The Federalist:
At a rally on Friday, President Trump said that the NFL should fire any players who copy Colin Kaepernick by going down on one knee when our national anthem is played. So this Sunday, dozens of NFL players dutifully responded by going down on one knee to show their “resistance” to Trump.
That’s where we are with the stupid politics of the “Resistance.” All that is necessary to decide the right thing to do is to check on what Donald Trump says and do the opposite.
One NFL player very conspicuously didn’t go down on one knee. While the rest of the Pittsburgh Steelers stayed inside the locker room during the anthem—management’s attempt to dodge the controversial issue—Alejandro Villanueva insisted on going out and standing, hand over heart as we were all taught to do. Why? Villaneuva is a former Army Ranger who graduated from West Point and did three tours of duty in Afghanistan, fighting terrorists so the rest of us can be safe.
I would say that Trump outsmarted the Resistance, but that doesn’t seem to take much work. The Resistance has framed the issue so cleverly that they are on one side and Trump is on the other—along with the national anthem, the flag, and military veterans.
The whole idea of “taking the knee” began, from what I can gather, as a way for a mid-grade quarterback to sulk about being benched. Then it turned, supposedly, into a symbolic protest against the injustice of police gunning down innocent black men. This was originally in response to the “hands up don’t shoot” narrative about the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri—a narrative that was comprehensively debunkedby the Department of Justice civil-rights task force the Obama administration sent to Ferguson.
But we all know that the narrative takes on a life of its own, never mind the facts. So going down one knee during the anthem was taken up as a symbol of protest against supposed police racism. It was an ill-conceived form of protest, bound to backfire. The symbolism is all wrong. By its very nature, it does not come across to most Americans as a protest against excessive use of force by the police. It comes across as a protest against the national anthem. And since the national anthem is, well, our national anthem, it comes across as a protest against America.
So, basically, Pres Trump tricked all of the progressives into bowing to him!
This image is confusing and misses making its point.
The Left has almost been tricked into doing it.
Love it.
And, btw, the NFL cannot afford for it to continue long.