Sometimes it’s just best to keep your mouth shut, follow suit and do the right thing.
Perhaps nobody is as unacquainted with this valuable life lesson and in need of such conscientious advice as Colin Kaepernick, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback who refused to stand for the national anthem during a preseason football game because of our country’s alleged mistreatment of minorities, in his own words.
Prior to a preseason bout against the Green Bay Packers last week, Kaepernick sat on the bench while our country’s anthem played. After the contest, Kaepernick was asked by NFL media reporters on his decision to remain seated while the song played.
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick told media after the game.
“To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
Unfortunately for you, Kaepernick, my moral compass is not in need of adjustment. I’m still trying to decide what is more selfish — not standing in respect for our nation’s most valued heroes, or justifying your actions with an entirely unrelated social issue that has no correlation with the men and women who serve in our armed forces — in this instance, it may be equal.
Kaepernick is terribly misguided, and his cheesy, fraudulent “taking a stand by taking a seat” publicity stunt personifies everything that is wrong with America today in a nutshell.
The liberal media handpicks these stories for our viewing. They make hasty generalizations and rush to conclusions before autopsies are done, testimonies are given and the facts of these cases become available to the public. Our own president has given public speeches on police brutality in areas where these incidents have occurred before anything is known about the case.
They do it to mislead you, divide you, and persuade you into advocating their agenda. And it works.
It works so well, in fact, that when a black cop shoots a black man with an extensive criminal record, who was also in possession of a firearm at the time he was shot, entire businesses are still looted and burnt to the ground while “protesters” roam the streets in search of chaos.
Police brutality against minorities is not the problem they make it out to be. If Kaepernick or anybody else with sympathy for the Black Lives Matter movement wants to truly make a difference in these communities, there’s a plethora of viable starting points, none of which include refusing to stand and honor the sacrifice made by those who protect your individual liberty to make a fool of yourself.
If you want to make a difference, Kaepernick, sponsor boys and girls clubs in these communities. Teach children in these areas at young ages the harms of drugs, alcohol, tobacco and gang violence. Introduce programming that instills the morals that turn them into dedicated husbands, fathers, wives and mothers. Show them the value of marriage and family. And perhaps, most importantly, stop voting for the party that has entrapped you and your neighbors in generational poverty and government dependency for nearly 50 years.
Instead, Kaepernick took the route of being low and disrespectful to the group of people who put their lives at risk to defend the very privileges he has invoked. For many of his colleagues in the league, his plea for attention has fallen on deaf ears. He’s grown increasingly irrelevant in the NFL and the 49ers organization since their Super Bowl XLVII loss to the Ravens, and apparently needed to make one more splash before he loses his job to Blaine Gabbert.
I applaud Kaepernick for standing up for what he believes in. If he truly feels there are moral, ethical or lawful injustices occurring in our country, it is only right to make your feelings known. However, it’s counterproductive to seek attention for this cause by publicly disrespecting those who ensure your liberties to speak and assemble.
