFL did mess up by allowing Kaepernick’s kneeling in the first place.  Many pundits misapply the concept of freedom of speech and expression in the context of kneeling.  When one works for a company, he/she agrees to follow the requests of the boss, as long as those requests are legal.  Most companies would not allow a worker to make a political protest while representing the company, and those companies can legally ensure of this.  An NFL team is no different in this regard….and no, Richard Sherman, it is not a “slaveowner mentality” that leads owners to want to forbid kneeling.  It is an “every boss ever” mentality that allows a boss to impose rules of conduct on his employees.  If a person voluntarily accepts a job and can voluntarily resign from the job if he chooses, there should be no comparison to slavery.  Anyway, to our last reason we go…

 

6)     A valid protest needs a defined goal.  Unfortunately, we have seen other protests, like “Occupy Wall Street”, with no defined goals, but that does not excuse the lack of a goal with kneeling.  Kaepernick, Rapinoe, and others kneel because they generally think this country is racist and because they do not like President Trump.  However, a valid protest is one in which a person says, “I will _______________ until ________________”.  The kneelers have filled in the first blank with “kneel” without filling in the second.  To be a valid protest, the protesters should have a defined goal such that, when said goal is achieved, they will stop kneeling.  “Eliminating racism” is not a valid goal, because it is purely subjective.   A protest needs defined goals.

 

Thus, in summary, athletes have plenty of ways to spread sociopolitical messages these days, but fans would prefer that they leave their messages off the field.  Coaches and many teammates feel the same way.  Therefore, I would urge them all to stand for the anthem and respect this country and its vets.  Of course, this is not a perfect country, but do not let the perfect be the enemy of the great.  We are a great country, and we can always look to improve.  However, let the athletic field remain just that.

Covid, Donuts, Cars, Swimming, and Cigarettes

Hello, all.

You are probably sick of me writing things about Covid.  I am sick of me writing things about Covid too. Unfortunately though, as long as the government maintains non-pharmaceutical interventions in regard to Covid, I will continue to be fueled to be write about the matters.  Anyway, as you all know quite well by now, I have always favored the "focused protection" Covid strategy in which we would have allowed the at-risk to quarantine (and receive government aid while doing so....same for businesses who have people quarantining), allowed the rest of us to live otherwise normal lives, and also allowed the rest of us to reach herd immunity in order to make it safe for the at-risk to end their quarantines.  Of course, when I first proposed this idea last March, I never fathomed that we would still be experiencing these non-pharmaceutical interventions more than a year later, but here we are.  

Anyway, one of the main things I have stressed over the past 14 months is that I believe that the lockdown approach kills more lives than the "focused protection" approach would.  However, I have not focused much on this next thought, and this next thought deserves plenty of attention too: Even if the "focused protection" approach were to take more lives than the lockdown approach (though I doubt this is the case), that would not mean that focused protection is the wrong approach.  Why is that, you might ask?  Well, there are two reasons.

1) With the "focused protection" approach, nobody would be forcing someone into any situation where Covid spread is more likely.  In other words, if you want to go to a crowded concert, you can do that.  You accept the risk of getting Covid when you do that, and that is OK.  (And, if you do get Covid while you are out and about, that is because YOU accepted the risk.  The blame does not fall on the person who transmitted Covid to you.*)  Nobody is forcing someone out of his/her home and into a crowded area.  However, if many at-risk people choose to accept the risk, the death total would be higher than if fewer at-risk people make that choice, and that is again OK.  Let people choose how to live their lives.  If we were to live lives with no risk, our lives would be miserable.

2) There is more when it comes to the idea of "number of deaths is not the end all, be all".  In no other facet of life do we look at rising/falling death totals or compare death totals from different geographic areas and judge policies solely on the quantity of those death numbers.  And from there...Let's compare Covid to cars, swimming, donuts, and cigarettes.

Covid: Yes, 500,000 Americans have died from Covid over the past two years. However, with Covid, that 500,000 number could have been lower with focused protection, and we must acknowledge that a) some of those 500,000 had Covid at the time of death but likely died of other causes, and b) many of the 500,000 died because of Covid policies (Putting people unnecessarily on respirators, sending Covid patients into nursing homes, keeping those who had been exposed to Covid locked at home with high-risk family members).  Furthermore, the lockdown restrictions have taken away people's jobs, businesses, leisure activities, communal gatherings and so on.  We have taken away so much of our kids' youth and harmed so much of their development.  We have done so much damage to mental health through social isolation, mandated masking, and much of what I said above.  However, our leaders have had a singular focus on death toll, while putting hardly any emphasis on these other issues.  Every actuary in the world must be tearing his/her hair out these days.  On to the comparisons...

Cars: 37,000 Americans die per year in car accidents.  Yes, that number is smaller than the Covid toll, but the "years of life lost" and "quality of years of life lost" totals in terms of Covid deaths and car-accident deaths probably differ by a minimal amount.  Car accidents often take young and/or healthy lives from us, while Covid has killed predominantly the elderly and immunocompromised.  That said, if we monitored car accidents like we do Covid deaths, nobody would be allowed to drive.  It's very simple.  By the prevailing Covid logic, you should be considered selfish for wanting to drive.  While we have a year of evidence that "virus is gonna virus" regardless of lockdown measures, it is clear that, if we forbid driving, we would drop that 37,000-fatality number down to 0.  However, nobody would ever dream of saying that we should forbid driving cars, because we accept that cars make our lives so much easier and happier.  (Maybe I shouldn't say "nobody would ever dream" about this; given I would have said the same about lockdowns last February.  Oops.)

Donuts: I don't know how many lives donuts take from us, because donuts do not directly kill people.  However, donuts do not make us healthier.  Donuts are sugary and provide no nutritional value.  If you have heart issues, diabetes, or obesity - to name a few conditions - eating donuts could push you closer to death.  Thus, by the Covid logic, it should be selfish to eat donuts, as your next donut could be the one that pushes you to the hospital.  Now you are adding unnecessary burden to our healthcare system!  Of course, I am being silly here.  Donuts are delicious, and we like to eat them because they are delicious.  I am merely pointing out the double-standard.  If we had a death toll from anything related to poor nutrition, and if CNN constantly interviewed hysterical doctors and nurses from crowded heart-disease or diabetes wings of hospitals, there would be leftists picketing outside every Dunkin' Donuts in the country.

Swimming: Roughly 4000 Americans drown to death per year.  Doesn't that seem unnecessary?  It's 2021 - modern transportation and air conditioning have made it such that nobody should ever have to swim.  (I've actually abided by this one pretty well in my life!)  You know what?  If we make swimming illegal, no Americans would die of swimming.  Instead, we have 50 governors "experimenting with human sacrifice", as the laughable The Atlantic would say, by letting people swim in their states.  Surely I jest though.  People enjoy swimming, so we accept as a society that some people will drown.  However, if you are personally worried about drowning, you don't have to go swimming!   Likewise, if you are personally worried about car crashes or sugar intake, you don't have to drive or eat donuts, respectively.  

Cigarettes: OK, by now, you get my point.  However, I will hammer it home with cigarettes.  We all know that many lives are lost to lung cancer and emphysema, as a result of cigarette smoking.  I don't see the real benefit in smoking cigarettes at all, but smokers seem to enjoy it.  I choose not to partake, because I know it is bad for my health.  Many others make the same choice I do.  However, we now live in a world where it is considered selfish for someone with a 99.98% - 99.997% Covid survival rate (Anyone aged 0-49 without major preexisting conditions) to do "normal" things like go to parties, concerts, or even a park and to do those things without masks*.  It is considered selfish because we are worried about overburdening the healthcare system, even though nearly everyone who is making these choices is unlikely to need medical care if he/she gets Covid.  However, if someone is a chain smoker, we don't criticize that person for being much more likely to need major medical care than the afore-mentioned people who simply want to live normal, healthy lives in the age of Covid.

Don't get me wrong here.  I don't think we should criticize the smoker either.  I am merely pointing out the ridiculous double standard.  In general, a large percent of people who need medical care at any given point in time need the care at least partially because they have made bad health choices in life.  We have never previously tried shown societal moral outrage at any of these people, yet the first time we are showing moral outrage is when people are trying to live their lives normally in the age of a respiratory virus?  We are showing moral outrage when the almost all of the people trying to live normally are the people least likely to need medical care?  It is pretty messed-up.  Of course, if you are worried about the fact that people can spread Covid to doctors and nurses but can't spread car accidents or lung cancer at a hospital; please remember that, with a "focused protection" plan, any doctors/nurses/staff who would be high-risk Covid patients would not be working or would be working remotely.

That is it for today.  Happy "57 Weeks to Flatten the Curve"!

*For those who don't know, I don't believe that masks work effectively to stop the spread of viruses.  At a minimum, I think that the costs of mask wearing (potential bacterial growth, tougher breathing, psychological costs) outweigh whatever minimal benefits there are (if any).  However, if you are at high Covid risk (or not), and you want to wear a mask, I am fine with that.  I just don't believe in the mask mandates.  As far as the "my mask protects you, not me" thing, I have no reason to buy that logic, or lack thereof, either.  If the mask blocks aerosols on exhale (which the many studies I have read would say is not the case, but let's go with it for discussion purposes), the mask blocks aerosols on inhale too.  Furthermore, if you are worried about maskless people exhaling aerosols that could enter your eyes, then wear goggles too.  It would seem that "my body, my choice" is a valid argument when it comes to masks and goggles. Worry about yourself, not other people (save for high-risk individuals) when it comes to viruses.  Lastly, with my herd-immunity idea, there has always been benefit to low-risk people contracting Covid; which is yet another point against masks (if we assume that masks block transmission, which I once again do not believe is the case).

Thank you for reading, and I hope that a day arrives soon when these Covid-related restrictions and mandates end and when you can stop receiving these posts from me!